Ah, the open road! Poets have waxed lyrical about its lure and its luster since the first prehistoric footpath was trod by naked feet. But that's because those poet guys have never been caught in a damn creeping-along, maddening, rush-hour traffic jam here in Chicago (or pick any other major city...particularly Atlanta) or what happened to us when we traversed half the state of Florida, east-to-west, on our way from the joys, excitement, much-appreciated book sales, Gallery of Legends hospitality, jingle of coins and crinkle of folding money at Sebring to my speech-delivery appointment at The REVs Institute in Naples. There is no direct, "as the crow flies it" route, BTW, since in south-central Florida, which is as flat as some of the girls who used to turn me down for dates in high school, is but one deep tide away from a sand bar with a few palm-tree tops sticking out of the water, and it is further bedeviled by swamps full of alligators and well-fed, illegal-alien Burmese Pythons and all sorts of other toothy and worrisome critters (like Black Bears...honest!) and poisonous reptiles and stinging insects and...but you get the idea. So we had to drive South and later-on North when our true destination was really West in order to get from Sebring to Naples, Florida. Plus it should come as no surprise that a large number of retirees and seasonal escapees from the Land of Snowplows and Road Salt have found their way to the sunshine, golf outings, early-bird off-price meals & occasional hurricanes of Florida. Some of them are even car and racing buffs, which is nice. And some of them are of advanced or semi-advanced age, can't see much further than their own hood ornaments and have the reaction times of a three-toed sloth on Quaaludes. So they compensate by driving at what might be called "a leisurely pace," and it is YOUR job, as a northern, big-city, high-energy, gotta-get-there interloper, NOT to curse at them through tightly clenched teeth or shake your fist at them or give them a horn blast or a wee bumper nudge to wake them back up. My favorites (albeit "inverse favorites") are what my rig-driving, consummate prep-artist buddy Geoff Heller always called "The Q-Tips," which are the little old ladies in big, squeaky-clean American cars where all you can see from behind are their frail, bony knuckles gripping the steering wheel in a death grip and this little white bun of hair--like the business end of a fresh Q-Tip--poking up maybe 2-1/2 or 3 inches above the seatback. Mind you, we have old people who drive slow back home, but in Florida it's more like an epidemic.

Would only be right to give one more shout-out to the staff and volunteers at The REVs Institute in Naples and to encourage one and all to schedule a visit next time you're anywhere nearby. Or make a special trip, as it's truly worth it. REVs is chock-full of amazing, unexpected, significant & historic treasures--wonderfully and respectfully presented, BTW--and you have to be doubly impressed that they take them out and run the crap out of them at various events in the hands of some truly accomplished professional drivers so that we, the enthusiast public, can see, hear and enjoy them as they were MEANT to be appreciated. That's one of the things that sets this institution apart.

Special thanks to Scott George, Caiti (who is helping us with graphics for the new Lotus book), Anna, Whitney, Samantha, Bill, Chip, Eric, the REVs volunteers & docents and the founder, guiding light and guy at the helm of the whole blessed toybox, Miles Collier. What a swell time we had and what a great and enthusiastic audience for my presentation. Below is a pic of me on stage at REVs, telling some most likely embellished and surely self-aggrandizing story or other. Actually, looking at the screen image behind me (what the heck is a first-gen Toyota Supra doing on the screen at The REVs Institute???), I'm telling the tale of the first season of so-called "pro" racing I ever did [translation: "amateur racing with an almost-believable tax dodge"] in the IMSA Firehawk and SCCA Escort endurance series.

I was driving alongside future multiple pro racing champion for Honda and Acura and also Pikes Peak winner P.D. Cunningham & a few others for the fledgling MPS Motorsports team out of Dayton, Ohio.

What makes this interesting is that a highly similar under-the-car mechanical scramble took place in the middle of the damn night at our very first race together, The 24 Hours of I Forget Now held at the rough & raggedy old Gateway track just across the river from East St. Louis. I actually kind of liked the track layout, but it was a pretty lumpy and hardscrabble facility and I seem to recall that there was some sort of trash dump next door where they seemed to be perpetually burning stacks of old tires. Or that's what it smelled like, anyway...

And now the tale itself:

I was in the car in the middle of the freaking night, careening through the noise and frenzied, searchlight-sweep of headlamp beams and then pitch-darkness, when I felt something go "POP" in the steering and all of a sudden the car is meandering rather aggressively to the right (oh, wait, now it's to the left!) and the steering wheel has found its way an unfamiliar, uncertain and somewhat queasy new position.

"I GOTTA COME IN!" I bellow into the CB mike that suffices as our com link. "SOMETHING'S GONE WRONG WITH THE F***ING STEERING!"

So I back way off and nurse it around and into the pits, the car weaving this way and that like a college freshman on his way home from his first-ever keg party the entire way, and I'm thinking as how we haven't had any major miscues or meltdowns yet and so we're still very much "in the mix" for a class podium. Maybe even a win? So I limp into the pits and the crew has a floor jack with a length of wood plank on top under the oil pan before I've even scrambled out of the car. I'm just in the way at this point, so I climb up on our timing stand alongside ace timer-and-scorer Judy Fiala (her multiple-national=champ husband Fred was one of the other MPS drivers that weekend) and I have no longer settled my butt into place than the damn Supra does a sort of sudden and spastic little weight shift and falls off the damn floor jack!

With two of our crew guys still underneath the car!!!

One of them, Al Thom, has his head right under the front crossmember, and the only thing that keeps it from crushing his head like a Christmas walnut in a fine Christmas nutcracker is that our crew chief, Jeff, who is a big, strapping, athletic-looking lad, is under the rocker panel kind of sideways--one shoulder up and one shoulder pressed down on the pavement--so his upper torso takes the brunt of it...

The rest of the crew responds with much yelling, screaming, running around and gesticulating, and in short order another floor jack is underneath the proper jacking point and lifts the car off our two stalwart crew heroes and a couple jack stands are weaseled into place. Both guys are hurt (we don't know yet how badly), but crew chief Jeff, God bless him, is already bellowing (between winces, anyway) for us to get the damn car fixed (turns out a lower front ball-joint has snapped) and get it back on track & into the fray.

Soon enough an ambulance comes trundling down pit lane--roof lights flashing--and they load our two Wounded Warriors up and cart them off for some much-needed medical attention. And not long after that, the Supra is more-or-less repaired and hustles back into the race. Whew.

You have to respect the drama, occasional desperation and inevitable "rising to the occasion" that are forever a part of Endurance Racing, and I love it dearly...even though a 24-Hour race is probably something more wonderful to "have done" than to actually "be doing."

Except for the winners, anyway...

Epilogue: The ambulance mentioned above wound up taking our two guys to a very busy hospital/trauma center in a rather dicey and economically disadvantaged neighborhood across the river in East St. Louis, and I believe they may have been the only patients admitted that particular Saturday night who weren't suffering from gunshot or stab wounds, blunt-force trauma or drug overdoses.

In the wee hours, they checked themselves out and took a cab back across the river to the racetrack. And you should have seen them. Al had a big, wide bandage wrapped around his head and crew chief Jeff's arm and shoulder were in a sling. I swear, they looked like 2/3rds of that famous "Spirit of '76" painting they showed you in grammar school when you were studying our War of Independence. All they needed was a blessed fife and a drum.

Final note: Al Thom went from almost getting his skull crushed to eventually climbing the ladder to become President and right-hand man to the owner/founder at Weather-Tech (yes, THAT one!), and also does some very fast and successful vintage racing these days in a well-prepped and truly lovely Alfa Berlina sedan. We talk and laugh about that night at Gateway every time we see each other. The full story will be in the upcoming "Potside II" short-story anthology.

And THAT'S why there's a blessed first-gen Toyota Supra on the screen behind me in the shot from my REVs presentation!

Also behind me are some more representative "REVs-like" baubles on display:

1) A magnificent, bright red Porsche 904. Definitely one of my "bucket-list" cars!

2) A ditto Alfa TZ1 "Tubolare" (one of my very favorite cars, and there's an in-car video of me driving late and much-missed friend Tom Mittler's example at Moroso on YouTube: CLICK HERE TO SEE IT).

3) An also bright-red Simca/Abarth. Not too well-remembered today, but a successful "homologation special" GT car in their day. Absolutely lovely and, like damn near everything Carlo Abarth ever built: exciting, evocative, nimble, sexy, deliciously & deliberately noisy and very, very quick.

Like I've said and repeated, if you're reading this (or any of my other stuff), you simply MUST make a pilgrimage to REVs. Period. Full stop.

And now, from the exquisite, exemplary and historically significant to, well, the folks who surely love their cars and, in that process, keep the car wax, chrome polish, tire cleaner and chamois buffing cloth people in business:

No question there are a lot of VERY nice enthusiast cars in Florida, as was evidenced by the impressive turnout at the "Cars and Coffee" event we went to on the Sunday with our fine, fun & fabulous hosts, Bill and Karen Vincent. It was held at a pretty big and decidedly upscale shopping mall, and we saw lots of shiny and shimmering Corvettes, Mustangs, McLarens, Muscle Cars, Lamborghinis, Porsches of every possible type, age and pedigree, a few Ferraris, some excellent American Classics and a smattering of pristine hot rods, "resto-mods" and street cruisers. Even a couple Spanish-speaking Low Riders flashing their gaudy, iridescent paintjobs and doing their spastic little hydraulic-ram dances to the sheer, giggling delight of all the enthusiastic youngsters who have yet to reach puberty.

Yeah, I don't get it, but I don't get Rap music, either, and that probably means I'm on the way to becoming a "Q-Tip" myself. Except that I'm bald on top...

It was quite the impressive & eclectic show--reminded me of the similar one I saw in Burbank a few years back--but I have to say that one enormous question filled my mind:

Yes, these were some wonderful and rewarding enthusiast cars, only down in Florida, WHERE THE HELL DO YOU DRIVE THE DAMN THINGS??? We didn't see a single decent elevation change, off-camber switchback or late-apex sweeper the entire time we were there. Add in the heavy traffic, long lights and the aforementioned "Q-Tips" and it's enough to fade the prefix "sports" right out of the word "sportscar." Even so, they were purty to look at and marvel over, and thanks to all the enthusiast types who brought them out to show them off.

As stated in the last blast, the talk at REVs was very well received and we even sold a bunch of books (thanks so much to volunteer-group organizers Bill Vincent and Chip Halverson for bringing me down), and I didn't get a single angry or outraged CoF ("Correction of Fact") during the Q&A session that followed. Whew. But maybe they were just being polite?

Besides my speech at REVs, Monday also happened to be St. Patrick's Day, and we ventured back to the same mall for a nice dinner and found it overrun with noise, music, strings of bright green plastic beads, strange and even outrageous green headgear, inebriated laughter and a lemming-tide of people acting or pretending to be Irish. As it turns out, most of my friends in high school were Irish (including Pat Fitzgerald, who was my best pal, my ad-hoc crew chief when I started racing and, a few years later, the Best Man at Carol & my wedding on Valentines'). So I knew almost all of the old "Clancey Brothers With Tommy Makem" songs the band was playing and singing and, in the great tradition of The Ould Sod, I sang right along with them. Much to Bill and Karen's amazement. But the thing about singing in a big and well-lubricated crowd is that no one cares...

Come Tuesday we said our good-byes--it was really a wonderful and comfortable time--and headed North again towards Birmingham, AL. Unfortunately, that insufferably pleasant and patient lady who lives inside Carol's cell phone routed us through Atlanta...which we hit right about Rush Hour (which runs from 6:30ayem right through 8:00PM in those parts), so we were creeping and start-and-stopping along for what seemed like hours (it was) and also there was some sort of major woods fire all around us so we were in a choking haze of smoke the entire time. What fun. We booked into a hotel between Atlanta and Birmingham overnight, thoroughly frazzled and exhausted, and the next morning we headed over to The Barber Museum/Barber Motorsports Park to meet up with my old friend Lee Clark, who is a bit of a big and well-aged cheese there, and see the collection again. Including several Lotus cars I actually drove and raced when my late friend, fellow Lotus lover (only he actually owned a few) and Birmingham native David Whiteside had them. In particular, following a meet-up at Watkins Glen where David let me test-drive his Lotus 17 so I could "write a story about it," we wound up having a great time and campaigning that car together for more than three full seasons. I detail the entire, Quixotic and Falstaffian adventure in my new Lotus book, but the bare bones are that Colin Chapman's Coventry-Climax-powered Lotus Eleven had established itself as "the car to beat" in its class(es) from its introduction in 1956 right through the early days of the "rear-engine" revolution in 1958-59. The Eleven won races all over the globe and scored major class and Index of Performance victories at Le Mans. Plus it was Colin Chapman's first-ever big commercial racecar success, with over 250 cars built in two series.

But racing is forever a moving target, and the curtain started descending when upstart and unheralded Eric Broadley introduced his similar but somewhat better "Lola Mk. I" in mid-1958. The Lola was a bit smaller, lighter and arguably lovelier than Chapman's Eleven and had a better rear suspension as well, and Chapman realized he'd better do something quick to regain his position at the top of the heap.

At the time, Colin already had a new, smaller, lighter car in the works, the Lotus 17, which had been brewed up specifically to run a tiny little 750cc Coventry-Climax motor and try to win the prestigious and lucrative Index of Performance "handicap" award at Le Mans again. As an aside, this was the first Lotus racing car NOT penned in person by Colin Chapman, but was rather drawn up by a young Len Terry with Chapman surely peering over his shoulder for every twitch of the drawing pencil. The 17 was a tiny little car, 7/8ths the size of a Lotus Eleven (see pic below), and was fitted with a new and ultimately problematic strut-type front suspension along with a fully independent "Chapman Strut" rear suspension similar to that used in the Lotus 15 and Elite.

As a package, it didn't work very well, and its test driver, Alan Stacey, refused to race it first time out (after qualifying quite well) due to "totally unpredictable handling." The problem turned out to be the front struts binding up under load and it was eventually sorted out with a completely different, dual A-Arm front suspension conversion that Chapman offered, FOR FREE, to folks who'd already bought a 17. If you know anything at all about Colin Chapman, that phrase "FOR FREE" should ring like the reverberating echo of the massive metal gong that a monstrously muscular guy used to bang at the beginning of all those wonderful old J. Arthur Rank movies (see image below)...

The 17 was something less than a competitive or commercial success and never accomplished much in its day. Plus, it was caught on the cusp of the sea-change move to mid-engined racing cars, and was the last-ever new front-engined racing car design from Lotus. The factory only built 23 of them before moving on to more promising endeavors and eventual multiple Formula One World Championships and victory at the Indianapolis 500 in 1965.

But David loved the 17 because of its orphan, windmill-tilt pedigree and also because, in its own petite way, it was beautiful, adorable, svelte and sexy. It was also a ball to drive--if a bit nervous and twitchy in fast corners because of the narrow track and short wheelbase--and we soon discovered that it was a truly exceptional track weapon for the new, Rolex-sponsored HSR Vintage Endurance Championship. I tell the whole story, ad nauseum, in the new Lotus book, but the bottom line is that we enjoyed some of the best, most challenging and hardest-fought racing I ever experienced, had the whole spectrum of highs, lows, desperate repairs, triumph and anguish, made some wonderful friends and won that championship outright twice (and lost it twice more) at tracks all over the south, east and Midwest. See pictures below.

ABOVE: DAVID'S 17 (green #11) WAS SIGNIFICANTLY SMALLER THAN THE LOTUS ELEVEN (#42) IT WAS SUPPOSED TO REPLACE

BELOW: PX FROM THE CAMPAIGN:

1: ME IN THE 17 AT LIME ROCK

2: DAVID LEADS FROM THE START AT ROAD ATLANTA

3: PODIUM AT ROAD ATLANTA (FRIEND, CREW CHIEF & SOMETIME CO-DRIVER STEVE WESLEY TO MY LEFT, DAVID TO MY RIGHT AND OUR PORSCHE-PUSHER COMPETITORS JACK LEWIS AND BILL FERRAN FLANKED TO EITHER SIDE)

4: RACING AGAINST JACK BOXSTOM'S COMPARATIVELY MONSTROUS ASTON MARTIN DB4. THAT WAS GREAT FUN AND REAL DAVID VERSUS GOLIATH STUFF!

5: PODIUM AT ROEBLING ROAD (JACK GOT US THAT TIME!)

7: PRE-PHOTOSHOP "TRICK PICTURE" OF ME STANDING ON TOP OF THE "MASSIVE" CRYSTAL-PAPERWEIGHT ROLEX TROPHY YOU COULD HOLD IN YOUR HAND (NOTE THE WORD "ENDURO" IS SPELLED WRONG). SIDE NOTE: THESE DAYS THEY GIVE YOU A FANCY ROLEX WATCH FOR WINNING THAT PARTICULAR CHAMPIONSHIP...damn!



Nothing really prepares you for the scope, scale, artistry, history and unexpected seasoning of whimsy at The Barber Museum and racetrack outside of Birmingham, AL. I actually saw it for the first time before it even existed. My late friend, co-driver and team-principal David--also from Birmingham--was involved in the project to a greater or lesser degree from the start, and it was through him I got to visit the large and dimly lit dairy truck garage where Mr. George Barber, the kingpin and sparkplug of the whole thing, was storing and attempting to display his enormous motorcycle collection. But the bikes had already swallowed up all the available floor space--even in vertical display cases--and, as happens in these deals if the money and the motivation are there, he realized he had to expand his concept in order to do justice to his vision and collection.

Now Mr. Barber was quite fortunately born into an unbelievably successful dairy family (the largest in the state, I'm quite sure) and had further expanded into other ventures like real estate and also done quite well.

Mr. Barber had an ongoing passion for motorsports--particularly motorcycles--and he did a bit of racing himself in the middle 1960s, including co-driving a Porsche 904 at Sebring with an up-and-coming hotshoe named Peter Gregg.

Mr. Barber decided that what he really needed to do was build a world-class racetrack--one that could someday hopefully host a championship-grade Moto GP round--plus a museum to house all of his various motorcycles plus his growing collection of 4-wheeled sports and racing machines. Including an unbelievable selection of Lotus racing and road models. I always thought David had something to do with Mr. Barber's growing interest and fascination with Lotus. He also brought in my longtime friend Alan Wilson (his wife Desire is among the, if not "the", best, fastest and most successful female racing drivers in history) to help design the new racetrack. They literally "sculpted" the already hilly and rolling landscape and went on to create among the most spectacular, scenic and sinuous racing circuits on the planet. And then they went a step further with landscaping and unexpected artworks with a unique and even Disney-esque sense of whimsy. Like the enormous spider sculptures (shown below) overlooking the racetrack. And there's lots more (including a four-foot dragonfly with stained-glass wings and a cigar-store Indian peering out of the woods and giant ants devouring an unlucky motorcycle racer and much, much more):

ABOVE: Inside the Barber Museum and the Lotus 17 David and I used to race on display. Next to it is David's wasp-waisted, Ford V8-powered Lotus 30, which was both the most beautiful mid-engined racing car ever built and also perhaps the scariest and least rewarding to drive...

The Barber Museum is another Bucket List Must--particularly if you like motorbikes and/or Lotus racing cars--but budget at least a full day as everything from the landscaping to the swoopy track layout & amenities to the lurking everywhere artwork & sculptures to the details of each and every 2-, 3- or 4-wheeled vehicle on display is worthy of your time and interest. Can't pile up enough superlatives to capture the essence of it.

From Barber we headed North again, heading towards Nashville and another unique and enthralling museum visit, but ran into the only real crap weather on the entire trip along the way. We were tired and maybe a wee bit cranky (imagine that!) and then the rain came pelting down like automatic weapons fire from the sky. I wanted to keep pressing on but Carol urged me to stop ("urged" is actually a mild and somewhat sanitized rendering of what she said) and I finally caved in just to shut her up. But of course she was right (Married Men: don't'cha just HATE it when that happens) as there were heavy storms and hail and vicious winds and tree limbs flailing and ripping off with a mighty "CRACK!!!" up ahead where I wanted us to go.

Even so, I grumbled and groused about it, because that's what husbands do...

Morning dawned semi-sunny and mild, and we had an easy drive up to Nashville and our final stop at The Lane Motor Museum. The Lane was already in as an advertiser in the "Big Ed, Burt & Buddy's Bucket List" section of the new Lotus book, but I wanted to see my friends there again and I wanted Carol to see the unique & thoroughly oddball collection of cars and "almost cars" there. To say that Jeff Lane and his staff are fond of the unusual, the inexplicable and the one-off about sums it up, and you see machines there that you just won't see anywhere else. Like the recreation of futurist visionary Buckminster Fuller's "Dymaxion," which shows what you get when you give a futurist visionary a bit of drafting paper to come up with a brand-new version of an automobile. The ultimate goal was a car that could also sprout wings and fly, but the project never got to that stage. Specs and dynamics were a bit iffy, even for 1933, what with a Ford Flathead motor mounted in the back but driving a FRONT-MOUNTED Ford rear axle that didn't steer at all. Nope, steering was accomplished through a single, tiller-style rear wheel. The resulting chassis was superb for getting into tight parking spaces but not good for much else, and its debut was clouded by both The Depression (hardly a good time for fanciful and expensive new private-car enterprises) and the well-reported fact that the prototype went out of control and crashed quite luridly on arrival at the Century of Progress tech show in Chicago, killing its driver in the process.

There's much, much more, and I suggest you look it up on Wikipedia (and beyond) as both the machine and its incredible history buggers belief. And, no, I didn't mistakenly spell "beggars" wrong...

And that's just one of the many strange delights at The Lane Museum. Including a whole passel of Tatras (brilliant Czech cars that were way ahead of their time and greatly influenced Dr. Ferdinand Porsche...Buddy and Big Ed ride in a rear-engined Tatra taxicab in Mexico City when they go down to run La Carrera in November of 1952 (in Montezuma's Ferrari).

Do you like little minicars? Lane has some you've never seen or even heard of. And then there's that strange roadster with an airplane propeller for motive power. Plus "real life" video-game cars for the kiddies and teenagers and so much more. It's like a carnival freak show for motorheads, and both fascinating and enlightening. Not to mention unforgettable.

Great people, too!