Picture this: fifty exquisite classic cars parked haphazardly under the flickering shade of tall cottonwoods. They’re the crème de la crème, the sort that make you gasp with admiration. I’m talking Shelby Cobra, Bentley, Lagonda, Aston Martin. Drivers and their navigators wander among plastic-clothed tables. They’re sniffing, salivating, and waiting with good-natured impatience for the local Lion’s Club to declare lunch ready.
This is the Colorado Grand classic car tour, a week in which the most beautiful old automobiles in the world are invited to drive through our state’s small towns and breathtaking scenery. On this route, my beloved county is the smallest and poorest of all, a mere splash on the map, with only one town. That town is a ramshackle collection of buildings straddling the state highway, itself just a two-lane blacktop connecting Wyoming with ski resorts to the West and South. It’s a place you’d drive through and wonder aloud who could possibly live in this cluster of lackluster clapboard houses. Look past those boarded-up buildings, and it all becomes clear. Our valley has wilderness areas on three sides as well as gold medal trout streams. Soaring over it all is that cerulean sky for which Colorado is famous. This is the place to drive through if you have an old car and want to use it. As these people do.
I wend my way through the crowd, pausing now and then to inspect a vehicle. I know even less about old cars than I do about new ones. Even if I had an iota of connoisseurship, I’d hardly dare touch the gleaming paint on any of these. Far be it from me to blemish a six-figure vehicle with a finger smudge.
When I finally spy Bernard, he’s unconsciously bouncing up on his toes. His strong, five foot six frame is like a hot air balloon barely tethered to the ground. I grab his arm to prevent liftoff. Bernard’s an effervescent man anyway, but now he’s bubbling in a way I haven’t seen in years. His green-blue eyes are framed by a mass of crinkles, his eyebrows are waggling, and his French accent is getting stronger, as it does when he’s truly excited. “This is Matthieu and Amélie,” he says, gesturing to a slender, sandy-haired gentleman with piercing blue eyes, his arm sweep including the classically groomed woman at the man’s side. I take in their studied casualness, their creased khakis, no brand name visible. Around here the only time pants are pressed is when you wear them out of the store, the name Carrhart or Wrangler prominently displayed on your back pocket. With barely a pause for me to say, “Pleased to meet you,” Bernard launches into the cause of his excitement. “Remember the book I have about the Croisière Jaune? Well, they’ve done something just like it, following the old Silk Route. It’s a rally. For old cars.” He spears me with a passionate stare. “There’s another one in 2007.”
Bernard takes barely a moment to swallow and catch his breath, but it’s enough to give Matthieu an opening. This he fills with the most extraordinary information. “It’s called the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge,” he says in faintly accented, slightly off-kilter English, though whether his origins were Swiss, Dutch, or German I couldn’t have said. He studies me in a professorial way, interested in me perhaps, but more interested in what he’s about to tell us. “You know, this is a redoing of a car race organized by Italy’s Prince Borghese a hundred years ago. So 2007 will be the centenary.”
As he now recounts, in May 1907 five cars set out from Peking—as it was called then—to prove that man and machine could indeed go anywhere, that borders between countries were irrelevant. They left Peking with no passports; these had been confiscated by Chinese authorities on the pretext that the drivers were spies. The Chinese had no interest in seeing the success of the motorcar, having just invested in shares in the Trans-Siberian railway. On this first-ever endurance rally, there were no marshals or officials. Fuel was transported by camel. The person who went to Peking to drop the flag at the beginning of the race caught the ship back to Paris and arrived just in time to flag drivers across the finish line sixteen weeks later. Of the intrepid five, four made it to Paris, arriving to a tumultuous welcome and worldwide fame. The fifth, maneuvering an awkward motorcycle-automobile hybrid called a Contal cyclecar, bogged down in the Gobi desert. “The crew was lucky to be found alive by locals,” Matthieu informs us. Arching an eyebrow, he continues ominously, “Their car was never found.”
Wiping his hands on a clean rag and carefully closing the long hood of the exceedingly elegant car behind him, Matthieu offers a sop to calm the agitation that must be evident on my face. “Things are better organized these days, of course. But the Chinese still don’t seem too happy to let us drive through their country.” He doesn’t appear to be someone’s mechanic, so with my customary insightfulness I deduce that the vintage vehicle he’s been working on belongs to him. It’s massive, but, dare I say, artistic in its design; if it were a sculpture, it would be a Rodin, not a Calder. The vehicle itself seems unusually big, perhaps as long as our extended cab, full bed, one-ton Ford pickup. Its long, sloping front fenders bring to mind a springing cheetah. A steel-spoked spare wheel adorns each running board. The black convertible top is folded back, allowing the black leather seats to warm in the sun.“When I did a similar event in 1997,”Matthieu continues, “we drove for thirty days. It was a completely different route. Quite difficult, very tiring. But fascinating.”
“What did you drive?” I ask in a sociable, chatty way. It still hasn’t dawned on me that someone with a car as splendid as that Mercedes would be willing to submit it to the rigors of Mongolian sands, Tibetan plateaus, or Siberian anything. If one had such a rare and beautiful vehicle, why would one court the possibility of smashing it on rocks, dredging it through rivers, or, even worse, flipping it over? I would like my expression to convey how intent I am on delving into the drama and the rigors of what he’s done, but my line of questioning is halted by the need to fuss with stray strands of my hair, which the plucky breeze has just blown over my eyes and into my mouth.
Matthieu looks at me, tolerant and bemused. “This car, of course. Built in 1927. Runs very well.” Then he exclaims, “Bernard, this is the thing for you! You will love it.” It seems in the moments before my arrival he’s discerned Bernard’s love for remote places, his pleasure when in deep vehicular trouble, his intense knowledge of all things automotive. Matthieu has no idea that I get panicky at the thought of car breakdowns, that my automotive knowledge fits into the small vinyl pouch that holds my car’s outdated first-aid kit. While I have long wished to be at ease in remote places, the truth is, not knowing if I’ll reach safe shelter at the end of the day makes me intensely nervous. Why in the world would I want to subject myself to what he’s described?
Then Matthieu drops the gauntlet.
“You must have an old car in order to go. Yes, the rally organizers allow only old vehicles to register. Prewar, if possible. Because, you see, they want to create an event that will use cars as close as possible to the originals.” His eyes twinkle when he says this, relishing the fact that he clearly has the sort of car they’re after. “Do you have one?”
Bernard and I look at each other, speechless. Do we have an old car? What on earth for? What we have are vehicles that can handle six months of winter snows, the deep powdery stuff others pay a fortune to ski in but that we have to drive through. Where we live, if you’re waiting for a wintertime roadside rescue, you want a well-sealed, comfortable cab and a fanatically dedicated heater to keep you company during the cold hours it’ll take for a tow truck to arrive. Two-seater convertibles with spoke wheels? Sedans with ribbed leather bucket seats and whitewall tires? These are not the conveyances that’ll get us home from town in a blizzard.
The bird chatter seems to grow in urgency, while the buzz from the burger line dims into the background. I turn to Bernard and see him standing there, so eager he’s almost vibrating. I think, “Well, if you’re with him, how bad could it get?” “Bad,” I answer myself.
“Go,” my adventurous side pleads. “It’ll be wild, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Consider it this way: two years from now, would you rather be driving through amazing Mongolia, or fixing a barbed wire fence?”
“Forget about it,” retorts the cringing side of me. “The entire concept is too far-fetched. It’s everything you hate about travel. Too many people around. Too many unknowns. Stick with what you’re good at . . . which is not reading in a moving car.”
Matthieu is staring at us, a slight smile playing on his lips. If I could stop arguing with myself I’d have a chance to engage this gracious European in clever, meaningful repartee—that is if I could think of anything to say. Thankfully, Matthieu interrupts my baffled reverie, “But, you may not be able to register anyway. Because I think they are already full.”
I look again to Bernard, see the wide, gleeful grin and his body tilted just a little bit forward, as if ready to go. I recall our vows nearly 25 years ago: to have and to hold, to love and to cherish. Who knows. Maybe there also was something in there about getting in a car together and going whither the road might lead. To drive and be driven. If there wasn’t, who am I to say there shouldn’t have been. Besides, to put a spin on Groucho Marx, if we can’t get in, then the Peking to Paris 2007 Motor Challenge is clearly something we must do. Our eyes connect and I can’t disappoint him. I nod.
“We don’t have such a car,” Bernard says. “But we can find one.”