Classic Motorsports Routes, 30 Legendary Routes You Can Drive Today
I am a road trip junkie; this should come as no surprise when you edit a magazine called Automotive Traveler. Road trips are and remain an important part of my life and that of many of the contributors and editors here on CarDomain (just ask a sleep deprived Jen Dunnaway). I often joke about the weight of the large number of travel guidebooks that cause the shelves of the bookcases that line my office to groan.
So when I find a great road trip book I want to shout from the mountaintop, or at least tell fellow enthusiasts. And the book I want to tell you about, that gets my vote as automotive book of the year, is Classic Motorsports Routes, 30 Legendary Routes You Can Drive Today by Richard Meaden, contributing editor to one of my favorite auto magazines, evo from the UK. On the evo staff, Richard has the reputation for finding great roads to drive, restaurants to indulge at, and hotels to bed down for the night. After reading this book, I now know why. More...
Of the 30 routes Meaden has covered, I've driven all or parts of 13 of his choices, including but not limited to parts of the Mille Miglia, the 1957 Italian Grand Prix course in Pescara, Italy, the public as well as the closed portions of Le Mans in France, the Jim Clark Rally in Scotland, the Nurburgring and the Frankfurt-Darmstadt Autobahn in Germany, the Klausen Pass in Switzerland, and the Bonneville, Pikes Peak, and the Silver State Classic in Nevada in the United States. What this book does for me, with words, photos, and maps, is sit me down while I try to figure out how I’m going to cover the remaining 17, and more importantly, it makes me consider what car I’d like to tackle each with. In my case it would be to drive the Klausen Pass in one of my beloved AMCs, possibly my restored 1964 AMC Rambler American 440 convertible.
Several years ago, evo published a story about Richard’s drive from London to the Klausen Pass in Switzerland in a Lotus 340R, and the back story to that drive is chronicled here. A Lotus 340R is almost the absolute contradiction of an of my Rambler--compact and light, a paragon of automotive efficiency. Yet as I read his prose, and viewed Gus Gregory’s stunning images, all I could think was how the trip might be different, dare I say better, if it was done in my Rambler, on a glorious spring day, with the top down, the wind in my hair.
I’m certain that the book will be of more interest to US readers for its profiles of North American routes, and if so, the book is worth every penny of its $40 price tag. For us, Meaden has profiled Pikes Peak in Colorado, the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, El Mirage in California’s Mojave Desert, and finally Nevada 318, site of the twice-a-year Silver State Classic, where if you have the car and the nerve, you can legally traverse the 90 miles between Lund to Hiko in excess of 200 miles per hour, in just about 25 minutes. Running the Silver State Classic is one of the few must-do items on my personal life's to-do list.
If you love to travel and drive the world’s best roads like I do, in almost any kind of car, this book deserves to be on your book shelf. Like books on the garages of the rich and famous, it’s a book for the dreamer in all of us. But more than that, it is a blueprint to your own automotive adventures. And in my opinion, it's the year's best automotive book!
Mike
May 12, 2008 1:19:30 PM
I grew up in Utah (Salt Lake City) and even though most of us - who love cars - visited the Salt Flats, no one was willing to drive his car on them because of one thing we all knew (and lived with): Salt. Salt Lake City's streets were kept snow-free by the cities liberal use of available salt. The only problem was that the salt devoured car bodies as well as the snow. And no one wanted holes in the metal of their cars. Oh sure, we could have taken our cars to a spray wash, but that wouldn't have gotten all of the salt out from under the frames, body panels, etc. So, even though it would be fun to run a car out there on the falts, none of us was willing to sacrifice our cars for the thrill of the ride.