Like Father, Like Daughter

Club tours are a great opportunity for father/daughter time.

I am not by nature a club-type person. I was active in sports car clubs when I was single, but now I find that work, family, and trying to keep a motley assortment of cars on the road keep me busy enough without adding club activities to the list. The one exception is Chris Gore’s annual spring tour through the North Georgia mountains. For the past 28 years Chris has organized this event. Technically it’s not a club event, as multiple clubs and a wide variety of cars participate. Mostly they’re British cars (Chris himself drives a stunning MGB-V8) but there are usually a handful of Porshes and this year we were graced by a Ferrari F430, a Volvo P-1800 Sportswagon, a Qvale, and a Datsun 1600 Fairlady. Oh, and a new Fiat 500 joined us, too.

My wife’s enjoyment of sports cars is, shall we say, less than intense, so I have always used the spring tour as an opportunity to bond with our kids. This year my son couldn’t make the trip so my daughter Grace invited a friend from work to ride in her 1971 MGB while my younger daughter Alice served as navigator in my 1948 MG TC. Our preparations began well before the tour. In addition to the normal spring maintenance (oil & filter change, lubrication, fluid check, etc.) I changed the brake drums on my TC. (The downhill stretches of mountain driving give you a new appreciation for the convenience of four wheel brakes.) While checking the brake fluid I noticed a crack in my rear transmission mount, so I also installed reinforcement plates to insure the gearbox remained inside the vehicle for the duration of the tour. Both Grace and Alice helped me with this operation, and in return I helped Grace install a new starter, diagnose and correct a poor ground in her turn signals, and reupholster the console lid on her B.

The weather was sunny and crisp on the morning of the tour. The temperature was in the 40’s but the forecast was for 70 degrees by mid-afternoon. We dressed in layers and I raised the windshield for the 2 hour drive to Dahlonega. About 20 miles north of town the TC began to sputter and I pulled off to the side, the first time I’ve ever had mechanical problems during one of these tours. The trouble proved to be a clogged fuel filter. (Does anyone else have trouble with alcohol in the gas creating a brown sludge over the winter?) It took only a few minutes to bypass the filter and we were soon on our way again. The impossibility of hearing cell phones in an open car led to a comedy of errors when we tried to coordinate pit stops, but other than that the rest of the drive was smooth going.

When we got to Chris’s house, the yard was filled with sports cars. MGs, Triumphs, Healeys, Minis, a couple of Jensens, Loti, a lovely Jaguar E-Type, an Aston-Martin DB7, and of course the Ferrari. Alice is a big Formula 1 fan who has worshipped Ferraris from afar for years but this was the first time she had ever seen one up close and personal. Needless to say, she took lots of photographs. We spent some time admiring the cars, swapping stories with the other drivers, and enjoying a picnic lunch. We shed our jackets, dropped the windshield (it makes a great picnic table), and enjoyed the spring weather. Then Chris called for the driver’s meeting.

I don’t know how other clubs arrange their tours, but to me Chris’s Spring Tour could be a model for all sports car tours. He passed out instruction sheets with a map on one side and detailed turn by turn directions on the other side. During the driver’s meeting he stressed safety, highlighting any sections of the tour which have loose gravel or other hazards. He also warned us that the mountain roads are very popular with bicyclists who tend to ride in gaggles rather than single file along the edge of the road, so we needed to be prepared for sudden stops at any time. He stressed the fact that this is not a race. Passing is prohibited. Drivers decide for themselves which group to join for the tour: a fast group, a half-fast group, or a leisurely group. Each group is led by a driver who has driven this year’s route with Chris several times previously. (Chris plots out a new route every year.) Even the fast group never exceeds the speed limit… or at least, not what the speed limit used to be… on an Interstate… in Wyoming. Driving is spirited, but the group leader keeps the pace well within the limits of the cars and the drivers. To my knowledge there has never been an accident during one of Chris’s tours.

As the driver of the only car with a beam front axle, I chose to tour with the leisurely group. Grace joined the middle group. We left the driver’s meeting, returned to our cars, and the first group set off. A hotshoe in a TR-6 squealed his tires as he exited the driveway and accelerated to join the group, but that was the only tire squealing I heard all day. (Later reports said he repeated that performance every time he accelerated. I guess he liked it.) Grace left with the second group about five minutes later, and then it was time for Alice and me to begin the tour.

Once underway, we spent close to four hours driving twisting roads through North Georgia. Spring came late this year, so there were few leaves on the trees. On the other hand, the dogwoods, cherry trees, and redbuds were in full blossom. Not that I had much time to admire the scenery. With Bishop’s Cam (worm and peg) steering, bias ply tires, and drum brakes I had my hands full just keeping the TC in my lane and, just as important, on the mountain. The TC left the factory with 54 horses under the hood, all of whom are now eligible for Social Security. Some of the long, uphill sections left me longing for a second-and-a-half gear. Even the Morgan +4 left me behind on those stretches, although admittedly the Mog had twice the horsepower and nearly twenty more years for technological development. (Not that Morgan used those twenty years to advance their technology.) I could catch up on the downhill stretches, and most of the time I kept with the pack, always keeping a little extra distance from the car ahead of me to allow for the fact that they had disc brakes and I did not. Alice proved to be an excellent navigator, marking off the turns as we made them and always letting me know what to expect. We had a few “party crashers” this year. In past years when we came to an intersection other drivers would often stop and wave us through, even if they had the right of way, so we could keep our parade intact. This year they cut right in. They were fully within their rights to do so, of course, but they generally drove slower than we did so the pack got broken up. Several times I got held up by other cars, and on those occasions Alice came to my rescue. The other sports cars were out of sight so we could no longer follow them, but Alice kept us on course. Once we parted ways with the “intruder,” we were never lost and quickly caught up with the parade.

All too quickly, the tour came to an end. We gathered once again in Chris’s lawn to swap stories of the drive and thank Chris for his hospitality. Several people complimented Grace’s driving and seemed surprised to learn that she worked on her car herself. Then, one by one, these extraordinary vehicles left the party and headed home. We stopped for dinner along the way, so it was close to 8:00 PM when we came to rest in our driveway. Alice, Grace, and I made a big bowl of popcorn and collapsed on the couch in front of the TV. We were sunburned, windburned, and exhausted, and filled with the memories of a great father/daughter experience.

About the author: Steve Tom has been using old cars as daily drivers since he bought a 1928 Ford in high school. His book Flaming Floorboards describes his “adventures” in MGs, Jaguars, Fords, Chevys, and an occasional Ferrari or Cobra. Excerpts and short stories about cars are online at www.random-writings.com.