2018 Great Race to travel from Buffalo to Halifax

The route for The Great Race 2018 has been set and will take competitors from Buffalo, New York to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The time-speed-endurance rally for vintage cars produced before the 1973 model year starts June 23 and ends July 1.

July 1 usually is the date for Canada Day, but the holiday has been moved to July 2 for 2018 because July 1 is a Sunday. Canada Day is the nation’s annual celebration of the country’s birth on July 1, 1867.

The Great Race launched in 1983 with a route that started at Knott’s Berry Farm near Los Angeles and ended at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where $250,000 in prize money was awarded.

The route changes annually and has taken participants to places as distant as Ottawa, Canada, and Mexico City.

In 2018, the route begins at the Pierce Arrow Museum in Buffalo, New York, crosses upstate New York, takes competitors to race-sponsor Hemmings Motor News headquarters, up Mount Washington, to the Owls Head and Seal Cove museums in Maine, and on into the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

“When the Great Race pulls into a city it becomes an instant festival,” Jeff Stumb, Great Race director, said in a news release. “Last year we had five overnight stops with more than 10,000 spectators on our way to having 250,000 people see the Great Race during the event.”

Drive Toward a Cure opens 2018 California Adventure registration

After its inaugural rallies raised more than $50,000 for Parkinson’s Disease research and patient care, the Drive Toward a Cure has opened registration for its second California Adventure drive, which is scheduled for May 3-6, 2018.

Again this year, the California event will feature two routes — one starting in the north and the other in the south, with all participants finishing in Santa Barbara wine country.

In addition to driving winding byways, participants visit several private car collections not normally open for such viewing.

“We wanted to build a meaningful movement that included passionate enthusiasts taking on a journey of roads less traveled — yet contributing to a cause for which we hope a cure will eventually be found,” said event founder Deb Pollack.  “Our goal is to build awareness and help fund the research that will find that cure faster.”

‘Greatest’ road race re-run accepting early birds

Bespoke Rallies reports that the 20 slots for “early bird” registration for its inaugural re-run of “the greatest ever road race” — the Grand Prix of South America — are filling quickly for an event that will start 70 years “to the minute” after the midnight launch in 1948 of the original race.

The first car will launch from Buenos Aires at midnight on October 20, 2018, as the participants set off on a 30-day event that will cover 10,000 kilometers from Argentina through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and into Colombia.

The route has been designed to follow as closely as possible the original route of the original event, which included Juan Manual Fangio among the competitors, whose Chevrolet Master battled against the Galvez brothers’ Ford V8s during the early stages of the race.

Fangio crashed on the 1,322km seventh stage. One Galvez brother was disqualified for accepting outside help after a breakdown while the other brother crashed on the final stage.