MEADVILLE — Nineteen cities, two countries, four states and an opportunity of a lifetime — now complete.

That, in short, is the Great Race, a grueling, timed, controlled-speed endurance competition along some of the most picturesque public highways and roads that two area residents consider themselves very fortunate to have been a part of.

Meadville residents Glenn Peterson and Gary Carr participated in the 2012 Hemmings Motor News Great Race that began in Traverse City, Mich., on June 23 and ended July 1 in Dearborn, Mich. Their 3,300-mile journey (the course itself was more than 2,200 of those miles) took them on a road rally that winds through the Great Lakes region.

In the Great Race, driver/navigator teams compete against the clock and each other in antique vintage cars, trucks and motorcycles with a body and drive-train built in 1969 or earlier.

The teams must follow specific course instructions and navigate through four to seven timed checkpoints each day. At the checkpoints, the arrival time is recorded and compared against what organizers have determined is “a perfectly driven route.” Each second off the perfect time is counted as a penalty point. Older cars are rewarded with a percentage reduction.

The team with the lowest overall score at the end of the event is the winner.

“It’s a prize,” Peterson said. “They limit the field to 100 vehicles. They had 92 cars when it started (this year) and only 70 some of them made it to the finish. It is very grueling.”

Peterson and Carr competed in the Great Race in Peterson’s 1958 Rolls-Royce. They hauled the vehicle to Traverse City, and from there navigated to the next stage of the race in Barrie, Ontario. Then, it was on to Kanata, Ontario.

They made a total of seven stops in Canada, four in New York, five in Michigan, three in Ohio and one in Pennsylvania — at nearby Franklin.

Sounds like all fun and games, right?

Well, imagine driving this race without GPS, cellphones or computers, and with the odometer taped over. The only directions Peterson and Carr and other participants had were a set of course instructions that indicated every turn, speed change, and stop and start that a team was required to make throughout the day.

“You get frustrated and you get lost very easy,” Carr said. “You don’t really get to see a whole lot of the country. We saw the best of the best of Canada, but briefly. You’re constantly looking at the speedometer and road signs.”

Carr said the instructions were a challenge.

Roads were unlabeled, he said. Instead, the directions indicated how many lights to go before a turn. But Carr said there were several blinking lights and it was pretty easy to lose count.

Carr said he and Peterson did get lost a few times.

“I gave my driver the wrong turn,” Carr said.

“The navigator is constantly telling the driver what to do,” he continued. “You’re changing speeds all the time. You’re going up a hill at 30 miles per hour, or down a hill and the speed needs to be at 30 miles per hour.

“Maybe you’re going up a hill and past another sign and need to go down to 20 miles per hour and then one or two seconds later you need to get up to 40 miles per hour. It’s a constant challenge.”

Carr and Peterson wound up finishing the competition 60th overall. The winners over nine days lost just 42 seconds. Carr and Peterson, making their Great Race debut, lost 10 minutes and one second.

“It’s one of the most grueling things I have ever done,” Peterson said. “My eyes were constantly on the speedometer. I’m watching speeds and taking directions from the navigator. It was a hard job for both of us. You are constantly figuring seconds.”

One thing Peterson enjoyed most about the trip was the ability to stop and visit places he otherwise wouldn’t. He said pretty much everywhere he and Carr stopped there was a museum or something to visit.

“We saw the Maritime Museum in Watertown, N.Y.,” Peterson said, “and visited the Detroit Ford Museum. We met so many nice people and saw beautiful country.

“They are things you would never see in your lifetime.”

The challenge now is to remove all the stickers collected from the trip from his shiny white Rolls-Royce — one of six collector cars Peterson owns. Peterson said he had considered taking a 1927 Buick that he said he would drive anywhere in the country.

That car is equipped with mechanical brakes, though, and he was worried what would happen had they hit rain along the trip.

“You have to have a special car,” Carr said. “Most of the cars in the race are open roadsters. A lot of them are handmade speedsters. Ours was a very hard car. Speedsters go so much easier.”

Carr said it was estimated that there was about $5 million worth of cars on the road during the Great Race.

Last weekend, a week after their 11-day spin had ended, Carr and Peterson said they would both consider doing the race again. But not for a very long time.

“I would have to heal a little bit first,” Peterson said.



Lisa Byers can be reached at 724-6370 or by email at lbyers@meadvilletribune.com.