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Collectible Sports Cars—Activities

Enjoying your dream car to the fullest

In the first two parts of this series we covered some of the better classic sports cars on the market, and explained how to check their condition prior to purchase. If everything has gone according to plan, you now have a new member of the family which occupies a warm spot in the garage where the SUV used to sit (it has a top, so park it outside). No reason to be rational, this is an affair of the heart!

So you've made a few trips around the block, taken a spin in the country, visited envious friends and gotten to know a foreign car mechanic on a first-name basis. So what's next? There are a number of automotive events that are ideally suited to older sports cars and can enhance the enjoyment of your new toy.

Clubs and Events

Sports car clubs sprang up in the U.S. in the late 1940s, coinciding with the importation of hundreds of MGs and Jaguars to placate America's growing love affair with cars featuring sophisticated looks and handling to match. These organizations put on rallies and started the postwar boom in road racing. In fact, the first sports car race put on after the war was organized by an MG club!

Today sports car clubs come in many specialties. All popular models (and many obscure ones) have internet-based clubs that require no membership dues and are great places to chat, chase rare parts and get advice on mechanical problems. Many have now graduated to holding regional or national gatherings so you can meet "Cobraeaters" and "Kickbutt911s" face-to-face.

Most large cities have affiliates of the huge nationwide clubs that cater to fans of Corvettes, Porsches, MGs and other popular makes. Other clubs are organized by country and cater to Italian or British sports cars, for example. There are also generic sports car clubs that welcome any marque into the fold. These clubs usually require dues, but put on events like rallies, tours, car shows, autocrosses and track events. These are great places to meet new friends, try your hand at low-level competition and find somebody who is willing to help with mechanical adventures in return for the same.

Track Time

There are also clubs that specialize in many forms of grass-roots competition events. One of the most popular types of no-contact racing is autocrossing, which pits cars against the clock on a sinuous road course marked by pylons. Speeds are kept low enough that rollbars and fire suits are not required, just seatbelts and an approved safety helmet. Although this sort of hobby leads to increase wear on your tires and mechanicals, it is easy on bodywork (both yours and the car).

For those with a more serious need for speed, there are numerous clubs that put on amateur-level fender-to-fender track events for sports cars. The Sports Car Club of America and the National Auto Sport Association have many classes and types of events, and there are hundreds of clubs across the country putting on vintage racing events for sports cars built in the 1970s or earlier.

Road Tests

At one time rallies were a popular sports car pastime, but they have waned in popularity in recent years. Perhaps it is time for a re-discovery of this potentially demonic enterprise, which pits a driver and navigator team against the clock and other competitors.

There are three basic types of rallies. The professional ones you see on television are run on icy, potholed roads in the middle of the night at suicidal speeds and are not what we are talking about here. Amateur rallies are either time-speed-distance (TSD) or "Gimmick" rallies.

TSD events consist of a series of directions that are keyed to time, speed and distance intervals. The directions might command you to travel 34.76 mph for 2 minutes, 32.2 seconds and turn right! There will be checkpoints along the way to record your average speed, and at the end the closest car to the correct time wins. Pretty complicated, and there are usually classes for entrants with or without digital help.

Gimmick rallies are less serious, and usually embody a "trick" in the instructions for your team to decipher. You may be asked to write down key words from signs you pass along the way, or count "dangerous intersection" signs or some such nonsense. These are great fun, even for those without a PhD in computer science. And you can carry along as many fans as will fit in your car.

Show Time

Many one-marque clubs put on concours events to encourage the preservation of classic sports cars. A concours is a car show where entrants are judged on originality, cleanliness or a combination thereof. There will be many classes, usually broken down by model, age or degree of originality. The really serious collectors literally clean out their tire treads with toothbrushes, but local events are usually pretty lax on the standards to encourage participation.

Less demanding in terms of elbow grease are club tours, where enthusiasts enjoy a leisurely jaunt to an interesting destination, preferably down winding, scenic country roads. The focal point may be a special restaurant, a park or a restoration shop for a technical lecture.

Old sports cars are not meant to live in the garage. In fact, sitting for extended periods is hard on the mechanical parts and not recommended. So get out there and enjoy your new old sports car—the road is waiting!