RESULTS: 2OO7 MOUNTAIN MILLE

Since 1993, Rich and Jean Taylor, under their Vintage Rallies, Inc. banner, have organized 5O sports car rallies. All of them have been five or six-day, 1OOO-mile drives. Now sponsored by Porsche Cars North America and aided by a jovial crew of “wranglers”—most of whom have been helping the Taylors for a decade or more—they’ve developed an unbeatable formula that mixes precision driving, spectacular roads, luxury accommodations, gourmet food, intriguing wines, friendly service and a welcoming “extended family group” of fascinating car enthusiasts who keep coming back year after year.

One of the many details that raises Vintage Rallies above other organizations is that once the bills are paid, the remaining proceeds are donated to charity…nearly $1,OOO,OOO so far. This generous record of “giving back” creates a warm and happy feeling throughout the week. Another clever detail that makes Vintage Rallies events work is the “safety net” provided by well-known vintage car mechanics from RPM VT in Vergennes, Vermont who follow the group. They seem to be able to fix just about anything by the side of the road, short of a rod through the block!

If the mechanics can’t fix your old Ferrari, they roll a new Porsche sports car out of their trucks for you to drive the rest of the week. That takes the worry out of being broken down in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest parts in Maranello!

To join the Vintage Rallies extended family group, all you need is a 1975 or earlier sports car or a modern exotic, a burning passion for driving on challenging back roads and a free week off from work. The events are set up as simple T-S-D rallies. Some enthusiasts bring atomic clocks and are serious about “zeroing” the rally, but to most, the opportunity to drive their car without worry, enjoy the scenery and share the camaraderie of like-minded car nuts is more important than the timing and scoring.

Rich and Jean try to limit their events to 5O cars each, because as Rich says, “We can’t handle more people than that with the level of personal attention we think is important.” I counted a sold-out 49 entries in the Mountain Mille route book. Parked all together on the lawn in front of Berry Hill Plantation, our starting hotel, they made a spectacular car show.

According to Rich, the oldest car that ever completed a Vintage Rallies 1OOO-mile event was a 19O7 Renault Grand Prix car shipped from England, while classic car collectors have driven everything from a 1932 Packard V-12 roadster to a Bugatti Type 51 racer to an Alfa Romeo 8C29OO on various Vintage Rallies.

At this year’s Mountain Mille, the earliest cars were both racing cars built in 1952; a beautiful Allard J2X driven by Lindsey Parsons and Merrill Yeager and a Morgan Plus 4 shipped all the way from Seattle’s Olympia Peninsula by Keith and Adine Kretschmer. The Morgan’s Triumph race engine was so hopped-up Keith had to visit local airports throughout the event, topping up with 115 octane Avgas!

There were eight Porsche 356s, seven various 911s—including three rare ‘73/’74 Carrera RSs—and even a pristine 928. Among the other sports car stalwarts were two Austin-Healeys, two Triumph TR-3As, two early Lancias, two Shelby Mustangs, two Maseratis, two Jaguars, a Corvette, a Mercedes, an Alfa, an Aston, half-a-dozen Ferraris and such rarely-seen oddities as the Alpine A-11O of Don Polak and John Grooms, the Lamborghini Islero of Donald Osborne and Frank Garofolo, the AC Ace of David and Debbie Allison and the Audi Quattro Sport Rally of Jimmy and Lisa Dobbs.

Among the nationally-known car collectors on this year’s Mountain Mille were Miles Collier and Scott George from the famous Collier Collection in Naples, Florida; Charleston’s Terri Henning; Jimmy Dobbs from Scottsdale; Palm Beach Ferrari collector Jeff Fisher whose navigator was classic car expert Dave Olimpi; and long-time New Jersey vintage racer and collector Jerry Morici, whose son Todd has become famous as a Ferrari racer and Mercedes-Benz spokesman.

Other interesting characters we met during the week included California banker/vintage racer Jim Jaqua who brought restorer Dave Ham as his navigator; retired corporate CEO Jim Vincent and his delightful friend Nancy Carr; and Admiral Wick Parcells. Admiral Parcells was a naval aviator before becoming the commissioning captain of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt. He and his lovely wife Prissy had wonderful stories to tell.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 15: 235.7 MILES (SOUTH BOSTON, VA TO WINTERGREEN, VA)

In surprisingly chilly morning air, our first cars left the Berry Hill checkpoint at precisely 8:OO am. Jean Taylor and Gerry Brooks flagged us off, and we were glad to be wearing cozy three-season jackets, warm turtleneck shirts and baseball hats we’d been given on Sunday afternoon when we checked in.

The route followed two-lane back roads through picturesque tobacco fields and tiny Virginia towns. Our first stop was at Appomattox Courthouse, where Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865. There was plenty of time in the schedule to look around and visit the various historic buildings before Rich Taylor and Pat Gibble timed us out on our way to the next checkpoint near Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

Lunch was at a famous Colonial restaurant called Michie Tavern, just down the road from Monticello. After lunch, we could visit Jefferson’s House, James Monroe’s nearby estate called Ashlawn/Highland, follow the local Virginia Wine Trail or head directly to our overnight hotel, mountaintop Wintergreen Resort.

My navigator and I chose to skip Monticello, which we’d seen before, in order to spend more time at Monroe’s house, which we’d never visited. The day had warmed up to the point that we were down to short-sleeve shirts and still found it hot even to sit around drinking lemonade under the trees at Ashlawn/Highland.

At Wintergreen, which is reached by a twisting 3-mile driveway that would make a world-class hillclimb, we each had our own condominium apartment. Ours had a spectacular view over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Dinner was informal, in Wintergreen’s golf club. We sat with Porsche-driving lawyer and Civil War historian Peter Efros and his wife Karen, and learned more than we ever could have imagined about Appomattox.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16: 254.0 MILES (WINTERGREEN, VA TO HOT SPRINGS, VA)

Once again the morning was chill, especially on top of the mountain, but the day warmed up as we drove along twisting Route 56 through the woods and over the mountains. Our first stop was the home of a local car collector. On top of a mountain with million-dollar views sat his nineteenth-century farmhouse, his small workshop and his old barn containing two-dozen vintage race cars. What an unexpected surprise!

From there we headed to an old logging town in West Virginia, called Cass, for lunch in the dining room of the Victorian hotel, a tour of the old railroad shops and an optional ride on a preserved steam train pulled by an unusual shaft-driven, all-wheel drive Shay locomotive. With another 12O miles still to drive through the mountains, we opted to eat lunch, take photos of the smoke-belching steam train and continue our drive.

Our destination was The Homestead, a famous resort that dates back to 1766, when celebrities like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson came here to enjoy the sulfurous hot springs, naturally heated to 92 degrees year-round. Today, The Homestead is a Grand Hotel with luxurious rooms, terrific service and old-fashioned southern ambiance that includes High Tea in the late afternoon and a tasteful dance band in the Main Dining Room. It’s like stepping back in time to when our vintage sports cars were new.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17: 263.60 MILES (HOT SPRINGS, VA TO WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, WV)

Once again, we were flagged-off at 8:OO am by Jean and Gerry. We drove more spectacular mountain roads in the morning mist, at one point zipping along beside a mountain stream that was like a living picture postcard from West Virginia. The first checkpoint was a quick in and out in a parking lot with Rich and Pat, before we set off to mountaintop Hawk’s Nest State Park where the checkpoint was manned by Fred and Anne Ehle.

From Hawk’s Nest, we followed a short transit stage that hid a wonderful surprise. The single lane road wound up and down the mountain to a old-fashioned bridge over the New River that has since been superceded by one of the world’s tallest and longest arch bridges. This has to be one of the most unusual drives in the world.

Lunch was at a rustic restaurant called Smokeys that caters to white-water rafting enthusiasts. We sat on a deck overlooking the river gorge, and downed an unexpectedly-gourmet lunch that featured things like wild boar, venison and quail. These rafters know how to live, and it was definitely tough to tear ourselves away from the unbeatable view and the to-die-for desserts.

The afternoon drive stopped at another state park, this one featuring a reconstructed and operating Colonial gristmill, then on to The Greenbrier. About half-an-hour from The Greenbrier we came upon Michael and Alexandra Lerch’s Triumph TR-3A, parked halfway across the road in a small construction zone, surrounded by ambulances, police cars and fire trucks.

It seems a construction truck had decided to back up just as Michael was instructed to go forward, producing a nearly invisible dent in the Triumph’s nose and a response all out of proportion to the damage inflicted. By the time we got there, Alexandra had already spent two hours chatting up the EMTs in the ambulance while they waited for the police to write up a report.

The Greenbrier is like The Homestead, only moreso. It’s another Grand Hotel that preserves famous 1946 interiors created by Dorothy Draper and updated by her protege, Carleton Varney. We enjoyed another incredible meal in the Main Dining Room, before relaxing with a nightcap served in the classic lobby with its black and white checkered marble floor.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18: 237.30 MILES (WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, WV TO SOUTH BOSTON, VA)

This was the morning we all got a graphic reminder that driving old sports cars on winding, sometimes damp, mountain roads is not tiddly-winks. Lindsey Parsons and Merrill Yeager were in their perfect Allard J2X. They went into a blind, uphill, off-camber corner covered in wet leaves in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the Allard’s connection to the road—always tenuous, as anyone who’s ever driven an Allard will attest—fell to zero. Thankfully, neither driver nor navigator was hurt, but the poor Allard will require major surgery.

The final checkpoint of the Mountain Mille was at Thursday lunch, where wranglers Wayne Brooks and Don Gibble were waiting for us by the gate into Virginia International Raceway. Rich and Jean had cleverly planned the schedule so that we had lunch at VIR, then could do a gymkhana laid out on the skidpad, race go-karts on the diabolical VIR kart course, drive our own cars on the tight Patriot Course, drive a Porsche Boxster or Cayman on the track or have a ride around the track with Porsche racer Hurley Haywood in a new 911 Turbo Cabriolet. Or do all of the above!

The Mountain Mille has already established a tradition of having the final Victory Banquet be black tie. It’s really fun to see everyone dressed up. Busy with last-minute details, Rich and Jean were the last ones into the ballroom. Over a hundred people simultaneously rose and gave them a standing ovation in recognition of a truly wonderful week.

Over the years, Jean has selected a wide variety of objects to use as rally prizes, including one memorable year on the New England 1OOO when we visited the granite works in Barre, Vermont and received miniature gravestones engraved with NE 1OOO!

This time, at Ashlawn/Highland she found beautiful reproductions of the antique china used by James Monroe’s family. Our trophies were various serving platters, candy dishes and boxes to remind us of this event’s Historic Virginia theme.

A record nine teams zeroed every stage: Peter/Karen Efros, Jerry/Robert Morici, David/Debbie Allison, Chuck/Beth Kaplanek, Rip/Elise Hayes, Kim/Dana Watkins, Roger/Fred Cochran, Chris/Ellen Greendale and Jim Vincent/Nancy Carr. The teams of Jim Jaqua/Dave Ham, Don Polak/John Grooms, Steve Harris/Lucien Rees-Roberts and Joe/Sharon Hayes picked up only a single point.

Tom and Jane Smith were given the Vintage Spirit Award, presented by previous winners Alexandra Lerch and Terri Henning. Rip Hayes took over the ceremony to conduct a charity auction that added additional thousands to the donation already going to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, this event’s charity. All together, the Mountain Mille donated $33,OOO this year.

As Rich Taylor movingly explained, one of his long-time wranglers, retired career Navy Commander Steve Porch—a genuine war hero who endured three tours of duty as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and has three Purple Hearts to prove it—has developed Parkinson’s. “This is the best way we know to help our friend Steve,” he said, “contributing to Parkinson’s research.”

Vintage Rallies events end with breakfast on Friday, after which the wranglers bring people back to the airport using Porsche Cayenne SUVs. At nearby Danville airport there was a line-up of nearly a dozen private planes owned by various rallyists, ranging from a classic Cessna repowered with a Rolls-Royce turbine to a King Air with twin-turboprops to a Gulfstream X. In almost every way, the Vintage Rallies extended family group is pretty special!