On the Road Again : Old Cars Once More Begin a Great American Race

Most of the cars are antiques that never exceed the speed limit.

But drivers in the sixth annual Great American Race, which began Wednesday at Disneyland, say that the competition is a test of nerves and endurance that rivals any other road challenge.

“It’s very tense,” said Richard Nickerson, 49, of Encino. “You’re on edge the whole time.”

The event is deadly serious for the 120 competitors who stand to win prizes totaling $250,000. But the pageantry is what draws crowds in rural America, participants say.

Drivers are teamed with a navigator to cover 4,500 miles as close as they can to the 50 m.p.h. average. And they must match the computer-generated time schedule using only a pencil, paper, clock and stopwatch.

The driver and navigator “have to work together faultlessly throughout the race to win,” said Phil Cole, race spokesman. He told the story of a team that was in first place through six of the seven checkpoints before taking a two-minute wrong turn that left finishing 14th.

Number of Entries Doubles

“It’s a mathematical event,” said Alan Travis, who won last year’s rally and is a favorite to take the $50,000 first prize in this year’s event, which ends July 3 in Boston. “You’re never going the exact right speed. Everything is a derivative of the (correct) speed.”

Cole said the number of entrants in the rally, sponsored by the Texas-based Interstate Battery Co., has doubled since it began. Several potential corporate sponsors were turned down for the first time this year.

The race is growing in popularity, Cole said, because it offers a mix of two popular pastimes--cars and history.

“America is in love with its past,” Cole said. And automobiles are “the one thing that has been a single thread through the history of the U.S.”

This year’s entries, limited to cars made in 1936 or earlier, include a 1909 Stanley Steamer Mountain Wagon, a 1912 American La France fire engine and one of the first mail-order-kit cars, a 1912 Metz Roadster.

The event “is the biggest thing that ever hit most of these small towns,” said Wayne Stanfield of Tustin, who is the navigator for former winner Travis. The cars will stop in Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut.

The drivers lined up at Disneyland with several hundred people cheering the snap of the checkered flag that launched each car.

The crowd, a mixture of regular Disneyland visitors and race enthusiasts, included a few people who were looking over the competition for next year.

Dick Weixeldorfer, 58, of San Diego and John Latino, 41, of Cerritos, said they had already invested the $5,000 fee to enter their 1935 Chrysler in next year’s rally and were at Wednesday’s race start to get tips from drivers.

“We’re going to do our part to go and win back our entry fee,” Weixeldorfer said.

As the crowd was forming among the old-style buildings of Disneyland’s Main Street U.S.A., Cole praised the automobiles of a time long passed.

“The old cars are very colorful,” he said. “People say to me, ‘I’m tired of everything looking like a damn Honda.’ ”