Rulers of the Road Rally to Title : Cars: A Newport Beach father-daughter team pulls first into Disneyland to win the Great American Race’s Class Brass division in their 1909 open-air Buick Racer.

Cruising down Main Street in Disneyland in their spiffy old jalopies, tired and sweaty Great American Race drivers and their navigators seemed happily relieved to be coasting through the last leg of a wacky route across the country.

A handful of racers from Orange County, waving to friends and relatives, seemed especially glad to be home.

For the father-daughter team of Dennis and Julie Holland of Newport Beach, the homecoming was especially sweet: They arrived winners.

Decked out in dirty blue coveralls and Red Baron-style World War I aviator caps with goggles, the Hollands looked like true turn-of-the-century speedsters, snug in their 1909 open-air Buick Racer.

They accepted a $15,000 check for winning the Class Brass category--for cars built before 1916--which will go toward a scholarship fund for Julie, 16.

“I was kind of hoping somebody would have put a sign over the check saying, ‘The first one to New York gets it,’ ” said Dennis Holland, 45, thinking aloud how such a tempting offer to race again would easily lure him back on the road.

However, he is scheduled to work today at his charter boat business.

“At least we didn’t get a ticket this time,” said Julie, the youngest contestant in the race and one of a handful of female racers.

Last year, she and her father were knocked out of the running minutes before the race’s end by a police officer who ticketed them for clipping a center yellow line during a left turn.

About a dozen teams from Orange County joined about 100 others from around the nation and four countries to compete in the 13-day race, which began at the Westchester Country Club in Rye, N.Y., passed through 13 states and covered 4,095 miles.

The eighth annual car rally welcomes only pre-1940 autos for the grueling jaunt, which requires navigators to follow route directions with pinpoint accuracy. About a half an hour before each day’s race, teams are given precise details of the route.

One set of directions, for instance, instructed: “Drive 35 miles down Main Street, make a left at the Post Office, then increase speed to 45 until the cow pasture, make a right and decrease to 25 m.p.h. until the next intersection.”

One wrong turn or faulty acceleration can throw a team miles or hours off the course, with corrections difficult.

The Hollands finished winners with the lowest score in their class--14 seconds off the optimum arrival time.

The idea of half-century-old cars wheeling on a secret course across the entire country may be a bit zany, but these folks are serious competitors, vying for $250,000 in total prize money.

Other biggest winners Friday were driver Dick Burdick of Rosanky, Tex., and navigator Wayne Bell of Lake Oswego, Ore., who teamed up in a 1924 Bentley to win $50,000 as overall champs for the second year in a row--the first time that has happened in the race’s history.

“How many people get to do something like this?” Bell said in explaining why someone would want to drive around the country, with no idea where he was going next, in a spruced-up old jalopy that no one in Smalltown, U.S.A., would know how to repair if it broke down.

Charlie Adams of Atlanta drove Herman Frito’s 1929 Ford Model A sedan for the potato chip company where he works. Like many contestants, he said that the most enjoyable part of the trip is passing through the seemingly endless small towns and receiving a hero’s welcome from local folk.

“It’s the people along the way who make it,” Adams said.

The rally passed by about 49 million people, according to race organizers.

In all, 82 cars crossed the finish line Friday and were welcomed to the Magic Kingdom by an entourage of dancing grapes, jesters and giant fish, plus Mickey and Minnie’s gang, amid the music of the Navy Ceremonial Band.

Betty Holland, the wife and mother of the Class Brass winners, had been on the road with the other Holland children--Heidi, 13, Amy, 9, and Dennis Jr., 4--and their grandmother for the last two weeks.

Exhausted but excited at the winning and the fanfare, she sighed and said simply, “We’re ready to party.”