By Kristen Hannum –
Photographs By John Waugh –
On a few special afternoons in September, Colorado mountain towns take turns hosting close to 100 sports cars the likes of which you’d usually have to book a ticket to the Riviera to see.
This 1960 Porsche 356B Super leads the way through the Colorado Grand. The cars’ drivers are often wet and muddy as they power their open roadsters through the thousand-mile route of the Colorado Grand, an annual vintage sports car tour that begins and ends in Vail. This year’s lunch stops include Lake City, Paonia and Salida, meaning that a couple hundred drivers, co-drivers and mechanics will make their way to buffet or picnic tables in those locales over the course of a couple hours, stretching their legs and ambling over for the fixings that the townspeople serve up.
Last year’s Grand boasted more than 20 sleek Ferraris, nearly as many Jaguars, a dozen jaunty Alfa Romeos and 10 elegant Mercedes-Benz 300 SLs. All pre-1960 vintage. Some worth in excess of $5 million.
Not many American cars are in the mix, but 10 Shelby Cobras made the tour last year. There are also cars that only the most dedicated sports car aficionados are familiar with, such as the 1947 Cisitalia 202 SMM Spider Nuvolari, a head-turning aerodynamic two-seater, of which only 28 were produced.
“The gear heads all show up,” says Dick Welle, retiring general manager of White River Electric Association, headquartered in Meeker, which isn’t a lunch stop this year but often hosts. “Sometimes people are standing three deep to look at the cars. It’s a big deal when they come through.”
“I’m always impressed with the Ferraris,” says Meeker Sheriff Cy Woodruff. “They’re amazing.” Woodruff says much the same about the drivers. “They’re basically on-the-road mechanics,” he says. “They’re self made with a passion for cars, not just a bunch of rich guys with crews following them around. They’re really nice guys.”
Sports car magazines often cover the Colorado Grand after the tour, but the organizers purposefully don’t publicize the event beforehand. They’re after wide-open roads, not spectators. The townspeople along the way, in Paonia, Hotchkiss, Salida, Lake City, Gunnison, Ridgway, Meeker, Steamboat Springs and Walden, are in the know about the unadvertised route, but for the most 
part unsuspecting travelers only happen upon the event by chance. That’s despite the fact that John Waugh, a well-known winter sports and auto photographer, has been a longtime participant in the Colorado Grand. He and his crew have shot tens of thousands of photos of the event.
Bugatti beginnings
The Colorado Grand began back in the 1980s when lumber store entrepreneur Bob Sutherland began organizing a few friends from around the country to tour the Colorado Rockies in their antique Bugattis, celebrated French race cars. Only about 8,000 Bugattis were ever manufactured, between 1909 and 1952, making Sutherland and his buddies members of a select club.
1930 Bugatti Type 51RSutherland talked with well-known Ferrari restorer Mike Dopudja and Colorado State Patrol Captain Larry Tolar about expanding his friendly little Bugatti tour. The three agreed that there should be a way for more antique sports cars to get out on public highways.
Tolar suggested that Sutherland set up a nonprofit organization to run the event and donate the proceeds to charities, such as the Meeker Lions Club. The cars could get special license plates just for the tour, and the organization could hire off-duty officers to accompany the sports cars.
Sutherland liked the idea: They would set up a noncompetitive vintage sports car tour, charging participants enough to be able to offer a great experience and also fund scholarships and charities. And so, 25 years ago, beginning in 1988, up to 100 drivers with pedigreed vintage sports cars could register.
Other vintage car tours launched soon after: the California Mille (mille also denoting 1,000 miles), the Copperstate 1000 in Arizona, the New England 1000 and more. Coloradans won’t be surprised to hear that the Colorado Grand, which takes place during the mountain aspens’ golden September shimmering, is always rated in the top two or three.
Cars and drivers come from around the world.
“We’re always oversubscribed and have to turn people away,” says Frank Barrett, who is on the board of directors.
Taking more drivers, he explains, would make the volunteer-fueled Grand too ponderous and change its friendly atmosphere. As it is, qualified drivers who register early enough to make the list enjoy Colorado’s spectacular scenery, the casual company of similar-minded people and great accommodations and food.
“Entrants come from all walks of life,” says Barrett, who runs Toad Hall Motorbooks, selling books about cars. “There’s no common thread except to preserve old cars.”
No mean people allowed
Neil Jones, a Denver-area entrepreneur who has driven his cars in a dozen Colorado Grands, describes the drivers and co-drivers as a casual, chatty bunch. “I don’t think I’ve met anyone in all those years who wasn’t pleasant,” he says.
Jerry Seinfeld drove in the Grand one year and Jones had figured that the comedian might be the exception.
Sure enough, one day Jones watched as a lady asked Seinfeld if she could get a photo of herself and her husband with him. He refused. But then the next day, Jones saw Seinfeld spend 20 minutes or more with a bunch of teenage boys gawking at his classic Porsche. “The kids were giddy,” recalls Jones, “and I could hear Seinfeld telling them sure, they could sit in the car, and agreeing to have photos with them.”
That night Jones asked Seinfeld about why he’d treated the photo-seeking woman and her husband so differently.
“They were grownups,” Seinfeld replied. “They should know better.”
Jones decided that was a good answer, so his tally of nice people taking part in the Grand remains at 100 percent.
Jones takes turns driving one of his three classic British cars in the Grand: a 1956 Austin Healey 100M, a 1957 Jaguar XK-140Mc and a 1958 Morgan. The Morgan is a good example of the kind of rare cars found at the Grand. Each Morgan is made at a little factory in England in much the same way the
first Morgan was put together in 1910. They have wooden frames and, because they’re handmade, each car’s screw holes are in slightly different places. Jones jokes about their stiff suspension “If you run over a nickel in the road you don’t just feel it, you know if it was heads or tails,” he laughs. “But they’re fun to drive, very windy.”
Like most of the drivers in the Grand, Jones and his co-driver, Seth Rollert, have a pact to not put up the top, no matter what the weather. “That would take 20 minutes,” he explains.
Jones and Rollert kept to their agreement even the time it started hailing on them, hard, not far from Ridgway. Jones was holding the half-inch thick route guide over his own head but took pity on Rollert, who was driving. He put the book over Rollert’s head until a particularly big chunk of hail hit his own head. “I thought, ‘To heck with him!’ and put the book back over my own head,” Jones confesses, not sounding a bit sorry.
Car Talk
The annual guidebook not only has photos and descriptions of all the cars in the tour, a list of all the drivers, a history of the tour, the charities served and its sponsors, but also a mile-by-mile description of the route. On mile 70.5 of the first morning of th
e tour last year, for instance, it reads: “Mt. Princeton, 14,197 feet. Avoid The Graybar Hotel (aka the Colorado State Penitentiary), established in 1891 and still thriving on your left. This is where your Grand license plates were made!”
1953 Ferrari 342 America SPThe route book also notes places where the Colorado Grand’s charitable works, now totaling more than $3.3 million, are visible, as at the Hotchkiss community center and the Ridgway Rodeo Association. The organization’s largest recipients are the Colorado State Patrol Family Foundation, which supports state troopers, state patrol civilian staff and their families in times of hardships; the Robert D. Sutherland Foundation, which helps people with bipolar disorder and their families; and the Pieta House in Denver, which helps people with HIV and AIDS.
The organization gives special consideration to charities working on the Western Slope, funding the structural engineering, for example, for Walden’s new North Park Medical Clinic. The Grand drivers don’t just put on a good traveling auto show in the towns where they stop for lunch, they also award a scholarship to a local young person.
While the route guide is written clearly enough, readers should understand car talk to appreciate the section on the cars. For example, the description of a 1953 Osca MT4 2AD begins, “O.S.C.A.’s first automobile was the MT4, for Maserati Tipo 4 cilindri. The 71 hp, 1092cc engine had a FIAT-derived block, alloy head, and the bodywork was built as a two-seater barchetta.”
Come again?
Like that Osca, many of the cars driven in the Grand are retired race cars, and so the State Patrol emphasizes safety. The story of what happened to a rambunctious German driver a few years back serves as a strong cautionary tale for other drivers.
This fellow attended the State Patrol’s lecture about how Colorado roads belong to its citizens and that there would be no lawbreaking during the Grand: no speeding, no passing on double yellow lines, no bad behavior whatsoever.
Perhaps there was a language issue. Perhaps the guy just had poor impulse control and was behind the wheel of a powerful car. Perhaps he was just too accustomed to the autobahns’ high speed limits.
Whatever the reason, an officer had to pull the fellow over the next day to warn him about his driving, a one-time warning. The next day, though, the driver was at it again, passing on a double yellow line.
The motorcycle-riding trooper pulled him over again. That was it — the trooper was pulling the car’s special license and the car would not be driven another foot on Colorado roads.
The driver was horrified. “How will I get it out of here?” the man asked, gesturing at the expanse of mountain wilderness around them.
“Not my problem,” the officer said.
In another version of what might be the same story, the officer simply insisted that the man couldn’t drive anymore. He would have to turn over the wheel to his wife for the rest of the tour.
The townspeople in Meeker probably would have lobbied to give the guy another chance. Tom Allen, the local Lions Club president and a White River Electric member, is yet another fan of the Grand and its drivers. “They don’t act like rich snobs,” he says. “We just fix ’em hamburgers and they dote on ‘em.”
Kristen Hannum, a Colorado native, is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Denver. Kristen drives a 2003 Toyota Echo.