Old-car tours are a popular pastime for classic-car aficionados who want to drive their vehicles. Many groups and clubs organize tours and rallies throughout the year, and some antiques are getting more road time than they ever did when they were new. The owners of pre-WWI vehicles are no less enthusiastic, but face another hurdle–it turns out that brass-era and previous cars just aren’t fast enough to keep up with modern traffic. Brass-era cars generally come in two speeds: slow and slower. Getting out and driving your lovingly maintained vintage car is one thing, but being a rolling-roadblock in a hundred-year-old contraption with no safety equipment is no fun.
Getting the oldest and slowest vehicles on the road is the purpose of the “Creepy-Crawly” tour, which will be run for the first time next year. Organized as an addition to the “Little, Old and Slow” tour that’s run by the Antique Automobile Club and the Horseless Carriage Club of America, the Creepy-Crawly will feature routes under fifty miles designed for vehicles whose top speed is below 20, a speed that most modern cars can easily achieve in reverse.
Organizers expect the Creepy-Crawly to bring out a number of unique vehicles–many of them over a century old–that are usually only seen in static displays, including highwheelers, cyclecars, solid-tired trucks and early steam cars. The tour will take place in southeastern Pennsylvania, and organizers note that participants might actually end up passing other vehicles, as the area is home to many Amish horse-drawn buggies.
The Little, Old and Slow tour takes place June 15-21, 2014.
