The Great Race makes lunchtime stop at museums
SOUTH BEND — The Studebaker National Museum and The History Museum serve as a lunch checkpoint for The Great Race on June 22 at 201 Chapin St.
Beginning at 12:30 p.m., with a Studebaker Hawk, announcers will greet every car as it arrives, providing spectators information about the car and the driver/navigator team.
This year’s race began in Warwick, R.I., on June 18 and ends in Fargo, N.D., on June 26. The nine-day, 2,300-mile adventure will travel to 19 cities in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota.
The race includes more than 150 teams and cars from Japan, England, Australia, Germany, Canada and every corner of the United States. The vintage automobiles date from 1916, and all cars had to be built in or before 1974.
The Great Race is not a speed race but a time/speed/distance rally. Each driver and navigator are given precise instructions each day that detail every move down to the second. They are scored at secret check points along the way and are penalized one second for each second either early or late. As in golf, the lowest score wins.
Tom McRae started the event in 1983, and it takes its name from the 1965 comedy “The Great Race,” which starred Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Natalie Wood and Peter Falk.
The event last stopped in South Bend in 1994.
Admission is free. To view exhibits in the Studebaker National Museum and The History Museum, attendees may purchase a campus ticket for $16-$9.
For more information, call 574-235-9714 or 574-235-9664 or visit studebakermuseum.org or historymuseumsb.org.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: The Great Race makes lunchtime stop at museums
