Classic Velocity

An armada of 02sThe tii can dispatch country roads with aplomb, but it is not the sharpest handling car. It will handle hundreds of miles of autobahn/interstate with aplomb as evidenced by it’s trips to the Vineyards event and Florida, but with 4 gears, it is not the most relaxed GT car. It will run 500 rpm below the rev limit all day, but it is not a race car. It will carry passengers and luggage with aplomb, but it is no SUV. It attracts attention wherever it goes, but it is no supercar. What it will do is accomplish all of these things on the same trip very well. That is not very well given it’s age, it is very well period.

Limerock at dawn is always a bit surrealCase in point, the annual pilgrimage to Limerock for the Vintage Festival. The car has made this trip several times, and now the event coincides with the 02 Festival East sponsored by the good folks at Sports Car Restoration http://sports-car-restoration.com . The weekend itself is covered in the main blog, but the trip to and from is what I have come to regard as the natural habitat of the car. A few hundred miles of interstate, about a hundred miles of some of the best feisty parkway in the country (NY’s Saw Mill and Taconic), and then about a hundred more of country roads. Add passengers and a weekend worth of Camping gear and luggage, and you get the picture. At the event, the car was popular in the paddock area, and there were two race versions out on track during the weekend. I could have made a commercial for the German sports sedan circa 1972. Job done.

02s were sprinkled liberally aboutThat said, there are two negatives. The first is that as good as the BBS wheels look, they are a royal pain to clean, and they get covered in brake dust pretty quickly. I have even tried different pads, but not much improvement. One fellow 02 owner told me to use less brakes 😉 The other negative is really a positive that turned out to be kind of dangerous this time. People on the highway often chase me down when I go flying by in the left lane, and take a picture with their phone. Fine if the picture taker is a passenger, but I had a driver attempt to drive alongside and use his phone camera while we were both doing 80+ mph. This is not smart. He had a slight swerve and I was on the rumble strip for a second avoiding him. This, we don’t need. Overall though, another brilliant trip in a car I can’t praise enough.