I’ve never been to a Concours d’Elegance but I thought this local story would be interesting to some. Admittedly, I was a bit disappointed after I discovered the word “Roll” in the article headline (“Famous 1950s race car gets set to roll from Reno to Florida”) was referring to a trailer and not the Lincoln itself. Either way, pretty neat car with a great history.
Original story from the Reno-Gazette Journal
February 5, 2007
Famous 1950s race car gets set to roll from Reno to Florida
A Lincoln that made its mark in Mexican road races decades ago is back in the shop, getting set to motor back into action.
The National Automobile Museum’s 1954 Lincoln Capri Pan Americana road racer is being prepped for next month’s 12th annual Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance. The Florida car show set for March 11 features the museum’s Lincoln as part of a special showing of world-famous race cars.
“This is a great honor for the museum,” said Jackie Frady, executive director of the museum at Mill and Lake streets near downtown Reno.
The Lincoln took first place in the Big Stock Car Class in the 1954 Carrera Panamericana. Starting near the Mexico-Guatemala border, the five-day race followed a route that climbed 10,486 feet near Mexico City and extended hundreds of miles over mountains and plateaus, museum research shows.
Driven 1,908 miles at an average speed of 92.22 mph in 20 hours, 40 minutes and 19 seconds, the Lincoln ended up in Bill Harrah’s Reno-area auto collection.
“It was a car that Mr. Harrah sought because of its rich history, the racing history and being one of the original Lincoln team cars,” Frady said. “The Panamericana Mexican road races were such important endurance races in the history of the automobile.”
The Lincoln’s connection to the Mexican races is what prompted the 2007 invitation to Florida.
The Lincoln racer features a V-8 engine with 205 horsepower but no power steering or power brakes.
“It’s a big heavy Lincoln so it wouldn’t be like driving a race car today where you had some turning technology and various things built in the car,” Frady said. “It’s a big, lumbering car, just ideal for these very rough roads. It was a very strong car that could handle driving under those conditions day after day.”
The Lincoln will head from Reno to Florida in a specially designed enclosed van to protect it from weather and vandalism along the way.
Museum automotive shop manager Jay Hubbard is getting the Detroit-built custom coupe in shape.
“Medically, the car is in very nice shape,” he said. “It just needs a lot of cleaning. Being put away for so many years and not being driven, you need to go through and change all of the fluids and check everything all out.”
“They ask that these automobiles be driven on and off the show fields so we don’t want to have any problems there,” he added.
Hubbard plans to travel to Florida, where he will care for the car. He’ll drive it onto the show field and stick around to pack it up for its trip home.
“It is the only one I have seen in a long while that has a pedigree that reaches back to that (Mexican) race,” Hubbard said. “To actually have this piece of history that you can trace all the way back to those road races, that’s pretty unique.”
See the original story at the Reno-Gazette-Journal
Learn more about Concours d’Elegance. Warning. Take your Pepto Bismol before reading.
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