The Road to Silver State is Not a Straight One - Part One
In 1999, after hearing so much about the Nevada Silver State Open Road Race (a 90 mile closed road race in northern Nevada). I talked with Cynthia about the possibility of driving our Pantera in it. I knew I didn't want to put the roll cage and stuff in the Pantera which is required when running in the 120mph and up classes. I figured the 110 mph class was fine.
Now I have to let you in on a secret here....I live in New Mexico and compared to the rest of the world we have very little traffic on our roads. I not only live in New Mexico, but I live in what could be considered a rural area as well. My parents are elderly and I go check on them several times a week and they live about 30 miles (one way) from our house. 99% of the time, the Pantera gets the nod for the mode of transportation to their place. So basically, every time I take the Pantera for a drive, I usually don't put much less than 75 miles on it. In addition, places to go seem to be pretty spread out in this neck of the tumbleweeds ("woods" for you greener folks) and with not much traffic on the roads....well, you get the picture. This is after all, a Pantera story. Lets just say, "spirited" driving is my style.
That said, driving in the Silver State Classic Challenge was not going to be about being able to drive for 90 miles at 110 mph (I can do that right here within a few miles of my house) but it was more about being part of "The Team".
Dennis Antenucci has been spearheading Team Pantera Racing effort at most every Silver State Classic Challenge for better than 15 years now. Dennis was looking to field a team of 10 Panteras for the September 1999 event. What is really so impressive about Panteras running in these events (and doing VERY well, I might add) is the fact that we are talking about cars from the early 1970's competing with new Vipers, new Corvettes, new Ferrari's and such. You notice I say "new" a lot, that because most of the cars competing are NEW. There are EXTREMELY few vintage cars running these events.
I think it is totally cool that the old vintage Pantera iron can hang with most anything on the road today.
Sorry for chasing that rabbit...now back to our story.
I got the OK to race in the Silver State with one condition from Cynthia. We would have a family vacation to California before the race. Her plan was that, Joshua, my son who was 4 years old at the time, and I would drive the Pantera to California. Cynthia and my daughter (she was 2 at the time), would fly the next day into Los Angeles. Joshua and I would pick them up at LAX. We would then as a family go to the beach, Disneyland and anything else we could think of. After our family vacation, I would take the three of them back to LAX and they would fly home and I would head to Nevada to race.
Let's see...that would add about 1000 miles to my Silver State Trip...sounded good to me!
I knew driving in the Silver State Classic would be a once in a lifetime event for me and I decided that if I were going to race, the Pantera would look even MORE like a race car than it already did. I had an absolute ball designing the "sponsor" (read bogus) logos and such. I contacted a local sign shop that make vinyl letters and had them make what I wanted. It took several days to apply everything but when it was done, the Pantera really did LOOK like a race car.
You can imagine what people thought as THIS passed them by on the freeway! P.S. Nope, that's not my house in the background...I "borrowed" it for the photo.
My thought (a good one by the way) was to try to average a minimum of 90 mph for the 800 or so miles from our house to Los Angeles. My reasoning was to do a "pre-race" warm up, figuring if I had no problems with the Pantera going that fast, that far....driving 110 mpg for 90 miles in the actual race would be a cake walk.
Oh, by the way, in a separate posting, Adams Hudson asked about where my idea for the front fender stripes came from. I got the idea from the Shelby Cobra racing days. Most of the Cobras were painted the same color and were differentiated only by the number painted on the car. Problem was when a Cobra was flying into the pits, it wasn't always easy to tell what the number was to figure out who was driving...and who should be working on the car. Shelby came up with the idea of painting different colored stripes (usually two)on one of the fenders so that the could identify the cars easier.
I always liked the Cobras with those stripes and came up with the idea of a three stripe design in the colors of the Italian flag. I took some masking tape and started playing with the stripe location moving it forward or backward as it either looked right or didn't. I then decided that the stripes should angle backward towards the passenger doors which gave the design a "speed forward" look, in my opinion.
I had thought for many years that I had come up with this design all in my own head. It was Linda Adler, former publlisher of Pantera International, that sent me a photo of a Group 4 Pantera in Switzerland with the identical stripe and I have never seen it before in my life! I thought that was totally bizarre!
Oh Man, another rabbit run over.....my appolgies!
Joshua and I left in the Pantera early one morning, hurled the Pantera toward California and arrived in LA the same afternoon, 815 miles later. This one day drive was only bested by another Pantera trip Joshua and I took to Boise, Idaho....that one was 1,011 miles in one day.
I type slower than I drive
....to be continued.....
