It promises to be like a scene from the wacky races . . . over 300 vintage cars from 1896 to 1930 do battle this weekend for the coveted Gordon Bennett cup in its centenary year, writes Michael McAleer.
Commemorating the "race that saved motorsport" and the direct ancestor of Formula One which attracts millions of viewers, the five-day event begins today, with the main event, the Gordon Bennett Rally, on Saturday.
Among the entrants one intrepid motorist will be starting his much longer motoring expedition only when the rally is over.
As over 300 vintage cars gather to commemorate the Gordon Bennett this week, one intrepid traveller plans to use the five-day commem-oration as the starting point of a much larger trip.
Writer Joe Sherman and his son Andrew will set off to retrace the tyre tracks of their cousin and motoring pioneer Charles Jasper Glidden. Sherman claims Glidden was the first to drive over the Arctic Circle; the first to reach Bluff, New Zealand, the southernmost point accessible by roa; the first to top the Kyber Pass; and the first to drive into Jerusalem.
Sherman and his son will set off on the Gordon Bennett centenary this week, the first in a line of journeys aimed at retracing Glidden's travels. They plan to complete the Irish leg in a 1902 Napier, following Glidden's route to Northern Ireland, then resuming the journey in Stockholm and continue in his tracks to the Arctic Circle. Next year they plan to attempt a second leg of the journey.
According to Sherman, Glidden set off from Ireland a century ago on his epic drive, starting with the 1903 Gordon Bennett Race and proceeding on a month-long drive to the Arctic Circle.
Between 1903 and 1908 Glidden travelled 47,000 miles in 39 countries at an average speed of 25 mph in a 24 bhp Napier. While Sherman and his son will be travelling in a Napier in the Gordon Bennett, as a keen exponent of alternative energy , he hopes to drive an electric car in the Arctic and plans to use more compact cars in the longer legs of the trip.
But there is more to this than simply tracing a relative's route. "I'm following in Glidden's wake because we're related," says Sherman, "and I want to celebrate the centenary of his marvellous but relatively unknown epic journey.
"Of course, deeper than all this, is wanderlust. It connects Glidden, myself and Andrew through some kind of genetic predisposition that the British travel writer Bruce Chatwin called 'insane restlessness'."
The aim is to be at Kommis on the Arctic Circle on midsummer's eve. The second leg will take in St Louis, Vancouver, then the South Pacific, including New Zealand, Tasmania and Australia.
As for the Gordon Bennett commemorations, they begin today at 2.30 pm with a 40-mile drive from Motor Distributors Ltd on the Naas road, home to Mercedes Benz Ireland, sponsors of the centenary, to Kilashee House Hotel in Naas. There will then be separate drives tomorrow, Friday and Sunday. However the actual centenary rally takes place on Saturday, with the oldest cars setting off at 8 am.
Four separate circuits are planned to cater for the large number of entrants - of the 306 entrants, 16 are pre-1903 and the collection includes cars from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Kenya, South Africa and Australia. And - a sign of the changes in the industry over 100 years - of the 80 marques taking part only 16 are still in production.
Entrants include a 1902 winning car, a Napier driven by SF Edge in the Gordon Bennett race from Paris to Innsbruck, and a 1903 Mercedes.
The oldest car in the race is a 8 bhp 1896 Panhard Et Lavassor - the first four-cylinder car ever built, it was an experimental factory entry in 1896 race from Paris to Marseille and back, and it won. Now owned by Daniel Ward, it actually had 12 bhp but such power was thought too vulgar for a carriage so it was marketed as 8 bhp.
While gardaí will marshal the four circuits, no roads will be closed. Routes will not be made public until the morning of the race, but are likely to include some of the towns in Carlow and Kildare visited by the original race, such as Kilcullen, Kildare, Monasterevin, Stradbally, Athy, Carlow town and Castledermot. Motorists are advised to expect some minor delays in these areas.