So some guy decides to take a drive in his old car.
The drive happens to be from Rhode Island to California, the guy is famed car collector Fritz Burkhard, and his old car is a 1937 Bugatti Atalanta:
…worth about $30 million.
I like his attitude:
“If people just park their cars to show them and keep them in the garage they miss 70-80 percent of the fun.
“They don’t know what that is. These are machines to be driven. They are pieces of art, but you don’t tack them on the wall.”
There is no mention of how his insurance agent felt about it.
The drive was likely insured by Hagerty. They do that kind of specialty Car event insurance. I’m sure a full video of the drive will show up on Audrains You tube channel in the near future. A few years ago they did a series on driving in the Mille Miglia. As for his return to Pebble Beach, it’s an invitational event, and they don’t let people enter the same car two years in a row. You can show a car every year, but it must be a different car. So what’s done is cars like the Atlantic spend several years at Paul Russell’s Shop hear north of Boston having a frame off restoration done at a cost of several million, then shipped to California, compete at Pebble, then maybe some other events and tucked away. That Nick decided to drive the car and put several 1000 miles on it goes to the quality of the Restoration. It’s basically better than New and the Bugatti is certainly capable of sustained Interstate speeds without issues
Stay tuned for the video(s).
https://www.youtube.com/@AudrainMuseumNetwork/videos
Considering those cars were pretty much handmade, as long as there’s still a VIN tag left, I’m sure he can afford to rebuild it after any accident. Assuming he survives, that is.
On a much, much, MUCH smaller scale, I sold my antique car about a decade back for various reasons. But one of the reasons was that it was just too difficult to drive it in modern traffic without having a heart attack at every close call. If wrecked, I certainly wouldn’t be able to afford repairs or replacement. And once I stopped driving it, well, there wasn’t much reason to keep it anymore. Antique cars are a rich man’s toy and I ain’t near rich enough.
If I were to encounter such a car when out on one of our spider’s web of high-ways and bi-ways, I would be tempted to just fall-in in line-astern and follow to it’s next stop so as to say “Hello”, and shake the hand of the driver/owner.
Call me a philistine if you will, but that thing’s as ugly as a cybertruck. It’s on the opposite end of the design spectrum, but still ugly.
I know a serious car collector, and he drives all his cars on the road. His whole collection is probably worth $30 mil, and the insurance can’t be cheap. Respect.
As you know, Jay Leno drives his cars, and he also gets to drive others’ cars, including some that cost a zillion dollars, or that simply can’t be replaced. Very often, you see the owner sitting in the passenger seat, acting casual but obviously under serious mental strain. Leno is always very cool, very casual about it.
I saw an episode of the Garage where Jay taught his producer to drive his Model T. The controls on a Model T are about as familiar to modern drivers as the controls on a steam locomotive. The producer was all excited about every little thing. Meanwhile Jay sat in the passenger seat looking like he just spat out a bad oyster and was trying not to make a scene.