2012 Great Race to include stop at Packard Museum

Staff report

Warren

The National Packard Museum will play host to The Great Race on June 29, 2012, during the nine-day, antique-auto trek that circles the Great Lakes.

The overnight stop in Warren, the seventh stop along the international race, is expected to bring 100 antique cars to the Valley, according to a press release.

The 2012 race will begin in Buffalo, N.Y., and end in Dearborn, Mich.

The Warren stop will be the first of three in Ohio.

“When the Great Race pulls into a city, it becomes an instant festival,” said race director Jeff Stumb in a release. “We have seen as many as 40,000 people at stops.”

The cars range from 1911 to 1969 models. Several Packard vehicles will be in the race as well, a release said.

The first entrant into the race back in 1983, Curtis Graf of Irving, Texas, drives a 1916 Packard.

Although the race is not designed for speed, it will test the ability of the driver and navigator of each car to reach checkpoints precisely on time.

Vehicles are penalized a second for each second either too early or late at a checkpoint, a release said. If everything goes right, the antique vehicles will cross the finish line a minute apart from one another. Part of the challenge is getting the old vehicles to finish the race. The lowest score wins.

At the National Packard Museum, the cars are expected to arrive about 5 p.m. There, the cars will remain on display until the next day.