Frank Speziale photo

NORWICH – The city of festivals welcomed another on Sunday as the 2018 Hemmings Motor News Great Race and its $5 million worth of antique cars strolled into Norwich for a lunch stop at the Northeast Classic Car Museum.

120 antique cars, some dating back 105 years, drove into Norwich over the course of three hours on Sunday as racers ate lunch and toured the museum on their way to Troy, NY from Rochester, NY. You couldn't miss the excitement in the air of Norwich.

I left for the car museum at about 11:45 a.m., 30-minutes before the first car was scheduled to pull in, and driving into the city I was surprised to see people already setting up lawn chairs on North Broad Street leading up to the car museum.

Walking to the museum across the railroad tracks from The Evening Sun office on Lackawanna Avenue, I ran into several other people doing just the same, toting cameras and lawn chairs and making small talk about all of the rare cars that were on their way to Norwich as they spoke.

After writing about the Great Race coming to Norwich a couple of times in the last six months, I knew the lunch stop at the car museum was going to be a big deal. But even so, my expectations were blown away once the opening ceremony began and the first cars pulled in.

A chain-driven, open-top 1918 American LaFrance Speedster bearing the emblem "World Troubadours of Finland," a 1948 Ford sedan with lobster claws on it (evidently from Maine), and a 1936 Ford Fordor Deluxe police car driven by Endicott, NY husband and wife Jim and Louise Feeney were just a few of the cars that pulled into the parking lot of the Northeast Classic Car Museum within minutes of each other as the racers began to arrive.

With each car arriving, the Hemmings Motor News announcers detailed the make, model, and year of each car, helping spectators fully appreciate the extent of what they were seeing. As the excitement grew and more racers arrived, it seemed more and more people made their way to the heart of the action at the car museum.

By chance when I went inside the museum, I ran into Jerome Reinan, driver of the 1918 American LaFrance Speedster with the "World Troubadours of Finland" emblem, and also the operators of the 1948 Ford with the lobsters on it, Guy McDurr and Ed Chapman.

I asked Reinan if he was Finnish, to which he replied that his mother is Finnish but the reasoning for their choosing the name was because of its initials.

"Well we like the initials WTF and we had to have something that was more family oriented that would follow those initials, so we chose that. It seemed like a family oriented idea," Reinan said.

Interested in what it must be like to drive an open-top car exactly 100 years old, I asked Reinan how the ride was going despite all the rain in the forecast. He said, "It's enjoyable except when it hails. I will draw the line at hail. Heavy rain kind of feels like when my older brother would shoot BBs at me, it feels a bit like that. But the hail actually is really painful."

McDurr and Chapman both confirmed my suspicions that they hailed from Maine, and are, indeed, lobster connoisseurs. They said this is their fifth year driving the lobster sedan in the Great Race. Asked how they've fared, Chapman paused over his Garf's sandwich and said, "Fair. But we get lunch, so."

Neither Reinan, McDurr, nor Chapman had been to Norwich before Sunday's lunch stop, but said they were happy to say they now have. Reinan said, "This is a great stop. We've been to a lot of lunch stops and this is one of the very best: the food, the surroundings, everyone's been very nice. We're impressed with it."

After wishing the racers well, I approached Great Race Director Jeff Stubb to see how he was enjoying the stop. He said, "Think about this: it's a Sunday, you get to drive your old car on the beautiful, scenic backroads of central New York, you get to stop at one of the most awesome car museums in the whole country, I mean what's better than that?"

Stubb went on to praise Northeast Classic Car Museum Executive Director Bob Jeffrey for making the stop possible after a year and a half of preparation.

Jeffrey said, "It's just good to see the public came out to welcome everyone. They're from all over the United States and at least four or five different countries, this is really rare, and we're really excited because this is a once in a generation opportunity. I hope everyone enjoyed themselves."

City of Norwich Mayor Christine Carnrike also spoke at the event, offering her gratitude to car museum staff for making the lunch stop come to fruition, as well as city officials and agencies who were working the event.

As I walked back through the museum, I encountered Great Race participants John Corey and Dale Kasson admiring the cars. I learned Corey and Kasson, who drive a 1954 Studebaker Landcruiser, are from Troy, NY––the next stop for them in the Great Race.

Being somewhat local, I asked how they felt that Norwich and the Northeast Classic Car Museum was a stop in this year's race. Corey said, "I mean, it's great. This is the best [car museum] I know of. I've been to most of the car museums in the country and this is still one of my favorites."