A Classic Event Roadsters In The Great Race, En Route To Toronto, Will Stop In The Lake City Next Week

The Lake City got a rumbling, four-carburetor taste of what’s to come next week when the pace car for The Great Race blew through here Monday.

A jet black 1931 Buick roadster growled around downtown to tout the road rally, which will bring 85 pre-1943 classics here next Monday evening.

Tom McRae’s the goggled driver of this show. A longtime car enthusiast, he pulled the original drawings of the classic race car and spent about $25,000 carefully bending a big sheet of aluminum into the graceful curves.

“Kit car is an ugly word,” McRae said, his face contorting as if he’d swallowed a bug. “We built this thing from scratch. It’s a straight-eight with four carburetors. It’ll produce about 250 horsepower.”

The pace car continued its journey westward to Tacoma, as it traces the race route backwards from Toronto.

The classic cars will wind through the countryside trying to get to their destination in a specific time. Coeur d’Alene is the first stop on the route. The Great Race, inspired by the old movie of the same name, McRae said, has run since 1983. The cars travel a different route each year.

For Coeur d’Alene, it could mean as many as 5,000 people crowding downtown, said Stacy Becker, tourism director of the Coeur d’Alene Area Chamber of Commerce.

“It’ll be a nice boost for a Monday night in June,” she said. Hotels and restaurants will be big beneficiaries.

The event starts at 5 p.m., about the time the classic cars roll in from the day’s travel. The Great Race should have the feel of the “Car d’Alene” event that happens each summer, but visitors will be able to touch and even sit in the roadsters, unlike at Car d’Alene, Becker said.

“Classic cars do nice things to people,” McRae said. “They open them up, make them smile, make them happy.”

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