The Rally Ends With a Bang
Michael Schlee

The Route 66 Rally wound down on Friday with a blowout awards ceremony at the Big Texan Steak House. To say the 50 teams participating in the event had a good time would be a gross understatement. The organizers of this amazing event deserve a huge shout out. So, here it is; way to go Scott Spielman and Tony Intrieri!

On the 3rd day of rally, Team Autotrader.ca (me) stuck to our plan of touring the historic Route 66 as opposed to racing to the finish line for the quickest time.

This idea was expanding as our original group of two cars had grown to 5 vehicles on the 3rd day. With a Canadian built American car (Camaro), a German car built in the United States (BMW Z4), a Japanese car (WRX), an American truck (F-150 Raptor) and a British car designed by Germans but built in Britain (new Mini) we decided on naming ourselves the fitting “Team United Nations Alliance”. Or TUNA for short.

After getting lost for over an hour in the maze that is Oklahoma City, ‘TUNA’ visited many historic sites on Day 3 including a tour of the National Route 66 museum in Oklahoma. The highlight of the day though actually came the following morning when we visited the world famous Cadillac Ranch. As one of my good friends on the rally said; ‘Visiting the Cadillac Ranch is one more thing I can cross off my bucket list’.

As a footnote, all of this determination to site see at our own pace paid off as we were awarded the ‘Die Hard Rally Award’ (see picture with the space man) for driving every inch of Historic Route 66 we could between Chicago and Amarillo.