(wind blowing steadily)
(slow, beautiful music)
- Back in the 70's,
an old family friend of ours passed away,
and he was kind of like a grandfather to us.
He didn't have a family of his own.
And he left me a trunk.
When I opened the trunk,
there is this jersey that said National.
I didn't know what National was.
I thought it might be a football team or something.
I realized that he had been racing a car
by the name of National.
When I found this stuff, I started studying
what had happened in history.
I felt like, my gosh, not only are the cars getting lost,
the cars are sitting in museums, nobody's driving them,
nobody uses them, nobody sees them out on tracks at speed.
When I finally tracked down a car and drove it, I thought,
my gosh, this is a piece of history
that we've got to keep alive.
(relaxing, beautiful country music)
Car Number 16 is a 1912 Packard.
We believe that's the oldest Packard race car in the world.
It's got a 420 cubic inch, four-cylinder engine.
And Number 20 is a 1911 National
that ran in the very first Indy 500.
It's probably the fastest of the bunch.
It did over 100 miles an hour at Indy,
and it's got over 450 cubic inches.
It only makes, probably, about 100 horsepower.
(engines clattering steadily)
Car Number 17 is a 1916 National,
and that one has a smaller six-cylinder engine,
which is 303 cubic inches, but about the same horsepower
as the others.
Starting the car during this period of time
is so different than what we're accustomed to nowadays.
It's a long procedure, and a big part of driving the car
is just being able to get it to run.
We have to check the oil level,
because these engines have a splash oiling system.
So, the level of the oil in the crank cases is critical.
They tend to leak water because there were no rubber gaskets
back in those days.
There's no electrical system on these.
The engines are cranked by hand.
And then, once it fires, we have to advance the timing.
We start with it retarded,
so that it doesn't kick your hand back so hard
it'll break your arm, which happens on an occasional basis.
It's fun, getting a group of guys together,
and we like to take more than one car out at a time
when we do, so, it may all be in perfect running condition
when they leave the shop.
Within an hour, somebody's gonna be broke down,
somebody's gonna be towing,
somebody's gonna have a push-start.
(engines sputtering and buzzing)
These cars are challenging to drive.
You've got a hand throttle, you've got a hand sparkler,
you've got a...
The throttle is in between the clutch and the brake.
You've got to double clutch
any time you go up or down a gear.
(relaxing, beautiful country music)
(engines clattering)
You can't take your eyes off the road.
You're vibrating, everything is so rough,
and the road is rough, so your riding mechanic will tap you
on the knee, and he'll point to one side or the other,
to let you know that someone's about to pass you
on the right.
Next thing you notice,
you just see this great big giant wood wheel,
and then you got to be ready, because,
right after he passes you,
you're gonna get this big slosh of mud, or dirt, or leaves.
Every time we've taken these cars out and race them,
we that we have successfully completed a journey,
just because we were able to go race for 30 minutes,
and make it back in one piece.
The thoughts that go through your mind,
driving these cars, make you wonder, at times,
did they have the same worries that I have?
Were they worried about the wheel coming off?
Did they grind the gears as much as I grind the gears?
Did they have trouble getting the brakes to work
after they got muddy?
And so, all of these things are part of this experience,
and that's kind of what we're doing.
We're reliving history.
(engine buzzing deeply)
A race car that sits in a museum
is a travesty.
I mean, the only thing worse is if it didn't exist at all,
because to just have it just sit in a museum,
it doesn't run, it just looks like a race car,
and it was a race car, but,
we can't make it run, or,
we don't want to run it,
or, we're afraid to drive it,
or, it's too expensive to race.
Our feeling is,
if these cars were built to race,
they were meant to be raced,
and that's what we do with them.
(beautiful, warm, acoustic music)
We've saved a piece of history that might have gotten lost,
and at the same time, we had fun doing it.
We got to restore a cool car,
we get to drive them, we get to race them,
we get to wave at the bleachers full of people as we go by.
And, it makes us feel like we're heroes for a day.
(engines grumbling)
My name is Brian Blain, and this is why I drive.
(car engines buzzing)
(beautiful acoustic music)
(engines clatter quietly)
(music flourishes)