Organizers are annoyed that half of the competitors have failed to purchase "repatriation insurance," which guarantees that cars breaking down anywhere on the route will be shipped safely to their owners' homes.

Few drivers ventured beyond the front gate of the Lanzhou Legend Hotel. Instead, they spent the day preparing their cars and themselves for what lies ahead: four days of camping and a rugged ascent to the Tanggu La, the highest road in the world at nearly 17,000 feet. The car lot of the luxury four-star hotel was transformed into an open-air garage as competitors emptied their automobiles. Drills, wrenches, foot pumps, tubes of lubricant, freeze-dried food, Velcro strips and granola bars littered the yard. Like looking in a bathroom cabinet, it was a most revealing display.

Americans Vic Zannis and Andy Vann work on their 1950 Ford Club coupe.

Most drivers performed simple servicing tasks like changing oil or filters and tightening the nuts and bolts for the jolts ahead. Others like Francesca Sternberg and the team of Charles and Arlene Kleptz needed more extensive repairs. Sternberg and her co-driver Jennifer Gillies left early in the morning for a Chinese garage, where they hoped the mechanics could repair the damaged front shock absorber of their 1964 Volvo Amazon, "Gordon", named after rally booster Gordon Bennett. Photographer Drew Fellman and I tried to accompany the duo, but lost sight of Gordon when our taxi broke down.

The Kleptzes were in even more dire straits. Their 1919 Marmon had to be towed into Lanzhou when a coupling in their drive shaft melted. The car couldn't make it to the garage, so Chic recruited three mechanics and brought them to the lot. To fix the car, they had to take it apart. Luckily, Chic built it himself and knew where everything was.

Chic Kleptz and a team of recruits
work on the Marmon.

Heard On The Legend Lot (RealAudio)

Jane King and Phil Bowen
1966 Volvo Amazon
Phil: "We are changing the coil, part of the electrical system, because we 'cooked' two of them already. We had the coil sitting near the heater. In England that is fine, but over here, with the 90 to 100 degree temperatures we've been running, the coil overheats. It is oil-filled, so it runs everywhere and the car won't start. We have a Chinese coil now and we are fitting it away from the heater and away from the engine."

Melissa Ong & Colin Syn
1963 Porsche 356
Melissa: "We are trying to fix the horn. Every time we use the horn it clears the trip-meter. It hasn't been a problem yet because there has only been one road, but when we get to Europe, we are going to get desperately lost. At the moment we are not using the horn, but in some of the villages we really need it, because we are getting swamped with people. It's kind of scary."

Bill Binnie and Ned Thompson
1928 Bentley
Bill: "We are making sure that the car doesn't rattle apart. Cars from 1928 are not designed to go 500 miles a day, so just keeping everything tight is a challenge. I'm using a pair of hemostats from a surgical office. We tightened up the skidguard and now we are going to fix a fender problem. The original design of this car was fine, but then they rebodied the car in 1935, and moved the fenders a little lower to the wheel to make it more rakish. The problem is that when you move the car around, it hits the fender and chafes the tires."

Team Retromobilia
Ted Thomas, Vic Zannis and John Jung, Andy Vann
1950 Ford Club coupes
Ted: "We've run together the whole time, so much that everybody thinks these coupes are joined at the hip. So we've been tossing out a lot of things if we have two. Between the two cars, I bet we took out 200 to 250 pounds."

Don Jones and Carl Schneider
1954 Packard convertible
Don: "We are bringing our car out into the open. That is to say we are bringing the suspension system out to 200 pounds -- we've been running at 120 pounds. We are also increasing the air pressure in our tires. In addition, we are just going around tinkering, or as the English say, fettling with radiator hoses. And, uncharacteristically to our normal condition in life, getting our hands grimy."

Mary and Pat Brooks
1949 Buick Woody Wagon
Mary: "I'm telling Pat he needs to put the car up on jacks and check everything out, but I know nothing about cars. I just heard at breakfast that everybody's doing it. I'm the novice mechanic trying to tell the mechanic what to do, so I decided to go visiting instead and get out of his way."

Pictures (from top right): Brown Brothers | Popperfoto/Archive Photos | Auburn Museum/Archive Photos | Drew Fellman/Candide Media Works |
Audio: Candide Media Works | Copyright © 1997 Discovery Communications, Inc.