Park a lawn chair on north Kingshighway or Broadway street in Cape Girardeau Tuesday evening to see nearly 100 vintage cars speed by in The Great Race. The race is a time, speed and distance rally for cars built before 1969.
Each car will have a driver and navigator. Instead of depending on speed, each car must arrive at a certain destination at a predetermined time.
Executive Director Chuck Martin encourages everybody to come to downtown Cape Girardeau to greet the racers.
“The coolest thing about this is the cars will be arriving just about one minute apart,” Martin said. “So they will be coming into the community about in one minute intervals, but then they will be parking all along main street. So you will be having all of these vintage cars that will be parking from Main and Broadway all the way down to Main and William.”
Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau public relations director Stacey Dohagne Lane says there will be welcome parties and pitstop parties along the race route, which runs from northern Kingshighway down Broadway street.
“We really want to win the hospitality award as a city,” Lane said, “and so we thought if we encouraged businesses to get together and throw these great pitstop parties to really welcome the racers to town that that will improve our chances. So we’re really wanting to see businesses and parties happening.”
The race will start in St. Paul, Minnesota and end in Mobile, Alabama.
