Road fever : a high-speed travelogue Read online

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  This One's for Karen Laramore

  Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010

  http://www.archive.org/details/roadfeverhighspeOOcahi

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles. Everywhere, in every country Garry Sowerby and I visited, people offered assistance, advice, and encouragement. We tried to sell Pan-American unity as a dream. The following friends made it a reality.

  In Argentina: Jacques Crete, Monica Johnson de Escardo, Duilio DiBella, Oscar E. Barralia, Raul Oscar Capuano, Roberto O. Ducca, Hector O. Alberici, Horacio Zentner, Italo F. Delano, Jorge Fernandez, Roberto Nori, Daniel Leguizamon.

  In Chile: Frank Chandler, Christian LaBelle, Gregory C. Nicolaidis, Daniel A. Buteler, Basil Drossos, Mario Archeta, Enrique Gutierrez.

  In Peru: M. Dinev, Ricardo Cordove Freyre, Jesus Gonzales Mar-quesado, Carlos Gonzales Zuzunage, Noel Yriberry Lira, Mercedes Gotuzzo Balta, Dario Caamano Montero, Estuardo Melendez Hoyle, Carlos Garcia Salazar, Luis Zamudio Garcia, Norma Espinoza, Enrique Viale, Fernando Viale.

  In Ecuador: R. Mora, Ralph Gillies, Dick Stead, Alejandro Pena-herrera, Ivan Toro, Dr. Juan Herman Ortiz.

  In Colombia: Perry J. Calderwood, Jaime Alberto Morales, Alan Carvajal, Elie J. Rezk, Santiago Camacho, Jaime Lopez Mendoza, Luis Eduardo Nieto Venegas, Captain Juergen F. Steinebach, Senor G. Giaimo.

  In Panama: Ruth Denton, Luis Paz Cardenas, Jose Tapis, Manuelita del la Guardia.

  In Costa Rica: James Lambert, Matthew Levin, Greg Cooney, Marco Antonio Pinto.

  In Nicaragua: Chistita Caldera, William Vargas, Cesar A. Noguera Ch., Mayda Denueda.

  In Guatemala: Thomas G. Cullen, Ricardo Pennington, Frances As-turea, William Gonzales.

  In Mexico: Laurent N. Beaulieu, Mario Silva, Luc Javier R. Saucedo Renoud, Francisco Resendiz.

  Acknowledgments

  In the United States (lower forty-eight): Rich Cox, Tucker Willis, Pat Moore, W. Marvin Rush III, Bob Lake, Dave Fugate, Art Christy, and Paul Dix. We are especially grateful to Albert J. Buchanan.

  In Canada: At Canadian Tire: Jim Miller; at GM Canada: Chris Douglas, Doug Terry, Gerry Gereski, Earl Weichel, Nick Hall; at Farmers: Barrie Reid, W. E. McLellan; at the Canadian Dept. of External Affairs: Anne Hilmer; at the Canadian Automobile Association: David Steventon.

  In Alaska: Jim Messer, Bob Mills, Gordon Messer, Terry Tipoly, John Horn, Fritz Guenther, Phil Blackstone, Bob Lewis.

  We are also grateful to the following individuals and corporations for special assistance in the U.S.:

  At GMC Truck: John Rock, Rich Stuckey, Bill Hill, Steve Olsen, Al

  Walker, Russ Cameron, Frank Cronin.

  At Detroit Diesel Allison: Jim Moloney, Wally Renn, Judy Kangas,

  Jack Blanchard.

  At Stanadyne: Joe Boissonneault, Barbara Bartucca, Mary Seery,

  Lee Jannet.

  At Popular Mechanics: Joe Skorupa, Joe Oldham.

  At GMODC: Ron Royer, Fred Schwartz.

  At Motorola: Dave Weisz.

  At Delco Products: Dick Westfall.

  Special thanks to those who provided invaluable letters of introduction: Alan Russell, former editor, Guinness Book of World Records; Ivan Toro, Automovil Club del Ecuador; Manuel Lissarrague, Automo-vil Club Argentino; Monica Figueroa Navarro, Automovil Club de Chile; Otto Jelinek, Minister of State, Fitness and Amateur Sport, Canada; Joe Clark, Secretary of State for External Affairs, Canada; David Steventon, Canadian Automobile Association; Deb Drummond, Canadian Automobile Association; Laurie K. Storsater, Canadian Embassy, Peru.

  Finally, the author wishes to thank Barbara Lowenstein, a professional agent and personal friend. Thanks also to David Rosenthal, a gifted editor with a whole lot of patience and faith.

  ROAD FEVER

  IT'S HOT HOT HOT

  (BOOM, BAM,

  KA-POW)

  January 1987 • Las Vegas, Nevada

  T

  ■I H

  I here were about three thousand of us for dinner that night at the Bally Casino Resort in Las Vegas. We were seated at large round tables accommodating ten people apiece, and each place setting bristled with flatware. There were at least ten separate utensils per person: knives and forks and a few mysterious surgical-looking devices with shiny sharp points. I counted almost four hundred tables in the cavernous convention hall. During the meal an odd group of musicians played understated dinner music on a raised stage at the front of the hall. There was a bass, an accordion, and ten women playing violins. They played "Hava Nagila" and "Roll Out the Barrel." They played "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree."

  An army of waiters and waitresses, moving with military precision and import, delivered the food so that everyone—all three thousand of us—got his or her melon simultaneously. Next we were served a dish in a shell-shaped chalice that contained small pieces of shrimp and lobster in a cream sauce. The following course, designed to clear the palate, was a frozen peach cut in half, hollowed out and filled with sherbet, which was followed by steak with sauteed mushrooms. Broccoli with cheese sauce. Baked Alaska.

  The women playing the violins wore green empire-waist shoulder-less dresses and they produced "symphonic" polkas, with their eyes closed in feigned ecstasy.

  As the waiters whisked away the gummy remnants of the baked Alaska, Nashville comedian Minnie Pearl took the stage and told a lot

  ROAD FEVER

  of jokes about the knee-slapping problems of the elderly. She gave the impression that she herself was too old to enjoy anything much and that the audience, a reasonably flamboyant collection of auto dealers and their spouses from the Western states, should find this amusing. Minnie Pearl remarked upon a female acquaintance of certain years who wanted female pallbearers at her funeral. No men. The acquaintance saw this as a form of revenge for disappointments suffered regarding heterosexual romance in her latter years.

  "If they won't take me out when I'm alive," Minnie Pearl quoted the embittered woman, "then they ain't gonna take me out when I'm dead."

  Minnie Pearl wore a large garish bonnet with a price tag hanging off one side and said that a few years ago, in her hometown of Grinder-switch, there was a fad called streaking, in which people ran around naked as a means of self-expression. One of these erstwhile streakers was yet another older woman, who, Minnie Pearl suggested, was revealing her body in order to arouse men who might make her life a garden of sexual delight. Concerned onlookers pointed out the spectacle to an older gentleman known as Grandpa, who didn't see so well.

  "She's streaking, Grandpa," they said.

  "What's that?"

  "Why, Grandpa," the concerned onlookers explained, "she's wearing her birthday suit."

  Grandpa squinted his eyes and said, "Looks like it needs ironing."

  Three thousand people laughed heartily at this and there was a smattering of applause.

  Exit Minnie Pearl. Enter John Rock, the general manager of GMC truck, a forceful and solid-looking man who appeared to be well named. Rock said that he wasn't going to waste a lot of time, but that the audience, which included a healthy sampling of the automotive press, should know that he was pretty excited about the new truck GMC was introducing. The Sierra pickup had been designed from the wheels up at a cost of $2.8 billion. It was the first redesign on the old workhorse in fifteen years. It was a tough truck. It was easy going on the road. It was hot.

  The trucks, we were given to understand, would sell like hotcakes. The typical buyer, Rock thought, might be defined as an "upscale cow-punk." The way Rock pronounced the words, he seemed to think upscale cowpunks were some pretty fine fellows completely
aside from the fact that he expected them to make him and everyone in the room fabulously rich.

  It's Hot Hot Hot (Boom, Bam, Ka-Pow)

  "Our typical buyer," Rock said, "he's an easy guy. He comes to a meal like this one, he's going to have about four forks and a couple of knives left over." Everyone laughed because we all had a bunch of gadgets left over, inexplicable little scalpels and picks scattered about, marking us all as easy guys, likable upscale cowpunks.

  The easiest thing about the easy guy, John Rock said, is that he only wants the best. That would be how one ad for the new truck might read: "I'm an easy guy, I only want the best." Rock thought GMC dealers would be in fine fettle vis a vis the easy upscale cowpunk buyer in that they had a product that was, in his opinion, clearly the best pickup on the market.

  Another thing about the easy guy, Rock said, is that he would like this show, and he'd love the next act: "Ladies and gentlemen, the fabulous Mr. Roy Clark."

  Later, at a booth near the entrance to the dining room, several attractive young women handed out free clothes that the dealers might want to wear at tomorrow's test drive. Members of the automotive press in attendance snapped up the easy-guy gear: leather driving gloves, Levi's jackets lined in something like sheepskin, and 4x Beaver Stetsons. There were parties that night in various private suites—lots of Tanqueray, goblets of Wild Turkey, laughter, and the sound of tinkling ice cubes behind closed doors.

  A few of the dealers, their spouses, and the automotive press in particular looked a bit musty the next morning at six. There were lots of hung-over clones in denim jackets and cowboy hats; it was the dawn of the dead upscale cowpunks. We were bused to a large convention center on the outskirts of Las Vegas. GMC had booked the center's parking lot for a demonstration of its rear-wheel antilock brakes. The parking lot, aimless acres of concrete, had been cordoned off from the general public and was sprayed with a mixture of oil and water. A mechanic disabled the antilock brakes in one of the trucks, and a stunt driver pushed it into the water and oil at top speed. The truck made a sweeping turn and the driver hit the brakes at the apogee of his arc, the point where centrifugal force wanted to send the vehicle spinning out of control. There was a bucking motion, the tires lost their grip in the oily water, and the truck spun off at an odd vector, doing doughnuts and tossing up oily rooster tails in the early-morning desert sun. The falling sheets of water had that vague multicolored rainbow effect characteristic of petroleum products and water.

  The antilock brakes were enabled, the stunt driver powered the truck into the same arc at what appeared to be the same speed, and,

  ROAD FEVER

  at the same point, he hit the brakes and the truck stopped, bam, like that. It wasn't very exciting or colorful, though GMC executives explained that losing the back end of a pickup on a slippery road was the sort of excitement they felt easy guys could do without.

  "We found," a GMC executive told me, "that half the time a guy is going to be driving around without a substantial load in the bed of the truck. It's pretty easy to swap ends that way and these antilocks take care of the problem." He nodded in such a way that I felt obliged to nod back my approval. "These brakes," the man said, "are going to save some lives." We nodded at each other. "Lots of lives." Antilock brakes were right up there with Mother Teresa in this guy's book.

  Later, we all drove to a resort on the slopes of nearby Mount Charleston, where the dealers and the automotive press were given a chance to drive these new trucks over some pretty rough terrain. Shining new Sierra pickups were lined up in the parking lot. I chose a half-ton gasoline-engine vehicle and sent it pounding over one of the rougher off-road courses. The truck had plenty of guts—it was actually fast—and I beat the crap out of it; had it thumping over high-desert moguls in B-movie-chase-scene mode.

  "Uh, Tim . . ."

  My partner and friend, Garry Sowerby, a professional endurance driver, was getting uncomfortable.

  "Tim, tell me what you're doing."

  "Trying to get all four tires off the ground," I explained. "Give this thing a workout."

  We were rocketing down a gravelly wash at perhaps fifty miles an hour. There was a small hillock at the bottom. It sloped upward at a gentle angle and appeared to drop ofTsharply on the far side. Garry was talking reasonably about keeping everybody happy on our upcoming odyssey. The vehicle was actually "somebody," indeed, "she" was the third member of the expedition, and the way we treated "her" would influence "her" attitude toward us. The truck could be our best friend or our worst enemy. The truck deserved respect.

  "They want us to beat these trucks up," I argued. "It's our duty. Like with a rental car."

  We hit the hillock hard and I discovered that the slope was not entirely gentle. Quite suddenly the desert ahead dropped below the hood of the truck so that we were looking at the peaks of various mountains and blue sky beyond. There was a momentary sense of weightlessness, then gravity shanghaied the engine and we found our-

  It's Hot Hot Hot (Boom, Bam, Ka-Pow)

  selves staring down at the desert floor. All this happened very fast. Mountains and sky, then sand and gravel, followed by an instantaneous and walloping jolt. The steering wheel twisted in my hands and we went into a gravel-spitting skid, which I corrected and then lost to the other side. We were careening over the desert floor at various forty-five-degree angles to our actual direction of travel. There were no obvious obstacles in sight and, purely out of curiosity, I hit the brakes full on. Unexpectedly, the truck straightened up and stopped right.

  "Antilock brakes," I commented.

  "We are definitely going to have to have a talk," Garry said mildly.

  It was a pretty good truck, tough on the rough cross-country course and unexpectedly smooth on the road. In the resort dining room, John Rock again spoke to the dealers. He said that GMC would do a lot to promote this truck: it would be a pace car at certain important automobile races, there would be "Easy Guy" television ads emphasizing that the truck was in fact "not just a truck anymore." I wondered what that meant. Was it a boat? An armadillo?

  John Rock assured the dealers of GMC's support. There were television promotions and print ads scheduled—something new for every month. "In September," he said, "Garry Sowerby will drive a virtually stock Sierra truck from Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. That's as far north as you can drive, on the longest road in the world." The trip would be a test of the new Sierra's speed and endurance. "Garry," Rock said, "will set a world speed record for this drive."

  Rock explained that Garry had set a recognized world record for driving a GMC Suburban from the tip of Africa to the most northerly point in Europe. During that trip, Sowerby had been fired on by bandits in northern Kenya. There were some holes in the Suburban but Garry had escaped intact. Sowerby also held the current speed record for driving around the world. It took him seventy-seven days, and Rock neglected to say that he did it in a Volvo sedan.

  "Stand up, Garry."

  There was much applause for Sowerby and his accomplishments. "Garry's codriver is Tim Cahill," Rock said. "Tim's gonna keep Garry out of trouble on this one." There was a smattering of applause and some curious looks. Rock had meant the comment as a joke—no one was going to keep Garry Sowerby out of trouble—but I got the feeling that people suspected I was a dangerous fellow, a bodyguard type, handy with a gun

  and knife. I touched an index finger to the brim of my new Stetson, Gunsmoke style, and surveyed the room with fierce secret-service eyes.

  Back at the Bally, several thousand truck dealers milled about in a hangar-sized room off the dining hall. Various models of the Sierra were on display. Truck dealers, I noticed, actually kicked tires just like ordinary people. Garry and I were on display, available, I guess, for publicity photos. We stood next to a one-ton Sierra painted black and white, with a green map of the Americas, north and south, that covered the entire hood of the vehicle. There was a thick red line pretty much bisecting the map that was
supposed to represent our route on the upcoming Pan-American record run. Our names were painted on both doors. The press and various dealers stopped by and took pictures because that's what they were supposed to do.

  Some of the dealers asked a number of informed questions.

  "What about Nicaragua?"

  "It's a problem."

  "What do you do about the Darien Gap?"

  The gap is an eighty-mile stretch of roadless area extending from northern Colombia into Panama.

  "The rules," Garry told people, "say that we have to drive to the end of the road in Colombia and Panama. We can have the truck shipped, but no airfreighting it."

  "Who makes the rules?"

  "The editors of the Guinness Book of World Records."

  "Why them?"

  "They represent the only credible institution that could certify a new record."

  "What's the old record?"

  "Months."

  "Can you beat it?"

  "Yeah. But there's a guy about to give it a try pretty soon. Some European prince. He's taking six Land-Rovers."

  "Kick his ass."

  One of the dealers asked me what engine we were using.

  "Six-point-two-liter diesel," I said. The guy popped the hood. "What's this?"

  "What?"

  "Gasoline engine in here."

  I stared at a big gleaming hunk of metal for several seconds exactly as if I knew something about automobile engines. Then I bailed out.

  It's Hot Hot Hot (Boom. Bam, Ka-Pow)

  "Garry, tell this guy about the engine."

  "It's a prototype," Garry said. So. It wasn't our truck at all. It was a prototype. Just a Sierra with a special paint job and a gasoline engine inside.

  "Prototype's a gasoline engine," I explained.

  The dealer smiled tolerantly.

  "Garry," I said, "is the mechanic on this team."

  After that I avoided dealers who kept asking pesky technical questions—"size tires you guys using?"—and hung out by the bar with the press and a very credible Marilyn Monroe impersonator.