Great Race celebration kicks off in Buffalo
Motor oil courses through Steve Rinaldo’s veins, but as a youngster in Jamestown he had only the vaguest notion of Buffalo’s place in automotive history.
There were more Detroit-made Packards than Buffalo-born Pierce Arrows and Thomas Flyers on the streets of his hometown, which he attributes to members of the Packard family. They were easy to spot riding around in their brand when they came from Ohio to spend summers on Chautauqua Lake.
And Packards were what Rinaldo’s father, from whom he inherited the car restoration gene, seemed to spend most of his time working on.
So there was much for Rinaldo to absorb from the driver’s seat of his glistening 1930 Ford Model A Tudor Sedan on Friday as he and about two dozen other antique car buffs drove back in time on a tour celebrating the centennial of the Great Race, the legendary New York-to-Paris automobile race of 1908.
Friday’s automotive parade, organized by James T. Sandoro, president of the Buffalo Transportation/Pierce Arrow Museum, set out from the museum parking lot at Seneca Street and Michigan Avenue at half past noon.
It wound through downtown streets to Court Street, where the restored vehicles moved south on the Metro Rail line past One M&T Plaza and on to Erie Basin Marina for grilled hot dogs and hamburgers.
After lunch, drivers and passengers — many in period dress — got back in their cars and motored up Niagara Street to the site of the former E. R. Thomas Motor Car plant in the Rich Products complex. The procession passed the Pierce Arrow Motor Car plant on Elmwood Avenue, paid respects at the graves of Erwin R. Thomas and George N. Pierce in Forest Lawn and paused outside Frank Lloyd Wright’s restored Darwin Martin House Complex before returning to the museum.
Rinaldo, who drove from Georgia with his wife, Brenda, has restored five antique cars besides the Model A, which has a deep blue body, black fenders and red wheel hubs and a matching thin red pinstripe just below the cab’s side windows.
“Keeping them running is a full-time job,” he said.
Rinaldo, 61, who has spent his career in the auto industry, knew before trailering the Model A north from his current home in Marietta, Ga., that George N. Schuster won the Great Race at the wheel of a Thomas Flyer. Jeff Mahl made sure of that.
A Springville resident and Schuster’s great-grandson, Mahl frequently calls in to the weekly radio program for hobbyists that Rinaldo hosts on a suburban Atlanta radio station.
During one broadcast, Mahl, who wrote “The Great Automobile Race” about the epic 22,000-mile endurance contest, made a deal with Rinaldo: If you come to Buffalo for the 100th anniversary of the Great Race, I’ll come to Chattanooga, Tenn., for the tour of 1915-vintage- and-older cars you’re hosting this fall.
Rinaldo, who has been an engineer and service trainer for various companies since serving in Vietnam and graduating from Oswego State College, has no regrets about working for Hyundai Motor Co., a South Korean manufacturer that is on the rise as U. S. carmakers struggle to save their dwindling market share.
“The industry is universal,” he said, noting that more Toyota parts are made in the U. S. than in Japan. He predicted Detroit will survive the current economic downturn and thrive again in the future.
“They just have to learn to adapt to changing times a little better,” he said.
The Great Race centennial continued with a free car show and a buffet dinner at the Transportation Museum.
Festivities continue today in Springville with a car parade, the dedication of a historic marker, a car show, a screening of the 1965 film “The Great Race” in Joylan Theater, a chicken barbecue dinner and Schuster performing as his great-grandfather in “Recollections of a Winner” at Springville High School.
