AutoGuide Answers: What Car Thing Do You Want to Do Before You Die?

My bucket list item would be to run a vehicle up the hill at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Easily the best collection of legendary machinery both past and present, the Goodwood Festival of Speed is a car lover’s dream. Not only is there a massive array of iconic, rare and expensive cars on display, but they’re actually driven at speed up the hill climb course.

To be able to pilot something up the same hill that has seen nearly every historic F1, rally and supercar would be immense. Even if all I was trusted with was a golf cart, that would still be massively insane.

I want to buy a derelict old car and restore it before taking it on a long road trip. The thing is, I can’t wrench at all, so this will be a long, stressful experience that I’m sure will be filled with frustrated late nights, blood, sweat and maybe even some tears. The dream find would be an old BMW 2002 Tii that I can restore to its former glory, but I’d be happy with even a Chevy Bel Air or some other vintage American car from the 1950s or ’60s. I’ll have to learn to wrench and find somebody who is skillful and might be patient enough to teach me …. Hi, Craig Cole!

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Of all the things I’d like to do, there’s just one that stands above the rest.

I want to retrace Route 66 in a vintage car, stitching together the fractured remnants of this hallowed asphalt ribbon. Often referred to as the “mother road,” it was America’s most iconic thoroughfare for decades until the interstate highway ultimately put it out of business in the 1980s.

And what a drive this would be! Route 66 runs all the way from Chicago, Illinois, to the Golden State, where it dumps you into the Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica’s famous pier, a distance of nearly 2,500 miles spread across eight of our united states. What could be cooler than retracing this famous highway, checking out historical attractions along the way, digesting the miles with a side-valve V8 pushing you ever closer to the horizon? Nothing, that’s what.

I’d like to do an all-electric road trip across the nation. I don’t care if it’s in a Model S, or a BMW i3 or even a Nissan Leaf, I just want to take the trip, and it’s not out of some “raising-awareness-for-green-cars” mentality either.

See, with how fuel efficient cars have become, I feel like I don’t stop and take in my surroundings when taking a road trip. Instead, I just spend five minutes after 500 miles to fill up a car and then I’m onto the highway again to the next fill up. Electric cars need much more than just five minutes to charge and during that time, I can be a tourist and learn more and explore a city on foot. Or I could take in the local eats. Or hit the dancefloor with my dance shoes. Basically, it’s a recess for the trip. It might take a long time, but sometimes the longer route is the best one.

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After laying eyes on those goliath trucks hurtling through the endless desert at top speed as a kid, I knew that it’s something I needed to do. Racing a T4-class truck at the Dakar rally is the epitome of my automotive dreams, combining my love for speed, off-road racing and driving massive vehicles.

Weighing at least 7,716 lbs, there is nothing more amazing than the sheer power such a big vehicle has. And there is something about the unpredictability of off-road racing, especially somewhere as wild as South America, that has always drawn me in.

Sign me up!