Day 1, September 18, 2014, Albuquerque to Hugoton, KS

Hello friends:

Ken Murphy and Bill Sullivan get loaded and locked.

This is a short blog to document our progress driving a 1937 LaSalle from Albuquerque to Defiance, OH for the AAA Glidden Tour.  Glidden Tours are a long touring tradition for pre-war cars.  This is the 69th consecutive Glidden tour, check here for some Glidden Tour History.

This year's tour is centered around Defiance, Ohio.  This is a small town about 1450 miles from Albuquerque.  I am driving this tour with Ken Murphy,  an old friend and antique car enthusiast from New Mexico.

We have a relatively unproven car for this tour.  It is a lovely 1937 LaSalle convertible coupe that I have been working on for about 15 years.  She has been off the road since about 1963.  She has been mechanically and cosmetically rebuilt since I acquired her in 1998.  This is an amateur restoration, but I received plenty of help from friends and experts around Albuquerque.  The car is fairly up to date, with a big 346 cubic inch flathead V8 engine and decent hydraulic brakes.  We drive her around 60 mph or less.  She can go much faster, but we don't like to stress that old metal any more than necessary.



Yes, folks, some of Kansas is definitely on the flat side.

As I said, the LaSalle has been off the road since 1963.  We did drive the car a few weeks ago from Albuquerque to Fort Collins, CO for a regional tour.  This 1400 mile trip had a few problems.  But I felt the car was ready to make this much longer trip to Ohio.  Time will tell.

We left about 10 AM from Ken's house headed NE to Clayton, NM, the Oklahoma panhandle and finally to Hugoton, KS.  This was a great cruise for us, there were absolutely no problems today.  Of course, the LaSalle guzzled about 11 mpg.  We managed 392 miles, not bad for an opening day.  Only a bit over a thousand miles left to Defiance. 

At dusk, we found a nice clean mom and pop hotel in Hugoton and a good restaurant.  So that's all for today.  I will try to blog a bit each day, so keep tuned.  Meanwhile, have a great day and we will try to do the same.

Bill from Hugoton, KS.