Smoky Mountain Tour Location Update: We Choo-Choo-Choose Chattanooga!
Say Hello to the 2025 Classic Motorsports Road Tours Schedule!
A Taste of What's To Come on The Bluegrass Tour
We just got back from a trip to Kentucky to put the finishing touches on our Bluegrass Tour. If you thought last year was great, this year’s tour will knock your socks off.
To start the week off right, we have been invited to lunch and a private tour of an incredible Ferrari collection near Louisville. The drive to the collection is one of the best we have put together on any of our tours. On the way back from the collection, we’ll stop at the historic Buffalo Trace distillery for a tour and tasting.
For the second day of the tour, we’ll visit My Old Kentucky Home, where we have been welcomed onto the lawn for a group photo shoot in front of this historic landmark. After a mint julep mixology masterclass and some lunch on the property, we’ll head to a world-famous distillery for what is perhaps the best tour on the bourbon trail.
On day three, we’ll visit Lane’s End Farm, one of the world’s premier Thoroughbred farms, and follow that up with lunch at one of Lexington’s best restaurants: the OBC Kitchen. From there, we’ll travel to another private collection and then on to Keeneland where we can catch some horse racing.
For our last day on the tour, we’ve planned some route along one of our favorite roads in the country: The Ridge Runner. Lunch at the Natural Bridge State Resort Park and then a run through Red River Gorge await us that afternoon. Don’t forget your camera: this is the day to capture some truly stunning landscapes.
More surprises await, and if you have been thinking of joining us, now is the time. There are only two spots left on the 2024 Bluegrass Tour, and after this year we’re putting this tour in the metaphorical Classic Motorsports Road Tours Vault while we bring back our Smoky Mountain Tour for 2025.
Preparing for the Empire State Tour and the Bluegrass Tour
Heading up to the Finger Lakes
We’ve just wrapped up putting the finishing touches on our sold-out inaugural Empire State Tour. Highlights of this tour will include opportunities to drive on both the current Watkins Glen track and the historic road course, a trip to the Northeast Classic Automobile Museum, and a visit to the Corning Museum of Glass.
And of course no trip to the Finger Lakes is complete without driving routes along the beautiful lake shores and taking in the beauty of the region’s famous waterfalls - two things we’ll be doing plenty of.
A Few Spots Remain on the Bluegrass Tour - Will You Claim One?
Next up after the Empire State Tour will be our Bluegrass Tour through the backroads of Kentucky.
Due to the intimate nature of our historic host hotel, we have decided to reduce the maximum number of cars we take on this tour to 20. As of this writing, we still have a couple of spots remaining on this tour.
This tour is truly one of our staff favorites. It combines near-peak fall foliage and unexpected scenery with virtually no traffic to make four days of unique driving. When we head east out of Berea KY, our home base, we are instantly in the Appalachian Mountains, and the driving rivals anything we’ve seen in North Carolina on the Smoky Mountain Tour. We also head west into bourbon country and experience the topographical feature known as “the knobs”. While not as intense as full-on mountain driving, the Bluegrass Tour driving experience thrilled our guests last year.
If you have never been to this area before, we can’t recommend it highly enough, and we hope you’ll let us show you everything there is to enjoy in Kentucky. Last year‘s guests told us it was perhaps our best itinerary yet.
Classic Motorsports Road Tours Schedule Set for 2025
We’re happy to announce that we have our schedule set for 2025. Regular participants will notice that while we have been putting on three tours each year; we have been rotating around to different locations to keep things fresh and interesting for repeat guests. View the full schedule of upcoming events here. All tour dates and locations are subject to change.
All-New Orange Blossom Tour - March 9-14, 2025
First up on the roster, we have an entirely new east-coast-based Orange Blossom Tour. For 2025, instead of leading into the Amelia Island Concours weekend like we usually do, we’ll be immediately following it.
We have inked a deal with the Hilton Daytona Beach Oceanfront, the nicest resort on the World’s Most Famous Beach. We are making arrangements to drive on the track at Daytona International Speedway, and we will be visiting several Old Florida treats like the original Marineland and The Alligator Farm in St. Augustine. We will also visit the Brumos Collection and other collections we have never been to before.
If you enjoy the beach, racing history, good food and great weather, this will be the tour for you. The resort is less than two hours from the Amelia Island Concours. Click Here to Register.
The Smoky Mountain Tour Returns - June 8-13, 2025
We will once again be returning to Asheville, NC for our ever-popular Smoky Mountain Tour. We have found new collections , roads and attractions to make this tour fresh and different from previous years.
The Empire State Tour Will Also Make a Comeback - Dates TBA
We are also planning to bring back the Empire State Tour in late summer or fall of 2025. Dates will be announced soon after the completion of this year’s inaugural Empire State Tour, so stay tuned for updates!
Gauging Interest: A Possible New Tour in the Florida Panhandle
We have been exploring the Forgotten Coast of Florida and the incredible history and roads of southern Georgia. We have found cool car collections, amazing beaches and some of the best seafood we have ever eaten. We feel we could put on a fantastic tour out of Apalachicola, as the historic Gibson Hotel is a stellar property that is walking distance from great bars and restaurants. The time frame would be April-May in 2026, depending on interest level. The weather is perfect that time of the year, and the summer crowds will have not yet arrived.
Please drop me an email if you are interested: Tim@classicmotorsports.com
State of the Tours: What's Coming Up in 2024 & 2025
The Orange Blossom Tour Is Ready to roll
With our 2024 Orange Blossom Tour just a few weeks from now, we have all our details squared away and we’re looking forward to getting together with friends new and old. Our tour is maxed out and our list includes a lot of older cars, so we’ve brought in long-time friend Tom Prescott as our riding mechanic; he has helped us with so many of our project cars over the years. Click here for a sneak peek at where we’re going.
The Empire State Tour is getting its finishing touches
When the weather warms up a bit more, our team will travel back to the Finger Lakes region of New York to put the finishing touches on our all-new Empire State Tour. We love this area and thoroughly enjoy spending time in it. We still have a couple of spots left on the Empire State Tour if you want to join us this July for this spectacular journey through one of the prettiest areas in the country.
the Bluegrass Tour will Be Even More Exclusive this year
While we loved the last year’s back-to-back Bluegrass Tours, we’ve decided to make this year’s event more intimate and exclusive, and to do so we will limit this tour to just 20 couples for 2024. While those 20 spots are already mostly taken, you can still check our website to reserve a place or join the waitlist for this amazing tour of horse and bourbon country. This tour takes place October 6-11, when fall foliage begins to hit its peak.
Image: The Terrace Hotel Lakeland
Orange Blossom Tour 2025 Preliminary Plan Is Complete
As we plan for the imminent 2024 Orange Blossom Tour, our team has also just finished a scouting trip for our 2025 Orange Blossom Tour. This one will be almost all brand-new as we move south into true citrus country. We plan on establishing our hub for this tour in Lakeland, Florida, at the Terrace Hotel Lakeland.
Planned highlights include a visit to historic Sebring International Raceway, Bok Tower Gardens, a private muscle car museum in Melbourne, and the Workman collection near Orlando. We’re also planning to visit the Tampa Bay Automobile Museum and Tarpon Springs, where we’ll learn about sponge diving. Registration for this 2025 tour will open March 1st at the conclusion of the 2024 Orange Blossom Tour.
Other Tours for 2025
We are bringing back our Smoky Mountain Tour for 2025! The dates will be in early June of 2025, and we’re thinking about another all-new tour to the Chattanooga area. Highlights will include a visit to the Savoy Automobile Museum, a new car museum in nearby Cartersville, Georgia, as well as stops at the Jack Daniels Distillery, the Lane Museum and the Grand Ole Opry.
Our final tour of 2025 will be our Empire State Tour, to be held in mid-July. More details to come after the conclusion of this year’s Empire State Tour.
All of our tours will sell out this year, so plan now for next year. Details are at ClassicMotorsportsRoadTours.com and will be provided in these email updates as well.
Classic Motorsports Road Tours are presented by Sunoco in association with Chubb.
Gearing Up for the 2024 Orange Blossom Tour
We have just completed the pre-running of our 2024 Orange Blossom Tour, which will be held February 25th-29th. It never ceases to amaze us how every year we manage to find more miles of great roads and cool things to check out.
Just added for 2024 is a trip back to The Citrus Tower in Clermont. We have not been back to this now-nicely-renovated landmark since our inaugural Orange Blossom Tour back in 2010. Situated in one of the hilliest parts of the state, the tower is 226 feet tall and is the highest observation tower in Florida. It was constructed in 1956, making it a true old Florida gem. It rises above the orange groves and lake Minneola and offers vistas of the Orlando skyline as well as a 35-mile panoramic view of central Florida.
Other highlights this year include a trip to Lakeland and Florida Southern College, home of one of the largest collections of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture. We are also planning on visiting private car collections, and Blue Springs where we will look for manatees and alligators on a private boat ride.
We still have a couple of spots left if you want to join in. Registration closes on February 1st, so act fast!
Classic Motorsports Road Tours are presented by Sunoco in association with Chubb.
Tour Recap: The Inaugural Bluegrass Tour
The chance to drive your favorite classic through the rolling hills of Kentucky–the land of bourbon, bluegrass, thoroughbred racing and finger-licking-good fried chicken? That’s the whole idea behind our all-new Classic Motorsports Bluegrass Tour.
This brand-new tour proved so popular, in fact, that we had to run two separate waves, with the first wave kicking off on October 8, and the second wave running the following week starting on October 15.
On the first day of our Bluegrass Tour, we welcomed our participants at their home-away-from-home for the week, the historic Boone Tavern Hotel in Berea, Kentucky.
Once everyone had the chance to unpack, settle in and freshen up, we headed to Churchill‘s Honeysuckle Dining and Bourbon House for a bourbon tasting and dinner.
Monday marked the first day of driving on each wave of the tour, starting off from the Historic Boone Tavern Hotel and heading towards Bardstown, the historic home of bourbon making.
Once there, tour guests were treated to an inside look at the bourbon-making process at the Heaven Hill Distillery–and the chance to taste a few samples, too.
Then, it was a short stint into downtown Bardstown where we met at the Old Talbott Tavern for lunch. In operation since 1779, the historic tavern has hosted just about everyone, from rough frontiersmen to generals and even a few statesmen.
After that, we stopped for a visit at the Maker’s Mark Distillery, where guests were treated to a tour of the grounds that offered insight into the art and history of bourbon making, plus a tasting before heading back to our home away from home, the Historic Boone Tavern Hotel in Berea.
Tuesday morning of each wave of the tour started out by heading southeast into the Appalachian Mountains, taking in the mountain roads before arriving at the first stop of the day, the Flat Lick Falls Scenic and Recreation Area and the virtually unknown waterfall, Flat Lick Falls.
After that, the tour headed through the Red River Gorge for a private lunch at the Hemlock Lodge at the Natural Bridge State Resort Park, followed by the opportunity to ride the skylift to the top of the Natural Bridge to take in the spectacular views and foliage.
Before heading back into Berea for another fantastic dinner at Churchill‘s Honeysuckle Dining and Bourbon House, tour-goers were treated to the opportunity to drive Route 587, better known as the “Ridge Runner.”
Wednesday on each wave focused on horse country, with tour guests getting a private tour of a stud farm and getting insight into thoroughbred horse racing.
Then, we headed to the Holly Hill Inn for a lunch full of sophisticated takes on Southern favorites. Owner Ouita Michel is a multi-time James Beard Award nominee.
After lunch, our guests got to partake in one of our favorite Classic Motorsport Road Tour activities, exploring a private automotive collection. This collection belongs to Tom Jones, chair of the Keeneland Concours d’Elegance.
To cap off the day, we let the tour participants choose their own adventure for the afternoon and dinner.
Thursday on each wave of the tour marked the last full day of driving before parting ways–but that didn’t mean we kept the festivities light.
The first leg of the day’s travels offered tour guests a lovely drive through the local scenery on their way to Cumberland Falls State Resort Park Visitors Center, home of the 68-foot tall, 125-foot wide Cumberland Falls.
After taking in the splendor, we headed into the town of Corbin to dine at the original Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant location, the Harland Sander’s Café and museum. In addition to a delicious lunch of famous fried chicken, participants also got to learn about the history of KFC and Colonel Sanders.
Then it was back to Historic Boone Tavern Hotel for a chance to clean up before a final dinner and a live show at the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame.
The following Friday morning, Bluegrass Tour participants enjoyed one final breakfast at the Boone Tavern before going their separate ways.
Thank you to everyone who participated in our first-ever Classic Motorsports Road Tours Bluegrass Tour!
If this tour looks like a great time to you, consider joining us on the 2024 Bluegrass Tour.