Goodbye Routebooks: Announcing a Navigation Innovation by Classic Motorsports Road Tours

Over the past decade of hosting Classic Motorsports Road Tours, we’ve worked hard to live up to our slogan: You Drive, We Handle the Details. And every tour we handle more of the details, refining our routes, hotels, meals, activities and more in pursuit of the perfect driving vacation.

But there’s always been a thorn in our side, a detail we just couldn’t handle: Navigation. Our road tours, like every other, required participants to follow our curated routes using a paper route book and their car’s odometer. Sure, it could be a rewarding challenge to be conquered by participants, but we couldn’t shake the feeling that acting as a full-time navigator was a detail that we should handle—if only we could.

So while we hosted tours with paper route books, in the background we experimented. We tried alternative map and direction formatting, additional lead cars, simplified routes, more stops, fewer stops, and even a plethora of smartphone apps that guaranteed to finally solve the problem. Even when we thought we’d finally found a solution, we were stymied: Participants in our 2023 Orange Blossom Tour were invited to test out a smartphone app alongside our traditional route books, but it didn’t work as advertised: A reliance on participants’ phones and a constant data connection proved to be insurmountable challenges for smartphone app-based navigation.

What we really needed was a magical device to handle navigation for our participants. It couldn’t rely on a smartphone’s minuscule screen or finite battery life. It couldn’t require a data connection. It couldn’t require any updates, downloads or maintenance. It needed to be easily installed into any car. And it needed to steadfastly adhere to our curated routes, as a navigation tool that kept suggesting the interstates would defeat the entire point of our tours.

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve finally solved the puzzle and developed this magical device: Starting with our 2023 Smoky Mountain Tour, participants will no longer be asked to navigate with a list of directions and an odometer. Instead, they’ll each receive a Classic Motorsports Road Tours GPS Navigator to use for the duration of the tour. Essentially a Garmin GPS that’s received a lobotomy, the GPS Navigator spends every minute focusing on our curated routes, so you can spend every minute focusing on your vacation. After all, our slogan is simple: You Drive, We Handle the Details. We’re thrilled to finally handle this one.

Powering the GPS Navigator

The Classic Motorsports Road Tours GPS Navigator requires power to operate, so we’ll have the following of options available at registration:

12V adapter for use with standard cigarette lighter ports

USB-A cable for use with standard USB ports

6V adapter for use with 6V cigarette lighter ports

Portable battery pack to run the GPS all day without vehicle power