Location Scouting for the 2024 Empire State Tour

We’ve just returned from our location scouting mission for the Empire State Tour, and we’re happy to report that we found almost too many great locations for just one tour.

The finger lakes area of New York features a stunning array of natural wonders, historic racing heritage, bucolic scenery and manufacturing legacy, all of which will be on display during this Ithaca-based adventure.

Bully Hil Vineyards overlooking Keuka Lake

First up on our scouting list were a series of waterfalls. Photos simply don’t do them justice, but we guarantee Ithaca Falls and Taughannock Falls will leave you oohing and ahhing. And with the Empire State Tour scheduled for mid-July, Mother Nature will be out in all her summer finery for us to enjoy. Wildflowers, verdant leaves and cool, clear mountain water will abound.

Ithaca Falls

But what’s a Classic Motorsports Road Tour without some exclusive access to motorsports history?

As part of our scouting, we paid a visit to our friends at the International Motor Racing Research Center, an institute dedicated to collecting and preserving motorsports media and history. Their archives are truly impressive, and their location in Watkins Glen hints at other adventures we have planned for you…

A peek inside the International Motor Racing Research Center in Watkins Glen

In terms of exploring the finger lakes area’s manufacturing history, we have a handful of museum visits planned that we’re very excited to share with you. These include the Corning Museum of Glass, a massive complex dedicated to the art, science and craft of glasswork, the Northeast Classic Car Museum, an ode to the region’s proud legacy of car production, and the Curtiss Museum, a tribute to the Wright Brothers’ rival whose story you’ve probably never heard before.

This is just a small taste of everything we have planned for the Empire State Tour next summer - stay tuned for more updates as we announce more exciting additions.

We’re still accepting registrations for the Empire State Tour, but this tour is filling up fast. Claim your spot today to make sure you don’t miss it!

From the Smoky Mountains to Bluegrass Country and Beyond

Last month we ran our 2023 Smoky Mountain Tour. The switch to basing in Asheville, NC provided a more cosmopolitan feel than previous years, with fantastic dining within walking distance of our host hotel and nearly-instant access to fantastic roads including the legendary Blue Ridge Parkway.

Guests were thrilled with lunch stops in Lake Lure, BMW’s Performance center, Little Switzerland and Maggie Valley, and the route we created from Little Switzerland to Hot Springs was truly world class. We also got to experience Chimney Rock Park, home of the famous hill climb, as well as a scenic boat ride on Lake Lure.

With the Smoky Mountain Tour all wrapped up, it was time to head north to Kentucky and finish working on routes and details for our upcoming Bluegrass Tours. We assumed the roads there could not match those of Western North Carolina.

We were wrong.

With the help of the folks at Backroads of Appalachia, we found roads in Kentucky that easily rivaled what we had found further south. You’ll have to see them for yourself to believe them.

With stops at distilleries, horse farms, Cumberland Falls, a truly unique car collection in Lexington and some other amazing sites, this tour is shaping up to potentially eclipse what we accomplished on our Smoky Mountain Tour.

One of the planned stops for our Bluegrass Tour this year: the Maker’s Mark distillery

For 2024, we’re planning three tours. Our always-popular Orange Blossom Tour will kick off the festivities for the Amelia in late February. This tour will be based at our most popular venue, the Mission Inn Resort & Club, and will visit many fan-favorite central Florida roads and sights. As always, we add new and different roads and attractions every year, but this one will touch on a lot of our greatest hits to make it a fantastic tour for newcomers and repeat guests alike.

The Smoky Mountain Tour will take a hiatus for 2024, but don’t worry: we’ll bring it back even better in 2025.

In July of 2024, we’ll host our first-ever Empire State Tour in the Finger Lakes region of New York. So far, planned attractions include track time at Watkins Glen and driving the old street route there, as well as museums, waterfalls, and a visit to the Corning Glass Works. This tour will be based in downtown Ithaca, NY.

And finally, in October we will once again host our Bluegrass Tour at the Boone Tavern near Lexington.

With the post-pandemic travel frenzy seeing no sign of subsiding, our 2024 tours are already nearly half full. When we announce our schedule to the public next month, they are sure to all sell out. Our Orange Blossom and Empire State Tours are filling up the fastest.

Save yourself a spot, check out itineraries, timing and pricing:

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