Look good. Have fun. Safety Third.
Rally Around the Ivy League
Once a year we will do a fabulous four-day fundraiser, and everyone, whether they're associated with the Academy or not, is invited to participate.
The assignment is easy: have fun driving your vintage automobile on a classic 1,000 mile rally through scenic New England, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania visiting en route each of the eight most prestigious and gorgeous universities on the planet.
We'll start from the Academy in Newport, RI and then on to Brown, Harvard, and Dartmouth (201 miles). Second day is Dartmouth to Cornell (297 miles). Third day is Cornell to U. Penn (230 miles). Fourth day is U.Penn, Princeton, Columbia, Yale, and then back around to finish at the Academy (271 miles).
The only qualification is: your car has to be as old as your graduation year, or twenty-five minimum. You don't have to be a student at the Academy, or an Ivy Leaguer. We think this is a fantastic way to celebrate a friendly spirit of competition, both on an individual, and university level:
Brown can sponsor a car to race against Harvard. Our buddies at West Point can challenge the Naval Academy. Stanford might want to enter a self-driving car and see if it can beat all the humans. Big Green vs Big Red.
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A breast cancer charity can paint an old VW pink and race for a cure. Sponsorships can be by the mile (or for a specific car), and spectators can follow the rally in real-time with a tracking app like Glympse. Local car clubs, vocational schools, as well as well-known brands are all welcome to bring their retro-heaps and see what it's like to live a stick-shift, top-down life for a few days.
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Keep in mind this is not in any way, shape or form a "race" but is what is called a GTA (Game-Tour-Adventure) Rally, where the whole point is just to have fun. Um, not. There will be a lot of oneupmanship and jockeying for position going on, for sure. Redemption for that D- in chemistry, perhaps? A little fast-and-loose bending of the rules to gain an edge? Exactly. Which is why the unofficial motto of the tour is: Look good. Have fun. Safety third.
Seriously, originality and creativity will be the name of the game–daily challenges will sprinkle in some cheek and humor: take a picture in front of your freshman dorm room and get extra points. At the start of a leg we can tell you to rotate your tires before the end of the race day to receive a bonus. Who's the only Ivy Leaguer picked first in the NFL draft? Solve this equation, (Ba + 2Na = ) first and you might win a free bottle of champagne.
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Included in the rally will be a morning of flat-out fun at Canaan Raceway outside of Dartmouth, a timed hillclimb at Mt. Equinox in Vermont, and an Official Auto Cross in Ithaca sponsored by the Sports Car Club of America.
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Live the dream.*
So let's enjoy a cool, quixotic adventure together – a fantastic vroom with a view; a lifetime of top-drawer memories; awesome food and (plenty to) drink, as well as meeting tons of interested and interesting people along the way. We'll surely experience some minor mechanical problems that'll add just the right amount of authenticity and spice to the sauce, all while raising money for a good cause(s).
We'll have an awards ceremony upon our triumphant return, where we'll auction a car (or two) to the highest bidder, give out prizes for best costume, quirkiest couple, trophies for first (and last) across the finish line, etc. so that everyone will go home a winner.
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*If you would like to enter a car (or sponsor one) in the rally we'd love to have you along for the ride. The cost is an all-inclusive $5,000.
Please see our Donations Page for more details.
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Velocitas! Velocitas!
We also have our very own fight song, written by the multi-talented Fernando Alva Miras, who was actually the first person to sign up for the first OCT way back in 2016. Here are the lyrics:
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Oooh, ooooh, ooooooooooh,
Oooh, ooooh, ooooooooooh.
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Old’s Cool, Old’s Cool, Old’s Cool,
These hallowed pistons reign,
With honor, pride, fame,
A oneupmanship game,
Old’s Cool, Old’s Cool, Old’s Cool.
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Oooh, ooooh, ooooooooooh,
Oooh, ooooh, ooooooooooh.​
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"I consider myself a road man for the lords of karma."
– Hunter S. Thompson
If you would like to enter, a car in the rally (or sponsor one) the cost is an all-inclusive $5,000.
1,000 miles looking like 1,000,000 bucks.
We made it!
A heartfelt thanks to the kind patrons who donated to the 10th Annual Old's Cool Tour – Rally Around The Ivy League, which was a huge success since we actually completed the whole shebang this time without a tow truck in sight...
We had two cars and a motorcycle this year – a 1978 Fiat Spider, pictured above and a 2000 BMW E46 generously donated by the Charlie Dedekind Family. We were also joined on the Columbia – Yale leg by Peter Stack, who was riding a devilish 900 Ducati Diavel in matte black. He took us on a personal tour down memory lane of his hilarious time as an Eli at that glorious (and our favorite) university.
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To give you a bit of the flavor of the (mis)adventure:
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Wertin and I had just crossed the Pocono Mountains on our way from Cornell (which if you've never been is essentially north of Canada) to U. Penn in the pouring rain and were coming down into the valley near Macungie when we smelled gasoline. We pulled into a tiny service station and sure enough a hack repair I had made on the dented tank before the trip had become a weeping leak. I jury rigged another laughable fix with some J-B Weld tank putty I had in the glove box. I figured as long as we kept driving the fumes would dissipate and the threat of explosion and instant death was then only probably around 50/50, depending on our speed of course – the faster the safer.
So we decided not to stop at red lights or intersections for the rest of the way home.
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I'm kidding. Wertin went in to get a coffee and I was standing there shivering, trying to assemble a day-old loaf of french bread, some sliced deli ham, and a wheel of brie somehow into a sandwich with numb hands on the trunk while boiling some hot water for tea in my canteen cup using an ancient G.I. Camp Stove I had bought on Craigslist for a buck three-eighty that looked like it had survived the Battle of the Bulge when a very concerned older woman came up to me, and this is verbatim:
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"Young man, aren't you cold?"
"No, ma'am. I'm frozen."
"Why don't you put the top up?"
"Huh? What do you mean?"
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