Yahoo Autos Our Fourth Hudson Quattrocento Road Rally Was a Blast
There are few better ways to spend a week than by rallying down beautiful roads, lined with autumn-kissed leaves, and jumping between race tracks with a group of over a dozen sports cars. How do we know? Because that's how we spent last week, on our fourth Hudson Quattrocento road rally. What a time.
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Guests joined us in New York's Hudson Valley region last Tuesday sporting an impressive fleet of sheet metal. There was a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, two Porsche GT4 RSes, a C8 Corvette Z06, a 992 GT3, and many more drool-worthy rides. All capable machines for our sprint through New York State and Connecticut. Our Road & Track editors led the rally in a McLaren GT, BMW M8 Competition, manual Toyota Supra, and our digital director's personal car, a last-generation BMW M2.
We started our trek with breakfast in Peekskill, New York at The Factoria at Charles Point, a scenic event venue that overlooks the Hudson River. Once all of our guests and their cars rolled into the lot, registered, and settled in, Matt Farah and Mike Guy got things started with opening remarks and a general debrief for the week ahead. After getting all of our guests set up with navigation guidance through the Rallista app, our three road groups set off north toward Wilzig Racing Manor.
If you're unfamiliar with WRM, don't worry. That's most likely because the track isn't for competition or public consumption. It's a privately owned, backyard, Grand Prix-style racing circuit crafted and owned by car collector and former banker Alan Wilzig. It's also any car enthusiast's fever dream.
Since it's not open to the public, if you're not, well, Alan Wilzig, driving on WRM is an extremely rare opportunity. This year, our guests got to join that highly exclusive group who've had the experience.
We also got to tour the rest of Wilzig's 50-acre property and car and motorcycle collection. Impressive is an understatement.
From there, we transited through backroads, across the Hudson River, to our evening digs, Inness in Accord, New York. There, we wrapped the day with a cocktail hour, dinner, and a watch discussion hosted by Farah and our partners at Richard Mille. Our Richard Mille friends also brought along their $128,000 RM 67-01 Titanium model for our guests to test drive.
The next day, it was off to Lime Rock Park for a full track day experience. Once at the track, our guests got an intro track safety briefing by Lime Rock's driving instructors, and split up between on-track driving and autocross laps. Our editors were also doing some hot lap ridealongs by request.
Our partners from McLaren were also on hand offering test drives in their 720S, 620R, and the GT.
Once all the lapping on the big track was completed, we met up on the autocross for one final timed competition. Using a modified NC Miata, our guests and staff split up into two teams to see who could collectively lap the autocross quickest. Intense, glorious fun.
After Lime Rock, we headed back across the state line to our next hotel, Scribner's Catskill Lodge in Hunter, New York. After another cocktail hour and dinner, we were treated to a captivating fireside chat between editor-at-large A.J. Baime and IMSA champion and Indy 500 rookie-of-the-year Randy Lanier.
For those of you who don't know his story, Lanier, at the top of his racing career in 1988, was hit with a life sentence without the possibility of parole for trafficking more than 300 tons of marijuana from Columbia to the U.S. The chat, which revolved around Randy's life story, racing career, experience while incarcerated, and charitable work, was beyond moving.
From Scribner's we were off to Saratoga Springs. But, we had a few stops to make on the way. After starting the morning with a hike to Kaaterskill Falls, we pushed on to Woodstock for lunch at Dixon Roadside. From there, we shot north on the country roads to our next evening's accommodations, the Adelphi Hotel.
To wrap our excellent week of performance car excitement, we took a morning tour of the Saratoga Auto Museum and its special Bond in Motion exhibit. Featuring real, on-camera picture cars, the exhibit was packed with favorites from the famed spy movie series. There are very few places where you can get up close and personal with an Aston Martin DB10, a car that, well, never really existed. Also, it looks much wider in person.
Overall, we had a ton of fun hanging out and getting to know our guests, in addition to spending time with an amazing group of cars. Don't miss our next one.
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