History on wheels: Awesome Brass Car Tour visits Columbus
A caravan of pre-1915 cars stopped Monday in Columbus to visit a unique repository of local history, and grab a cold RC Cola before continuing on their five-day tour around the Chattahoochee Valley.
The Awesome Brass Car Tour visited the Columbus Collective Museums, 3218 Hamilton Road, home of the Lunch Box Museum, a car museum of classic and rare vehicles, and more.
Tour participant Kenny Wright of Fayetteville, Georgia, said the all-brass cars on the tour date to 1915 or before, with the oldest on this tour from 1908.
“They’re fun cars to drive,” Wright said, “They’re not hard to work on. You don’t have computers and chips and all the stuff you do on a modern car. So basically, if you’ve got a pair of pliers, a straight-blade screwdriver, some duct tape, you can pretty well go where you need to go.”
Wright said this year’s participants come from as far west as Oklahoma, as far north as Maine and as far east as the Netherlands.
“We actually have five folks that are riding with us that came across the pond to come be with us, so we’ve got a good crowd,” he said.
John Rendemonti and his wife, Joyce, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, are touring in their 1912 Franklin. Built in Syracuse, New York, by the Franklin Automobile Company, Franklins were famous for advanced, direct air-cooled engines and lightweight construction.
Rendemonti said tour participants are members of the Horseless Carriage Club of America, and this is a hub tour based at Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia.
“We all stay at the hub, and every day is a different spoke, so we’re a five-spoke wheel, so to speak,” he said, “Today is one of them, and we have four more to go, and we all pack our cars up in a box, put them behind our trucks and take them home.”
Monday’s tour was 100 miles. Other day trips vary in mileage and include stops around the Chattahoochee Valley, including LaGrange, Warm Springs and West Point.
Rendemonti said the overcast weather, light traffic and rural roads between Callaway and Columbus were a welcomed change.
“One hundred miles in a brass car in the Northeast is almost impossible to enjoy,” he said. “Down here, it’s nothing because we’re just floating the whole time.”
Rendemonti likened the trip to being on a magic carpet.
“This touring area is blessed,” he said “It is a paradise for touring.”
