A group of 10 Lawrence high school students will embark on a 4,000-mile trip across the country in a dusty-rose-colored 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air.

Two Harleys and a 60-foot blue, white and yellow “Partridge family” bus-turned-camper towing an empty trailer won’t be far behind.

The Lawrence High School Auto Club, made up of LHS students and several rogue Free State High School students, spent three months tuning and priming the car, donated by the club’s sponsor, for competition in a national race for cars at least 45 years old.

The nine boys and one girl will compete for $10,000 in scholarships in the Great Race’s X Cup, a division for students and amateur racers.

In all, about 120 antique autos will drive the route that begins June 19 in Jacksonville, Fla., loops up toward Kansas and ends July 3 in Monterey, Calif.

The Lawrence club is one of only three entrants in the amateur division of the race, said David Bailey, the Free State automotive instructor who will drive the support bus following the Chevrolet. Usually, there are five or 10 amateur teams.

So if the Bel Air finishes the race, team members are almost guaranteed compensation, said Mike Ewing, media relations coordinator for the Great Race.

“We try to make everybody happy,” he said.

Ewing said he couldn’t remember a time in the 22 years of Great Race history when an amateur team hadn’t finished.

“These kids are good mechanics,” he said.

Lawrence High School senior Michael Davis, left, wipes dry a '57 Chevy Bel Air as graduate Brandon Hardtarfer exits the car at Lawrence High School's auto shop. The duo and eight LHS and Free State students and their shop teachers are fielding the car in the Great Race, an event that sends 100 antique cars running from Florida to California.

Taking precautions

The car wears its original paint, a little thin in spots, but all of its cranks, shafts and inner parts are freshly lubed and ready for a cross-country jaunt.

Nearly everything on the car is original, but nothing is pristine. The car sat in the rain Wednesday as crews touched up paint on the group’s support bus and finished assembling the trailer that will haul the car to Florida before the race.

“Take it around the block. The keys are in it,” LHS auto instructor Dave Tenpenny hollered to a Journal-World reporter over grinding machine noise from inside the school’s auto shop. Tenpenny organized the trip.

The car is on its third owner with only 58,000 miles on the odometer, but the team isn’t taking chances.

The bus will carry an arsenal of spare parts, including an alternator, water pump, several belts and a battery. The crew will repay Carquest Auto Parts of Lawrence for any parts used during the trip.

Team members are hoping with fingers crossed that nothing goes awry, Bailey said. They’ve raised only $8,500 for the two-week trip and competition fees, and most of that will go to the one hotel room per night the group will rent to give team members an opportunity for a shower.

Great Race (official Web site) Vintage cars race through Lawrence (6-23-04)

“We’re making some big sacrifices just to be able to do this,” Tenpenny said.

Several attending will have to pay between $400 and $500 each in out-of-pocket expenses, including meals and gas, if the general pool runs out.

Gas prices have topped $2 per gallon in several Western states, and the Chevy can get about 11 miles per gallon. The bus chugs diesel at a rate of about 6 miles per gallon, Bailey said.

All but the lucky four who draw room rights each night will sleep in the bus, where Bailey has fashioned two 20-foot-long bunks of metal piping and plywood.

“It’s going to be home sweet home for about the next month,” Michael Davis said during his break from building the trailer. Davis, an LHS senior this fall, will be on one of four driver/navigator teams in the group.

The team has spent at least two hours a day together in recent months working on the car. The playful relationship among members shows that time has produced bonds.

“We’ll leave Mikey in the middle of the desert in Nevada,” Bailey joked.

Riding the dream

Participation in the Great Race, which will award $260,000 in total prizes to winners of the general race, is new to this high school team. When Bailey flippantly mentioned the race to Tenpenny in March, he didn’t expect to be thrown head-first into the project just three months later.

“I looked at the flier and thought, ‘Gee, that’d be kind of neat, but I don’t know how the hell we’d ever do it,'” Bailey recalled.

Just before the students went on spring break, they overheard Bailey and Tenpenny talking about the trip. They begged, the teachers gave in, and now most will be riding cross-country this summer in decades-old vehicles without air conditioning.

The students are the center of most of the trip’s adventure, but two of the sponsors, Tenpenny and Ted Crady, another LHS auto instructor, will follow the caravan on their Harley-Davidson motorcycles. That trip will be from Lawrence to Florida to California and back to Lawrence.

‘Wine-and-cheese’ affair

The group’s car will drive alongside some amazing vehicles, Tenpenny said.

“This is kind of a wine-and-cheese race — big corporations, very prominent people,” he said. “Some of these cars, they walk into a museum, pick them out and drive them.”

The roster includes a 1919 Cole, which was an American roadster, a 1925 Rickenbacker roadster and a 1934 race car that ran in that year’s Indianapolis 500.

“Even if you’re remotely interested in cars, this is going to be something else,” Tenpenny said.

Lawrence residents can see the cars in a makeshift parade when they make a pit stop the morning of June 24 at the parking lot of the Dillons store at Sixth Street and Wakarusa Drive.

The day before, competitors will stop in Fort Scott for lunch, in Ottawa for an evening pit stop and in Overland Park for a two-hour welcoming parade.

After Lawrence, the crews will head to Manhattan and out toward Colorado, stopping in Hays the night of June 24.