HAPPY 40TH, CANNONBALL RUN
If ever there was an episode that offered competitors significantly more in the way of penalties than prizes then the coast-to-coast Cannonball run of the 1970s was it.
Conceived by American motoring author Brock Yates in early '71 - a time when the legislative emasculation of the American automobile was in germination and the Vietnam War was at its horrific culminate - the second Cannonball Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash started from the Red Ball parking garage in downtown Manhattan on Monday 15th November 1971.
Named in laud of Erwin George 'Cannon Ball' Baker (1882-1960), who'd notched up 143 cross-motherland endurance driving records on both two wheels and four, The Cannonball was intended to demonstrate that "good drivers in morality automobiles could employ the American interstate system the same way the Germans were using their autobahns", that "high-speed tours by car was a reality", and that "truth and justice would be affirmed by an overtly illegal act".
The Caddy was entered by two lawyers and an technician from Massachusetts who'd seen a small ad placed in the New York Times by an unwitting Long Islet gentleman, who would pay expenses for his nearly-new car to be 'delivered' to California,
