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The 63rd annual AAA Revival Glidden Tour will bring almost 200 “pre-war” cars —1942 or older models — to the area Sept. 7-12, with the Radisson Hotel in downtown La Crosse serving as the tour headquarters.
Although there will be plenty of opportunities for people to look at the cars, this event is a tour, not a show. Over the course of the tour, participants will drive more than 500 miles of back roads around the Coulee Region, with destinations including a cranberry bog, a railroad museum, antique car collections, a houseboat manufacturing plant and Effigy Mounds National Monument.
“The thing I like about touring is the area you go to is generally an area you’ve not been to before. We tour all back roads so you get to see what the country is really like,” said Ken Cvikota of Onalaska, who owns two Ford Model A’s and is a veteran of nine Glidden tours.
He won’t see much new this time, though. As regional director of the Veteran Motor Car Club of America and a key organizer for the event, he has traveled all the routes to make sure the directions provided to all the tour participants match with reality.
The back roads are more scenic but that’s not the only reason why the tour sticks to them. “Most of these cars will not drive more than 30-35 mph,” Cvikota said.
The name “Glidden Tour” comes from the 1905 sponsorship of a magnificent silver trophy by early automotive pioneer Charles Jasper Glidden to be awarded each year by AAA to the driver of the winning vehicle. The tour was meant to help demonstrate that automobiles, then in their infancy, were a viable form of transportation.
The tour was revived in 1946 and the VMCCA and AAA take turns sponsoring the event.
Two years ago, Al Topel of Onalaska took part in his first Glidden Tour in the Black Hills area of South Dakota. “We enjoyed the company of the people who were there, and some of the back roads we enjoyed quite a bit,” Topel said.
He’ll be taking part in the tour again this year, driving a 1928 four-door “blind window” Model A that he bought about three years ago. “I wouldn’t say it’s rare, but it’s not usual,” he said.
Model A’s won’t be rare at all among tour participants. Cvikota said the 183 cars registered so far include probably 60 percent Model A’s. But there will also be some prime examples of pre-war Plymouths, Cadillacs, Pierce Arrows, Hupmobiles, Duesenbergs, Packards and Kissels.
“There’s going to be a lot of really nice cars,” Cvikota said. “There’s a lot of very rare cars, I know that,” he said.
Uniqueness doesn’t count for much when it comes to the big prize on the Glidden Tour. Ten awards are given out, but getting one’s name on the AAA Glidden trophy will require the driver to come closest to the average time of travel of all the drivers (without requiring AAA roadside assistance).
Topel, whose pride and joy is a 1959 Thunderbird, still gets a kick out of driving his old Model A. “They aren’t easy to drive, but they’re fun to drive. You really have to muscle them around the corners,” he said. “They aren’t muscle cars — you got to muscle them.”
In addition to the VMCCA, other local sponsors of this year’s Glidden Tour include Harry Dahl of Dahl Motors, Kwik Trip, Logistics Health, the Cvikota Company and Web Team.
It’s not too late for area owners of pre-war cars to sign up for the tour. Cost is $550 for each driver and car and $210 for each passenger, which includes tour books, any admission charges, catered lunches and coffee breaks during the day and three banquets. People can sign up by calling Joanne Steele at 788-5520.
People who want to get an eyeful of classic cars will have no problem getting that if they go for an evening stroll in the parking lots at the three main hotels where participants are staying in downtown La Crosse: the Radisson, the Holiday Inn and the Courtyard by Marriott.
Cvikota recommended La Crosse’s Riverside Park between 9:30 and 10 a.m. Sept. 12 as the place to be to see the maximum number of cars at once. Glidden Tour participants are going on riverboat cruises and parking at the park has been reserved for them.
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