AUGUSTA — Harvey Lipman loves to talk about his car. And wouldn’t you, too, if you had a shiny black 1955 Chevrolet Del Ray sitting in your garage, looking so new you could practically smell the showroom itself?

“This is the first time it’s been out of the garage in the month of January since 1971,” said Lipman, an Augusta resident whose grandfather bought the car back in ’55 in Lynn, Massachusetts. 

The first night of the 35th annual Northeast Motorsports Expo and Trade Show at the Augusta Civic Center definitely had a classic feel to it. But while vintage Cheveys, Fords, Packards and Jaguars were on display, they weren’t there to be museum pieces. 

Many of these cars will participate in June’s Great Race, a nine-day, vintage-car road rally covering 2,300 miles from Owensboro, Kentucky to Gardiner, with stops along the way in famous tourist attractions such as Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and Newport, Rhode Island. Last year’s winner earned a cool $50,000.

Eight cars out of 135 will be from Maine, Lipman said.

Lipman bought the Del Ray from his aunt for one dollar “and other valuable considerations” in 1971, when he graduated from Hebron Academy. He keeps it at his summer residence on Cobbosseecontee Lake in Manchester. It’s a perfect summer car, but he drove it on Maine’s bumpy winter roads to the Civic Center on Friday in order to promote the Great Race. 

Five months from now, Lipman will drive it from Kentucky to Maine. Randy Gannett, another Cobbosseecontee Lake resident, will be the navigator who accompanies the driver and makes sure the car stays on course.

“I have never done anything like this in my life,” said Lipman, who said his car has a six-cylinder engine used in the original 1953 Corvette. “This a big deal for our area.”

Toby Stinson, the director of development at the Owls Head Transportation Museum in Owls Head, is entering a black 1936 Ford Phaeton, a big, roomy convertible that almost looks like it could house a family of four and still have room for the pets. 

Several classic cars that will be in The Great Race this summer are seen on display during the 35th annual Northeast Motorsports Expo on Friday at the Augusta Civic Center. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

After the car was donated to the museum several years ago, Stinson and his assistant, Rob Quebec, modified it for the 2018 Great Race, which trekked from Buffalo, New York to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Stinson drove it to a 30th-place finish.

“It was more challenging than I ever imagined it would be,” Stinson said. “What’s really fun is that if the driver/navigator (team) cannot work collectively as a team, then you’re really in trouble.”

As a rally race, the object of the Great Race isn’t to run the fastest time, but to complete the stage in a predetermined time. Stinson compared it to golf — a second or so off the correct time is equivalent to being docked a stroke on the links. Maps and electronic clocks are not allowed, and you can forget about a GPS.

“Sorry, kids, there’s an awful lot of math involved in this,” said Stinson, showing an elaborate stack of graphs and charts from the 2018 event to prove his point. “It’s a lot of math, a lot of precision, but it’s a lot of fun.”

The Great Race cars weren’t the only golden oldies on hand Friday.

Will Davis of Woolwich brought along a red 1979 Chevy Malibu. This boxy, hand-painted beauty, which looks like it came right out of a 1980s Daytona 500, won best in show at last year’s Expo, with the giant trophy alongside as proof.

Davis, who acquired the car in 2021, said he plans to race it at Wiscasset Speedway and perhaps Oxford Plains Speedway this summer.

“It was at least raced until the late ’80s, then it took me three years to rebuild it,” said Davis, who had 73 people and businesses help fund his repairs. All are listed on the back of his car.

“The older stuff, you hand-build it,” Davis said. “Today (modern vehicles), you just buy it.”

Bob Eastman of Clinton might have had the most unique car on hand — a purple 1972 AMC Gremlin, complete with a stuffed Gizmo character from the 1980s “Gremlins” movie perched on the roof. 

Long the butt of ’70s wisecracks, this car is no joke on the track. Eastman bought the car in 1981, a year before he graduated from high school, and turned it into a drag racer at Winterport Dragway several years later, where it runs to this day as part of the “Gassah Guys” team, whose Facebook page describes it as “a group dedicated to the promotion of ‘Ol’ Skool’ Drag Racing.” 

Eastman plans on bringing the Gremlin to Oxford a couple times this year.

“It goes pretty good,” said Eastman, whose car uses a Chevy 434 drag racing engine.

The show continues through Sunday.

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