Tom Cotter - Route 66 Barn Find Road Trip: Lost Collector Cars Along the Mother Road

Two Ford SUVs, seventy-seven years apart!

Weve all experienced game-changers. For me, one of those moments was asking Tom Cotter for five minutes of his time. Its been a whirlwind ever sinceweve traveled thousands of miles, met hundreds of people, and found thousands of cars. Hell, weve even partied with rock stars!

So when the phone rings and its Tom Cotter, you never know what could happen next. It could be sharing a new story or the beginning of a new adventure. After completing Barn Find Road Trip, the spiritual predecessor to this book, Tom and I started thinking about our next project. One day Tom called and said, Ive got it. When he asked if Id be interested in doing a sequel on Route 66 from beginning to end, I went all in. As a seven-year-old, Id traveled Route 66 in the back of a 59 Chevy station wagon and the memories are still etched in my mind.

From playing the license plate game to counting hundreds of box cars with my brothers, and certainly the look on my fathers face somewhere in Arizona as he experienced his third flat tire in one day. The Mother Road is a part of me.

The opportunity of discovering Route 66 from beginning to end and to tell the story with my camera was something I couldnt turn down. We pushed every day from dawn til dusk and then some. There is no rest for a Cotter Spotter.

If theres one thing Ive learned from doing trips like this, its that the most rewarding thing is not the best find, its the people we meet along the way. We heard stories from perfect strangers that touched us to the core, as if wed known them for years. Sure, the cars are cool, but without the stories and the faces, theyre just another catalyst for a tetanus shot.

I hope you enjoy this book as much as we enjoyed that burger in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, and experiencing dawn at the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo. I encourage you to go out and embrace this BIG gorgeous country. Bring a camera, make conversation with a stranger, and enjoy the smile of a waitress in the middle of nowhere as she serves you that last piece of blueberry pie la mode.

Theres nothing better than the open road to clear your head. Who knowsit might just be your next game-changer.

Michael Alan Ross

Sterling Moss and Denis Jenkinson. Tom Cotter and Brian Barr. Thats a stretch, but being a good navigator requires having a great driver. Tom has given me that opportunity, first in Barn Find Road Trip and now in Route 66 Barn Find Road Trip.

Most important is communication. This means being able to translate directional instructions given in grunts, groans, hand signals, waving, nods, and, sometimes, words.

A good map and atlas are essential. Invest in detailed versions. We used Route 66: The Map Series by Jim Ross and EZ66: Route 66 Guide for Travelers, by Jerry McClanahan. Both are excellent and give pre- and postwar routes.

While technology is a not a necessity, it can enhance the Route 66 experience. As the hobby evolves, it makes sense barn-finders use the best technology available to them to find future stashes of rusty Vipers, WRXs, and Mustang GTs.

We used MyTracks GPS Tracking App. Dropping pins at every location so we had the GPS coordinates made it easy to identify sites and track mileage. Google Earth and Maps let us look beyond the highway when our instincts were low or topography blocked our view. We pinpointed our social media leads and used GPS to find them.

Technology has been with us through every journey we take. After all, Jenks created the first rally route navigation tool from a roll of toilet paper just saying.

Brian Barr

A few days before leaving for our trip, Michael Alan Ross, our photographer, sent an email half-joking that we should buy a snake-bite kit because wed be spending time in the desert. I sent an email back saying that wed only need a snake-bite kit if we discovered a Cobra.

Then I remembered last year when a pit bull clamped his jaws around my knee while I was looking at a Falcon Ranchero in West Virginia. I thought he was going to tear off my kneecap.

Good idea, Michael, I later wrote. Yes, lets buy one, just in case. We had been planning the Route 66 Barn Find Road Trip for months. During the spring, my copilot, Brian Barr, and I drove my Cobra from Charlotte, North Carolina, to McPherson, Kansas, for the annual McPherson College advisory board meeting. During that trip, we went out of our way to drive about 50 miles on Route 66.

During that trip, we met a dynamic English couple that had flown from London to Austin, Texas, and picked up their recently purchased 1974 Starsky and Hutch paint scheme Ford Torino. They told us they would be living the American dream by driving Route 66 from Chicago to LA for the next three weeks.

At the end of our Kansas trip, I called my publisher, Zack Miller, and told him I thought Route 66 might be an ideal follow-up to Barn Find Road Trip. I felt it would not only be a car-finding book, but also a travel guide for folks who desired to drive the famous route.

As we did before our previous trip, Brian and I visited the Bagel Bin Deli in Huntersville, North Carolina. We ate hearty breakfast bagels and hit the road toward Chicago before 7 a.m. on Friday, October 30, 2015.

We hit the road from Chicago on Sunday, November 1, letting Americas Highway be our guide.