Owners of Vintage Cars Find Area's Roads to Be a Wretched Obstacle Course

Is it even worth having a cool classic car in Washington anymore?

I mean, we're cursed with the second-worst traffic in the country. Our "high-speed" interstates run like cholesterol-laden blood through a sclerotic artery. Even a simple trip to the store can be a crapshoot: Will this take five minutes -- or 35? Then there are all those diabolical neighborhood speed bumps. Cropping up like mushrooms after a summer rain, they seem designed to scrape the muffler off any vehicle lower than a minivan.

I have a 41-year-old Datsun convertible, and every time I pull out the choke and twist the key, I wonder: Is it even worth it?

"Obviously, you avoid the Beltway," says Denney Keys. We're outside the Spring Hill Recreation Center in McLean, standing next to Denney's breathtakingly beautiful 1966 Corvette, one of four Vettes the Mitchellville resident owns.

The grass is covered with classic metal: an eclectic mix of tail fins, T-tops, rumble seats, wire wheels, shiny chrome -- almost a century's worth of automotive achievement, all brought together by local auto writer Vern Parker for his annual "Street Dreams" car show.

I'm asking these besotted owners whether they still enjoy the open road -- or what passes for it around here. The Beltway comes up a lot.

"It's not nice to go on that even in a new car," Denney allows. "I end up driving on it. I just don't feel particularly comfortable."

The Beltway is like the God of the Old Testament. You never know what's going to set it off. One minute, it's deceptively placid; the next minute, it becomes enraged and you're creeping along trying not to think about the vintage needle on your vintage temperature gauge climbing towards the red mark that just might fry your vintage engine.

Not everyone hates Interstate 495. "Sometimes in the winter, when it's cold and nice, I just take a car out and drive it around the Beltway," says Harry Goins, whose 1976 Cadillac El Dorado on display is just one of a half-dozen cool cars he owns. "Sixty-two miles and then I bring it home."

Of course, Harry's talking about 7 a.m. on a Sunday, not 5:30 p.m. on a Wednesday.

"We've gotta pick our routes," adds Alexandria's Dwight Wilson (1976 Monte Carlo). That means anticipating traffic, considering bailout routes, being aware of shoulders you can pull onto should your vehicle start coughing and wheezing.

And thus driving an old car becomes like planning a military campaign: We can expect German resistance here and here so we will send our tanks down this goat path through this undefended French village.