MARK WAITE / PVT Dan Harris poses with his 1929 Ford Model A Speedster in the trailer the night before he left for North Carolina, from which he will drive the antique car cross country to California. Advertisement

Rather than keep his classic car cooped up in the garage, Dan Harris will be driving a 1929 Ford Model A Speedster cross-country in the 25th annual National Guard Great Race, which this year leads from Charlotte, N.C., to Anaheim, Calif.

The three-week excursion shoves off June 30. It will be Harris' third such race, a test of accuracy following a course with the winners judged by the one that can follow the complicated driving instructions in the closest time.

The competition echoes the endurance events made popular when cars were more in their infancy in the 1930s and 1940s. Cars in The Great Race must be at least 45 years old. The first race was held in 1908.

Last year, The Great Race included a stop in Tonopah July 5, when the route stretched from Philadelphia to San Rafael, Calif. Harris placed 32nd in that event.

"It's a great chance to drive old cars across the country and make new friends," Harris said.

Racers will follow a more southerly route this year. The closest they will come to Pahrump will be a segment from Kingman, Ariz. to Laughlin July 12, with an overnight stop at the Colorado Belle Resort.

"We know it's going to be hot and we're probably going to run into some rain," Harris said. "It's an open car. We don't have any roof, we don't have any windshield wipers."

Harris ran into a few days of rain when they started out from Pennsylvania last year. "It was pretty miserable. Fun, but we all got wet," he recalled. "We wanted to drive an open car. We wanted it because it performs really well and it's just fun being in an open car."

Father Hollis Harris, a long-time Pahrump resident, won't be a navigator this year but will visit the team in Texas. Harris's cousin Brian Webster will be the navigator for the first time, while Roy Mankins and Bobby Woods will be part of the road team and may ride in the race part of the way, he said.

"It's hard. I mean there's some guys that are just really, really good. They've been doing it for years. Every year we try to learn something and get a little better," Harris said.

"We'll be running at 50, 55 mph sometimes on the freeways. They'll turn us loose and let us go as fast as we want, but when we're on the clock, the top speed is 50 mph," Harris said.

Unlike the 1908 Cadillac he drove in the Pahrump Fall Festival parade last October, when his dad Hollis was grand marshal, this vehicle won't have a crank ignition.

"We put an electric starter on it. That's allowed. A lot of Model As in that year had electric starts, so that's not really a modification or anything," Harris said.

But otherwise driving an antique car like that isn't as easy as cruising cross-country in a modern car, he said.

"At the end of the day you're tired. It's 300, 400 miles per day. The suspension on those is pretty stiff. You're ready to get out of the car after eight or 10 hours a day in it," Harris said.

Contestants like visiting the smaller towns, like Tonopah, where people really appreciate the event. "In 2001, the first race that we ran, we kind of did the southern route. We're hardly hitting any of the same cities but we were in the South. We're prepared, we know it's going to be hot. I know some cars might have problems in the desert with overheating. We're keeping our fingers crossed we're going to be OK," Harris said.

The big challenge will be in 2008, the centennial anniversary of the first Great Race, traveling westbound from New York to Paris. Harris hopes to enter that race too, driving a 1936 Ford.