Dear Ultimatecarpage.com visitor,

Every year in April over 200 classic racing cars gather in Paris for the start of the Tour Auto road rally. This year's edition started in the Jardin de Tuileries, between the Place de la Concorde and the Louvre museum. The five day, 2000 km event took the participants through France, Luxembourg and Belgium. The route uses some of the finest roads that are both exciting to drive and have fabulous vistas. On the itinerary were also five racing tracks including the swooping Dijon and the legendary Spa Francorchamps. One of the finish locations was the fantastic Schlumpf Museum in Mulhouse.
The Tour Auto is open to cars of a type that competed in the original Tour de France between 1951 and 1973. An exception is made for interesting cars of a later era. This year the Jaguar Mk I and Mk II took center, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Mk I's maiden class victory. The colorful field included many exciting cars including Ford GT40s, Alfa Romeo GTAs, Alpine A110s, Aston Martin DB4 GTs, Porsche 906s and Cobras. With the original event dominated for so many years by Ferraris, it is no surprise to see so many of the V12 engined machines line up for the 2009 edition. The absolute highlight was the 250 GTO that took the outright victory back in 1964.
Due to conflicting schedules we could only follow the Tour Auto for two days. By staying out from dawn to dusk, we have managed to capture all of the classes on a wide variety of locations. Our work has been compiled in an exclusive 150-shot gallery to illustrate our full report.

2009 Tour Auto report and slideshow

Regards,
Wouter Melissen