Announcing a new way to explore the Smoky Mountains by car

Over the past decade of hosting Classic Motorsports Road Tours, we’ve worked hard to live up to our slogan: You Drive, We Handle the Details. And every tour we handle more of the details, refining our routes, hotels, meals, activities and more in pursuit of the perfect driving vacation.

But there’s always been a thorn in our side, a detail we just couldn’t handle: Navigation. Our road tours, like every other, required participants to follow our curated routes using a paper route book and their car’s odometer. Sure, it could be a rewarding challenge to be conquered by participants, but we couldn’t shake the feeling that acting as a full-time navigator was a detail that we should handle—if only we could.

So while we hosted tours with paper route books, in the background we experimented. We tried alternative map and direction formatting, additional lead cars, simplified routes, more stops, fewer stops, and even a plethora of smartphone apps that guaranteed to finally solve the problem. Even when we thought we’d finally found a solution, we were stymied: Participants in our 2023 Orange Blossom Tour were invited to test out a smartphone app alongside our traditional route books, but it didn’t work as advertised: A reliance on participants’ phones and a constant data connection proved to be insurmountable challenges for smartphone app-based navigation.

What we really needed was a magical device to handle navigation for our participants. It couldn’t rely on a smartphone’s minuscule screen or finite battery life. It couldn’t require a data connection. It couldn’t require any updates, downloads or maintenance. It needed to be easily installed into any car. And it needed to steadfastly adhere to our curated routes, as a navigation tool that kept suggesting the interstates would defeat the entire point of our tours.

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve finally solved the puzzle and developed this magical device: Starting with our 2023 Smoky Mountain Tour, participants will no longer be asked to navigate with a list of directions and an odometer. Instead, they’ll each receive a Classic Motorsports Road Tours GPS Navigator to use for the duration of the tour. Essentially a Garmin GPS that’s received a lobotomy, the GPS Navigator spends every minute focusing on our curated routes, so you can spend every minute focusing on your vacation. After all, our slogan is simple: You Drive, We Handle the Details. We’re thrilled to finally handle this one.

Eager to try it out for yourself? Register for our Classic Motorsports Smoky Mountain Tour today by visiting classicmotorsportsroadtours.com/smt.

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