We're ready to take off for the second part of the race's final stage. Forty-some engines, most over a half-century old, come rudely to life, crackling and snorting in the chilly air. Although the general mood among the racers is nearly always casual, now is when they're most serious--the race officials have issued each team its time reports with a starting time and a final time in which they're to complete the next "regularity test."

I thought I'd missed something in the translation from French, but "regularity test" is what the racing portion of the rally is called, and it has nothing to do with fiber consumption. Each leg of the stage runs approximately 20 miles, meticulously mapped out in the LV Road Book along with warning that the drivers must maintain an average speed of 50 m.p.h. This isn't Nascar with cars brushing bumpers and trying to pass one another whenever they're sharing the same stretch of pavement. Not always, anyway. The upshot is when you're cruising at 50 m.p.h. along roads hardly wider than a sidewalk in the Austrian hinterlands, it's easy to miss a turn. Missed turns lead to driver's irregularity (not a pleasant state) which results in demerit points. The car that pulls into the square of Prague Castle tomorrow night with the least points wins.

With the assistance of the LV staff, I ditch Olga and meet my new driver, Manrico Iachia. Manrico is Italian and an Executive Vice President of the Europ Assistance Group, a large European insurance corporation. He's racing his 1955 Bentley R-Type Continental (it was intended for tours of continental Europe), in which he won his class in the Louis Vuitton Classic China Run in 1998--the car was midnight-blue then.

It's one of the most stunning cars I'd ever seen. How often have you stared at a car and felt like you're in the presence of a work of art? This one recalls the shimmering undulations of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim in Bilbao. Everyone stares at Iachia's R-Type, at its curves and their own reflection in them. (What would high art be without the low? Here's a similarly themed example of the latter.)

As we take off from the castle I'm sitting in the backseat next to Vera Iachia, Manrico's wife and the team navigator. She's checking her digital stopwatch and intently studying the Road Book, putting an "X" through each box once we've passed its mark. A calculator rests in her lap.

In the front left seat is copilot Joao Teves Costa, a dead ringer for John McCain if McCain were younger and had less hair. Joao mans the odometer and manual stopwatch on the dash and lets Manrico know, usually with hand gestures, how fast he should be going. There's no navigation or GPS system in the car other than the highly-efficient and bickering team of Vera and Joao. (Each car is equipped, though, with a GPS locator in the trunk for security purposes.)

The Bentley R-Type Continental inspires an almost religious following, as I learned in Vienna when a private jet executive from Venezuela told me he'd changed his family's vacation plans after hearing it would be passing by. When I ask Manrico why an Italian (himself), a Portuguese (Vera), and a Spaniard (Joao) are in an English car, he answers by preaching the gospel. "This is one of the best automobiles in the world," he says in English, and goes on to list its many qualities: lightweight aluminum body, automatic 4-speed gearbox, air conditioning, leather seats, and a 6 cylinder, 4.9 litre engine. We charge around a blind turn and a young girl is standing in the middle of the road with a wheelbarrow full of chopped wood. "The brakes work well, too," I say, after Manrico manages to miss her. Silence. "Yes," Joao says finally, chuckling, "good brakes."

Soon, we're passing through the small Austrian village of Echsenbach. It seems most of the townspeople are out alongside the streets, watching the race pass through. As we go by their eyes are fixed on the car, rarely do they make eye contact for the first few seconds, and then they eventually remember to wave at us. It's as if this car could drive itself, too. I was struck that more cars passing by in the other direction don't honk--I think only one or two of them honked the entire time I was in the R-Type. They may actually have been afraid of us.

Manrico is moving through the winding village streets at about 45 mph when Vera shouts, "Retardar! Retardar!" I figure Manrico must be a patient husband to take such verbal abuse in front of a stranger and then realize she's shouting "slow down" in Portuguese.

There are around ten miles left of the regularity zone when we miss a tricky turn toward Wolfenstein, just before the Czech border. Manrico pulls off to the side of the road. Vera is needling Joao who's studying the Road Book with his head bowed. After a few minutes of debate they finally figure it out. Manrico yanks the car back onto the road, tires screeching, dirt clouding up around us. "Have to make up time," Manrico says, looking in the rear-view mirror.

Soon we're doing 90 mph over twisting hillsides, miles of cornfields on either side of us when the road straightens out. The air is spiked with the smell of cow manure. Speeding in this car is like being at an old-timer's game when the old guard trounces today's best. "We can do 120 mph," Manrico says, steering with just his left hand. Vera elbows me in the arm and nods to let me know she's seen it.

Joao is still urging us on, saying "Go, go. Si, si." Manrico pushes the car like it's his older brother's beat-up Camaro. No one except me winces as we tear over crevices in the poorly paved road, bounce across rail-road tracks, or when rocks kick up against the windshield. "This car used to be midnight blue," Manrico explains. "The roads were so bad in China, the paint was ruined. When I got back to Portugal I was going to repaint it. But when we stripped it I liked the aluminum."

We see the first road sign for Gmund, almost at the end of the regularity zone, and Joao tells Manrico to slow way down. Seems we've made it with time to spare. We're rolling in to the checkpoint at a heady 3 or 4 mph, the gravel crunching beneath the tires and Vera, digital stopwatch in hand, begins counting down our finish time. Manrico is watching her in the rear-view mirror as we crawl to the LV official waiting to be handed the team's time card. "OK, good," Vera says, and that's it.