Blasts From the Past to Roll Up to City Hall Sunday

A cross-country rally of roughly 120 antique automobiles is scheduled to reach its finish line in front of Pasadena City Hall on Sunday, closing out the 2026 Hemmings Great Race, a nine-day, 2,300-mile rally along Historic Route 66 that organizers timed to the highway’s 100th anniversary.

The free public Grand Finale ceremony begins at 1:15 p.m. at 100 N. Garfield Ave., with the cars on view until 4:00 p.m., according to Visit Pasadena, the tourism organization promoting the local stop. The finish caps a precision driving rally that began June 20 in Springfield, Illinois, and crossed eight states before reaching Southern California.

The cars will finish in front of picturesque City Hall, the 1927 landmark designed by the firm Bakewell and Brown and listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 28, 1980, as part of the Pasadena Civic Center District.

The Great Race is a precision-paced race, not a high-speed one. Each team of a driver and a navigator follows turn-by-turn instructions and must hit secret checkpoints at exact times while driving at or below posted speed limits, with GPS and other modern navigation aids barred.

Teams are penalized one second for every second they arrive early or late, and the lowest cumulative score wins — a system the event compares to golf.

Coker Tire Company, the event’s presenting sponsor, describes the rally on its official event page as “the world’s premier time, speed, distance rally for classic cars.” Hemmings Motor News is the title sponsor.

Cars, trucks and motorcycles built in 1974 and earlier are eligible, and the 2026 field is sold out with a waitlist. The oldest entries listed for this year are a 1913 Chevrolet, a 1916 Hudson and a 1918 American LaFrance. The rally carries a total purse of $160,000 across five competitive classes, with $50,000 going to the overall winner. Most official materials, including Visit Pasadena’s listing, put the field at about 120 cars, though some race-day social media posts have put the figure at more than 140.

Great Race Coordinator Houston Gibson, quoted in a Feb. 9 press release distributed through the Great Rivers & Routes Tourism Bureau, said the rally turns its stops into celebrations.

“When the Great Race pulls into a city, it becomes an instant festival,” Gibson said. The release said the event travels with an entourage of more than 500 people.

The same release said teams and cars come from Japan, England, Australia, Canada and “every corner of the United States,” and called the event a “‘bucket list’ item for car enthusiasts, especially in 2026 with the Route 66 as the backdrop.”

The 2026 edition is built around the centennial of Route 66, the cross-country highway that received its official designation on April 30, 1926, and was established as part of the U.S. Highway System on Nov. 11, 1926. It ran from Chicago to Santa Monica before being removed from the U.S. Highway System in 1985. The Great Race has been recognized as an official Route 66 Centennial Event by the U.S. Route 66 Centennial Commission, the panel Congress created to mark the anniversary.

Before reaching Pasadena, the rally was scheduled to make a Southern California stop Saturday at San Manuel Stadium in San Bernardino from 3 to 7 p.m. The Pasadena finish on Sunday is free and open to the public.