A Bentley, a race driver and California’s Highway One
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By Dutch Mandel
Oct 09, 2007
In the list of 100 Things a Car Enthusiast Must Do Before He Dies, how high up is an at-speed chauffeur ride by an Indy 500 champion? We aren’t talking freeway airport-shuttle trip, either, but a full-blown, knock-down, killer-twisty-road, screaming hump.
Top 10, baby!
Don’t tell the Bentley people about this, though. It was their Continental Flying Spur in electric French Racing Blue, which I borrowed for a weekend in Northern California, that was the chariot. I say don’t tell them, because as a condition of such a loan, they ask for just about everything from a DNA sample to a second mortgage before releasing keys. You can understand why. Still, this twin-turbo beast was in the deft and capable hands of one Daniel John Sullivan, clipping along Highway One from Carmel to Big Sur and back again, and he was doing it at speeds that occasionally exceeded the posted limit.
To make this moment better still, the morning was spectacularly blue, the weather clear and fresh, the traffic virtually nonexistent and the conversation lively.
Sully lives in Monterey these days and commutes to his multiple businesses in Canada, Connecticut and San Diego courtesy of aircraft. That he was in town was a surprise; he’d earned platinum flight status by the end of the first quarter of ’07.
He’s building a Baja 1000 race truck, and he’s working with Highcroft Racing on its Acura of ALMS racing fame. He’s got irons in the fire, here and there, and is always looking to expand horizons. We talked about mutual friends, mutual frustrations, mutual joys and the people who crossed our paths in our lives; it was one of those great and far too infrequent cathartic moments we all should undertake to pursue.
