Israeli car rally

By Charles Schoendorf
All photos by Ronen Topelberg

Location, location, location

If vintage car tours are your bag and you’re looking for the next great and different one, I’m afraid you just missed it, the inaugural HolyLand 1000, yes, in Israel, held March 22-27. But there is hope that the organizers Elad Shraga and Amir Almagor will have the chutzpah to stage a sequel in a year or two. They are talking about it.

In lots of ways the HL 1000 was similar in format and execution and as big a rush as the best tours I’ve ever done in CO, CA and AZ and elsewhere in the US and in Italy too, only more so, because it was in Israel.

Lee Levi is already looking forward to a second running of the Holyland 1000.

The top three things that give this road tour the edge over the other great ones are simple: location, location, location. Israel has all the scenery to rival the best of tours but what Israel also has that the others never will is the Biblical and historic and geographic locales. Add to that what has to be without exaggeration the most flavorful produce grown on the planet, which they prepare and present so incredibly, and this has to be the best bang for the tour buck in the world.

Elad Shraga’s Osca MT4 at rest at the beautiful Beresheet Hotel.

By Charles Schoendorf
All photos by Ronen Topelberg

DAY 3 Sea of Galilee-Nazareth-Mitzpe Ramon

As the inaugural Holy Land 1000 progressed, the cars headed south to the Negev Desert, with a lunch stop along the way at a horse breeding estate, literally in the stables, and on to spend the night on the edge of the Great Crater of Ramon, nearly 1000 meters above sea level. This crater, so called, was actually formed naturally over millions of years through the forces of erosion and subsidence to be over 500 meters deep, and is as amazing a geological spectacle as can be found anywhere.

Climbing up away from the sea is Raymond Scheer from the U.S. in his Alfa.

1965 BMW 3200CS brought by the BMW Group Classic. Driver is Ralph Schutze.