It was an event as audacious as its founder, Brock Yates, the Car and Driver editor known for speaking his mind regardless of the consequences. Five times in the 1970s, the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash traversed the United States from New York City (or Darien, Connecticut) to Redondo Beach, California, with the sole rule being “get from start to finish in as little time as possible.†The slap-in-the-face to highway decorum spurred a successful 1981 comedy based on the 1979 running (and partially rooted in truth), but now a German writer and 1979 Cannonball Run participant, Gero Hoschek,...
