By Emily Marshia

David Mize chooses the car less driven; he takes the route most forgotten, the trip most historically faithful.

The Chelsea man believes roads should never have been paved. He believes that cars were meant to be driven and tested and pushed. He believes that America could slow down and it wouldn’t hurt anything.

But Mize’s musings are not a reaction to today’s gas prices but represent a lifetime of paying homage and elbow grease to the cars and ideals of a time gone by.

Mize, a native of St. Louis, is known for his intellectual, yet colloquial ruminations. His thick, deliberate speech is rich with worldly perspective, yet sharp with small-townisms too.

He has the professorial appeal: his tanned, bald head, brimmed with tussled white hair is bespectacled with large or small frames depending on his focus; always a handkerchief in his breast pocket, his tweed jacket broken-in, leather elbow patches intact.

And then there is the twinkle: a sense of immediate adventure and fable dancing in the corners of his wrinkled-rimmed eyes that lends itself to splendid curiosity because the stories really are always as grand and as wild as his matching impish grin.

He won’t say how old he is, but his wife Gay let it slip that 80, plus or minus, would be a good guess. He’s had a Chelsea home since 1968 and lives there full time now. He and Gay have two daughters.

He is a man of many countries, fluent in multiple languages, a former professor and state department employee, but above all, a traveler. Being a traveler is a major distinction from being a tourist he notes; he has always been careful to steep himself in knowledge of his destination. He considers it a responsibility, a prerequisite to any trip. It links him to travelers of the past, with whom he is deeply fascinated.

Perfect Combination

Last summer, Mize’s two loves, travel and antique cars, united for an irresistible opportunity. He retraced the historic silk route in Asia in a 12,000 mile trek from Paris, France to Peking, China. The trip was organized by a French club of enthusiasts, all of them owning 2-CVs (Deux-Cheveaux), which are 2-cycle air-cooled, 600 cc motors with front-wheel drive.

They date from the 1920s, making them roughly Mize’s age.

The cars feature a rollback canvas roof, and the four-door cars get a remarkable 65 miles to a gallon. Mize shares that the 2-CV did for Europe what the Model T did for America by making an affordable automobile within reach for rural folks. They were cheap to buy, cheap to maintain. He doesn’t own one-yet.

After hearing about the 2-CV rally, Mize knew he had to be a part of it. So he found a driver who wanted a passenger and literally went along for the 38-day ride. The convoy featured about 40 2-Cvs, six modern cars, eight motorcycles, three Landcruisers, and three gigantic trucks—one featuring a complete automotive shop, one stocked with provisions, and another containing the rally’s own ambulance, complete with a doctor and nurse. They traveled through France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kirghizstan, Kazakhstan, Tadjikhistan, and finally into China.

At times, it took over four hours to exit one country and enter another. The trip was somewhat unorthodox for Mize in its strictly regimented route.

"Many of the serious travelers took issue with it," points our Mize. But with a large convoy to manage, the group had to stay organized. Most nights they put up in hotels after five to seven hours of driving, but for four nights, they were above 10,000 feet in the mountains of China in sleeping bags. Some roads were in good condition, some hadn’t seen upgrades in 1,700 years.

Mize absorbed the trip in three layers. First, there was the trip itself, a raw, dusty, sweltering adventure. Second, he was able to see four countries he’d never seen before. And lastly, he thoroughly enjoyed his "daily first hand observations of a large group of Frenchmen." In particular, he loved the endless talk of food, from which he thinks Americans could learn a thing or two.

Imprisoned by Bees

One notable day included a delay at a Chinese toll station that was unexplainably closed. Several accidents had occurred prior to the convoys’ arrival, blocking the road in multiple places. Two trucks had collided, one carrying apples and the other bees. The bees swarmed around all the vehicles, keeping all the travelers inside with the windows up in 100-degree heat with nowhere to go.

In Mize’s self-described cavalier style, he and his driver left the road and followed a BMW off-road to an alternate route. But they lost their leader and ended up lost in central China for hours. Mize lights up describing this detour, recalling how he happily announced that day, "Now we are traveling!"

A few ditches and a flat tire later, they hired a cab driver to show them the way and they reached the city of their destination, haggard and weary, but still six hours ahead of the rest of the convoy.

Mize’s love for old cars has old roots. His father gave him a 1926 Model T truck and some tools to keep him out of trouble when he was 14. He chuckles and recalls," that truck kept me out of all kinds of trouble, but it opened the door to every conceivable kind of automotive trouble!"

Today, he owns a 1928 Bughati (known as the equivalent of the American Model A), which he keeps in Europe, a 1930 Model A, a 1964 ½ Mustang convertible, a 1936 Ford Phaeton, and a 1963 Chevy Nova. He touts the Model A as the "world’s simplest car to work on," though he says he doesn’t claim to be a mechanic.

"I can take anything apart, but I can’t always be certain that I’ll be able to put it back together!," he laughed.

Vermont Bughati Rally

Luckily, Mize has found no shortage of fellow enthusiasts and mechanics in Vermont. "This state is in tune and involved in the old car movement."

For this very reason, Mize is bringing his love home this fall by organizing a Bughati rally here. He hopes to bring together a group of regional enthusiasts and send them all over the back roads of Vermont to recapture that not-as-distant past.

The rally will be based at the Lake Morey Inn in Fairlee and will begin Oct. 1. Mize will blend his experiences with regimented treks and more relaxed journeys "I do this to recapture the past. I find joy in seeing how far you can go on a unpaved road. I love driving in Vermont."

After living most of his life in the Mediterranean Basin, Mize is intimately familiar with the travel history of that portion of the globe. He has driven all but a few hundred miles of the Mediterranean coast and has begun writing a book describing the differences between the political and physical boundaries and histories of the region.

In his spare time, he is also translating an early French memoir about a Bughati adventure from the Sahara to the Atlantic through the French colonies in 1929. Roughly translated the title is "A Mile a Minute Across the Sahara," and it epitomizes the flavor of travel Mize craves and seeks to recreate.

Mize already 10 ten days in Tasmania on a rally with 25 cars earlier this summer. He and some friends have also talked about a "Round the World in 2-Cvs" trip in 2010. He participates in multiple rallies each year.

Simply put, Mize has places to go and he wants the roughest ride to get there. The lessons he learns out on those roads inform his approach in life. " Yes, you can bring back the past," he smirks, quoting "The Great Gatsby."