But that’s not right – this car has something you can’t steal. It’d never really be happy with anyone else in the saddle except for the one who brought it up from a foal, so to speak. Not to mention that I don’t have any idea what half of these buttons and gauges are for. It’s a bit like being handed the keys to a Twin Otter after a five-minute flying lesson. “Here’s the stick, there’s the throttle, your feet go on the rudders. Go.”

And then we swap seats back and Dave shows what the Rally Bug can really do. Under his hands, a clearly familiar pattern begins to emerge: his left foot slides over for a touch of braking as the front slightly washes wide, the back comes around on the throttle and the little Bug just whangs through the corner like a pinball coming off a flipper. You can feel it through the chassis, a little slide, a little pivot – Dave’s grin gets even bigger.

This is the first outing for the Rally Bug this season, and at the end of the run Hord pops the engine cover and reaches in to adjust the all-over-the-place idle. “I love this car,” he says fondly. Because of how loud the past half-hour just was, I ask him to repeat himself.

This bond between man and machine is actually Hord’s daily bread these days. Along with his long-time friend Warwick Patterson, a cameraman covering rallying and other racing, Dave founded Classic Car Adventures based on the idea that there might be other nuts out there who’d prefer to drive their classic cars rather than just sit at home buffing their bumpers.

The company started out with their Spring Thaw run in 2010, and this year has expanded to events in Ontario and Colorado. You get all kinds of stuff showing up at the runs: classic American muscle, cantankerous two-stroke Saabs, pre-war Aston Martins, Mini Mokes. The owners are equally as varied, but they do tend to have one common thread.

“Oh, I already know what I’ll do for the next one,” Dave says, “But I’ll never strip out this car. I’m keeping it for sure.”

Over the past year and a half, Dave’s put about fifty thousand kilometres on this car, roving around finding the best roads for his company’s events, or just taking an aimless drive like today’s. It’s an extension of his personality, a bundle of charm and little flaws that eschews restoration and favours individuality. It’s a triumph of a personal vision over cookie-cutter concours perfection.

Hitler would have hated it. We love it.

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