Sunday Drives - American Muscle, Devil's Beef

Spring has sprung! And in a much more wholesome way than we’re used to in Scotland.

This brings the obvious benefit of good weather, but with that sunshine comes a litany of motorbikes, cyclists, horses and sun-seekers with caravans-in-tow out of hibernation and on to the road network.

I don’t have a problem sharing the road with other road users, but many of us who prefer to travel on four wheels know the frustration of hitting the umpteenth mile of 40mph pootling behind a caravan that just won’t yield, while all the bikers zip past astride their insectoid machines.

This past Sunday, however, I was happy to trundle along at a sedate pace, in a fair-weather convoy of a rather different kind. On my jaunt back from visiting family in Dumfriesshire to Edinburgh on one of my favourite stretches of road, I came upon quite a special cavalcade.



Cresting the peak of the rollercoaster strip of the A701, which winds and whips its way around the Devil’s Beef Tub, a Pontiac Trans Am pulled out of the view point lay-by and into my way. Far from a regular sight in these parts, I was even more astounded to see it was following a Shelby GT500 Mustang, with another V8 monster joining the road behind me.

The pace of these cars was gentle to say the least, so I zipped by them and set myself up at a lay-by further up the road to grab some pics and footage, which I have to share today.

After the brief photo-op, I caught up to the convoy once more and sat behind the Corvette C6 for about 20 miles, enjoying the rumble of the combined roughly 2,000 horsepower ahead of me as we wound our way northward.



(Aye, the video's quite short, but the soundtrack is like God's own bees gargling warm honey.)

From what I could tell, the convoy ran:

• Shelby GT500 Mustang
• Pontiac Trans Am
• Dodge RAM
• Pontiac Trans Am
• Shelby GT500 Mustang
• Chevrolet Corvette C6

Though if I’ve mistaken any in there, those with a more trained eye feel free to let me know; as I said before American muscle the likes of this is not something often seen in the Moffat hills.

Not really much more to this really, just thought I’d pop in a bit about a nice Sunday drive.

I haven’t been able to find out anything about muscle car owners clubs on a run that Sunday (2nd April 2017), so if anyone knows more this please get in touch on Twitter (@Jack_McMotors) as I’d really like to catch up with the drivers and get to know more about their fabulous machines.