A Grandfather Clock, A 1983 Citroën 2CV, And A Track Record That Nobody Can Take Away

There are track records you chase for years. Lap timers, tire compounds, suspension geometry, the right conditions. And then there are track records that walk up to you in a parking lot in the form of a guy carrying a grandfather clock out of a Ford Maverick. You don't plan for those. You just say yes.

That's more or less what happened at the Autopian's first members-only track day at Lime Rock Park, where Jason Torchinsky showed up with his 1983 Citroën 2CV and left with what he's claiming, pretty reasonably, is a certified track record. Specifically: fastest car ever to complete a lap at Lime Rock while carrying a grandfather clock. Nobody's checked the official books, but I'd be shocked if this one has competition.

The setup matters here. The 2CV has a documented association with grandfather clocks going back to the car's early promotional history, a recurring visual that made a kind of perfect sense: you can put anything in it, and it will handle it. It will lean dramatically, but it will not fall over. Torchinsky had written about that tradition at the Autopian, and someone read it and decided to do something about it.

That someone is an Autopian member named David. Beyond that, the reporting available doesn't give a last name or background, only that he read the piece, sourced a grandfather clock, loaded it into his Ford Maverick, and drove it to Lime Rock. If you've ever wondered what separates a great track day from a memorable one, the answer is usually someone willing to do exactly that.

The clock went into the 2CV. Of course it did. It stuck out through the roof. The 2CV didn't care. The car was designed in France in the 1940s, and the engineering reason for its composure is genuinely interesting if you've never dug into it. The suspension design allows the car to lean like a carnival ride while transferring load progressively enough that rollover stays off the table. Torchinsky was giving passenger rides and letting it lean to angles that would make a modern crossover's stability control start sending distress signals, and the 2CV just kept going. Clock and all.

He ran the autocross course with it. He also completed a parade lap on the main circuit. The record claim is built on that parade lap: fastest clock-carrying car ever to complete a circuit lap at Lime Rock Park. The reasoning is airtight, in the same way any record nobody else has tried for is airtight. No official lap time has been reported for the run, which means the record exists entirely in the category of fastest, not how fast, and that's probably fine.

I want to be honest that I wasn't there. This is Torchinsky's story and the Autopian's event, and I'm writing about it because it landed in my inbox at the right moment. The piece doesn't report on what modifications, if any, Torchinsky made to the 2CV to prepare it for track use, and the reporting available doesn't fill that gap. What it does say is that the car ran, leaned, and returned, which for a 2CV is probably preparation enough.

The grandfather clock thing is funny, obviously. But there's something underneath it worth naming. The 2CV has absolutely no business being on a road course by any conventional performance metric. In racing trim, these cars produce somewhere between 40 and 50 horsepower from a 602cc engine. The car weighs 665 kg. It predates the modern concept of active safety by decades. And it's one of the most joyful things you can drive, precisely because none of those metrics tell you anything useful about what it feels like to hustle one through a corner at the limit of its very reachable limits.

That's the whole thesis. You don't need a four-figure horsepower number to have the best time at the track. You need the car to respond to you, to put what you're doing with your hands and feet into a language the car answers back in. The 2CV does that. It does it with a grandfather clock hanging out the roof and a passenger trying to figure out whether to laugh or grab the door handle.

Track days that stick in memory tend not to be about the fastest car in the lot. The weird machine that demands you actually drive it, that keeps you at the limit of something reachable rather than somewhere past the limit of something terrifying, those are the ones worth talking about. The 2CV is that kind of car. It demands engagement and rewards it immediately.

So yes, the record stands. Fastest lap at Lime Rock Park for a car carrying a grandfather clock, set by a 1983 Citroën 2CV with Jason Torchinsky behind the wheel and a piece of antique furniture sticking out the roof. The Autopian has the photos. Nobody's appealing it. And somewhere, a guy named David is driving home in a Maverick, probably smiling, having absolutely nailed what he went there to do.