TWO thousand miles into the trip, with another 1,000 yet to go, it was a 30-cent fuse that finally stopped us. But maybe that’s the sort of trouble you have to anticipate when trying to cross the continent in an old car.

Accompanied by my co-driver and longtime photographer-friend, Terry Moore, I started out last fall with a simple goal: drive a classic convertible coast to coast, mostly following U.S. Route 50 because it is one of the most intact, Interstate-skirting east-west roads still on the maps. Just two middle-age guys, wives and worries left behind, the open sun-struck road ahead.

And not in just any old car, but a 1958 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, a long-neglected castoff that I bought in South Jersey three years ago and had hauled to Vermont for a rebuild of its engine, transmission and brakes. Otherwise, it remained original  the black paint worn, its red leather tuck-and-roll seat covers splitting at various seams, and whatever mysteries and ailments haunting the wiring, the cooling system and the drivetrain waiting to reveal themselves.