Mark Basso built it and they’re coming! Only thing is, when they show up they make a helluva lot more noise than Shoeless Joe and the ghostly Field of Dreams boys. The Autobahn Country Club gang go VROOM! before blurring out. Basso, he loves it.


Basso with classmate Paul Hulseman'82, President of the National Alumni Association.  Husleman knew he had been taken for a ride.

The former Blue Streak tailback is a speed guy and a car guy. As a small boy, he took his dad’s mower and carved out a dirt bike race track on the empty lot next door. When he was at JCU, he’d take his gold TransAm and career through outlying cornfields in the small hours. After graduating and returning to northern Illinois to sell insurance and raise a family, Basso bought Porsches and raced them. The insurance sold, Penny and the four kinds throve, and Mark had his toys, He also had a dream. VROOM!

About seven years ago, Basso took the dream out of his head and named it: The Autobahn Country Club (ACC). The concept? A country club where driving high performance automobiles replaces using a club to get a small ball into a hole. Penny said, “Go for it.” Basso persuaded three guys to be his partners; looked for land; talked to track designers and engineers; passed muster with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers; got down with bureaucrats; spent a year obtaining the various permits. Simultaneously, he was corralling 40
dream-sharers who were willing to pony up 100K (to be reimbursed) for a lifetime portion; then he snared a few hundred more who agreed to pay 15- 30K initiation fees and three thousand yearly dues so they can play in Basso’s country club.

By the time all those people were lined up to play, it was April 2005; esteemed race track designer Alan Wilson had done his magic; the heavy equipment was leaving the 320 acres near Joliet, Illinois; the gentlemen (not only) were starting their engines, and Basso was looking like an entrepreneurial wizard and a forty-something with the coolest backyard in the hood.



No one seems to know if this is the only auto racing operation on the planet based on the country club model, but it probably is. The North Circuit is 1.46 miles and 10 turns; the South Circuit is 2.10 miles with 14 turns; the road racing tracks are contiguous and can be combined to total 3.56 miles. A go-kart track will be built. The present clubhouse is bare bones. Basso plans to replace it with a clubbier one containing a byadmission auto museum. Nearly 20 very large garages for member’s vehicles have been
constructed and more are coming.

Basso’s a media magnet, but, as yet, it’s mostly regional. Of ACC, racer Mark Junge said, “It
definitely goes in my top-three tracks in the country.”

His colleague Bob Deily echoed, “Phenomenal.” Basso’s face nakedly reveals his delight: “I did not
do this for money. To go from nothing – literally –
and build it…You take one step and if that doesn’t
blow you off, you take another step. I had to sell all
my Porsches, all my toys. It’s just been incredible how it’s taken off.

“The neat thing about Autobahn is that there are two tracks. It’s like a golf club with two 18-hole courses. One’s for the members; the other is rented for corporate events, driving schools. Michael Jordan’s motorcycle team was here yesterday. Morgan Stanley’s here today with clients and Porsche providing the cars. They’re teaching people how to drive; they do a skid path; they learn to oversteer
and control the car; they’ll do acceleration and braking on pit row and then a lead and follow around the north track.

“I was the poster child for bad teenage driving – I had a guardian angel on my shoulder. … Golf is fine, but it’s not fast enough, and I’m always thinking I should be calling some guy. When I’m in the car,
there is nothing else. Once you’re in the rhythm, you’re 100% focused.”

You can see that when you’re in the passenger seat with Basso. It’s not driving; it’s another kind of activity. For a passenger, it’s scary. Basso’s never had a scrape, but everyone wears a bracelet
indicating they signed a waiver; an ambulance is always at the ready. For a passenger who has never been on a roller coaster because his butterflies are big, it’s really scary. So scary your eyes are – mostly – closed, and your feet are pushing through the floor, and your shoulder is trying to become part of the metal of the delicate – it’s a blue butterfly – Lotus Elise race car that Mark Basso is piloting on the
South Circuit. The speed isn’t that great, maybe 100, but the braking and the turns are unlike anything in ordinary life.

“Speed isn’t what impresses me,” Basso had said. “Braking does. Braking from 140 mph in 20 feet. “ Paul Hulseman ’82 and the reporter didn’t do that, but they did enough to understand how different this kind of driving is, and to understand that Mark Basso is a driver and an impressive entrepreneur, and to understand that inside the VROOM there is a WHEE!

jp