Go Get Your Kicks: The Europeans Obsessed With a U.S. Highway

Wolfgang Werz took a drag on his cigarette and a sip from his coffee cup, looked at his watch and blew his whistle.It was 8 a.m.

in the parking lot of the Best Western in suburban St.Louis, time for Mr.

Werz to rally his troops — a dozen German and Swiss tourists — so they could jump on their Harley-Davidson motorcycles and head out on Route 66.Mr.Werz, who is 67, rattled off the day’s stops on their roughly 200-mile stretch through Missouri: the Wagon Wheel Motel in Cuba; the rocking chair in Fanning; the Devil’s Elbow Bridge; the Redmon’s Candy shop in Phillipsburg; and, by about 5 p.m., Springfield, the birthplace of the highway known as the “The Main Street of America.”Then Mr.

Werz, a wiry, weather-beaten former ski instructor from Tübingen, Germany, looked at the group of middle-aged bikers in leather jackets and boots and gave them their marching orders on day three of their two-week, 2,500-mile sojourn from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif.: “Let’s go get your kicks.”The “Mother Road,” as John Steinbeck dubbed Route 66 in “The Grapes of Wrath,” turns 100 this year, and the motels, diners and gas stations along the road have repaired their neon signs, refreshed their menus and stocked their shelves with commemorative goods for the flood of extra traffic.Tourism boards and Route 66 associations have held classic car rallies, street painting contests and art installations, including a 23-foot stained-glass-style push pin that marks the midpoint of the road in Oklahoma....