Another great California morning greeting the Club AutoSport Cars & Coffee participants for this month’s gathering.
The Cars
Category Archives: automotive
100Oct Cars and Croissants, April 2014 — Menlo Park, CA
Wow, what a great morning for exotic cars! The variety was fantastic, from 1960’s vintage GT40 to the latest from McLaren, the 650S!! And plenty of heavy metal in between (including an epic MBZ SLS Black, in red).
Here is a gallery of the pics… ENJOY!!
Thanks to the organizers, especially Benoit Boningue, fellow car club member and just plane cool dude.
Take a ride on the wild side – Club Sportiva style.
Wednesday, I took in a nice set of the coast’s best back roads, including a lunch at the infamous Alice’s Restaurnt, all with the help of the great people at Club Sportiva.
Being a complete car nut, instead of borrowing one car, I borrowed these 6 examples of driving awesomeness:
#1 The Batmobile
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Blessed Mother of Acceleration, that thing is more than the sum of it’s parts. For all that it looks, with it’s massive motor, massive hood and ridiculous (ridiculously awesome!) gull wing doors.. I expected just it to be a muscle-bound pig. OK, so it is musclebound, but it didn’t feel like a pig. Not in the least! And to the company listed below, it was a pure joy to drive. Reasonably loud. When set in AMG manual mode the shifts were crisp but not abrupt (unlike one of the other cars in the list). This was probably tied with car #6 for the easiest of the lot to drive.
I fully expected this thing to scare me. And considering we’d be ascending the Calamari Highway at pace, I was apprehensive. I mean, if I bin the car, it’s going to cost me (or at least to me) a small fortune to repair or replace. And these guys check these things OVER before they hand off a set of keys.
So.. the car. It’s like sitting in a leather coffin. It’s tight inside. It makes a Cessna 152 Aerobat seem, accommodating. The door sills are pretty thick, and rather high compared to most any other car. Getting in and out can be a little amusing for an observer. Having the gull wing door shut, which feels like it’s 2′ thick, really made me feel sealed in cockpit of sorts, and just a tad claustrophobic. However once that lump in front was lit up and grumbling, I forgot about all that.
Suspension just sucked up the ratty road surface so well, It didn’t feel at all like the bumpy road of my youth. But that smooth driving didn’t come at the cost of a wishy-washy ride, like a couple of the cars I drove today.
Overall, this is one really fun car to drive. It’s refined enough to be a daily driver, and rude enough to be what it is; one super car.
#2 Street Legal Go-Kart
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Wow.. what a HOOT!! It’s not much in the power category (190 HP) but the weight (1900 lbs) more than makes up for it.
Now, talk about cars with high and thick door sills. This is the patron saint of making men look absurd getting in and out of a street car. If the Benz was like being in a 152, this was like being in a Cub. Getting it started is a little odd. You put the key in, click it forward a few notches, then hunt for the START button (only 1 car today didn’t have a start button) way in the upper left.
For the set of cars today, I thought.. meh… they tossed this in as filler. I can’t say I was really excited about the prospect of driving it.
For the leg of the route I had this car, we made the run across the ridge (Skyline Blvd) to Alice’s. This is one of the sections of road things can really be cracked open. It’s very easy to hold a good 70-80 MPG avg. speed for the section, if you’re balls or wallet are big enough.
I lit it up, listened to the big Benz motor sound (I could not hear the Lotus over the Benz), and we set off. I think it took about 5 seconds for me to start grinning like a complete moron. OOOH BOY, this car is FUN! I want one. It reminds me of my old FZR400. Not much power, but light, and makes you feel sporty when you drive it. Did I mention it’s hilariously FUN!??! Banging up and down in the gears, heel-and-toeing the little thing into the corners and back out again.. it’s fun as snot! I’m going to start checking CL for them!!!
It does have a rather nasty bump-steer on corner exit throttle if you hit some nasty pavement. Of all the cars I drove today, this one scared me the most. You have to be ON your game, or going 25 MPH or it feels like it might dart off into the weeds before you can can finishing crapping your pants. It’s that on edge and that tight. You FEEL the road in that thing, in all the best ways!!! If you haven’t driven one in anger…. DO IT!!
#3 The Barge
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Following a great lunch, the next leg was going to be down one of my favorite Nor Cal roads. Highway 84 to the coast. It’s got great sight lines, 100+ sweepers, technical banked (properly banked) turns… through the rain forest and to the coast. It’s a driver’s (or rider’s) road. And I had what I can only guess is made of neutron materials, for a car. :/ Can’t win them all.
Then I started to drive it, really drive it. Once I pushed it out of auto mode in to tiptronic mode and was able to use the downshifting on corner entry instead relying on the brakes, I reeled the Lotus in with ease.
Wait.. no, not a typo.. yes it’s big, yes it’s fat, (yes it’s big and fat) but wow the motor in that thing must have been stolen from an cargo ship. It’s a monster. Not a fire breathing monster, but a torque shooting out your kiester and never wanting to stop monster. Speeds in excess of ….. were easy, on that road, a road that I nearly never ride my bike on that fast. It’s not a sports car, I know that, and it should royally stink but damn.. if I was old, like in my 40’s or something and needed a luxo-barge… this would most likely get the nod!!! The specs say it has almost 500 ft./lb. of torque and yeah.. OH YEAH!! … I say BRING IT!!
So it turned out that this one favorite part of the road, was enjoyed by a really pretty freaking fun car!!!
At the base of Hwy 84, we headed south on 1 to Pescadero State Beach where performed the next swap. Just as we arrived 2 bus loads of local kids were visiting the beach on a science field trip. The boys were going bonkers checking out the cars, taking pictures with their cell phones (these are like 9-11 y.o. kids.. what are they doing with smart phones!??!).
We give them some extra revs on the way out and manged to put in some WTO runs down 1 before turning up Pescadaro back to the top of the mountain. This is another fantastic piece of road!!. This time on one of the finest sounding cars of the bunch..
#4 Bond, James Bond.
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OK, it’s not a DB9. They sold that one because it was too sloppy feeling. Maybe the DB9 coupe is better but the DB9 vert was supposedly a not mess. And frankly… and this was the biggest disappointment of my day, so was the Vantage. The body didn’t feel especially loose, but the car was nervous, and not in a good way. No matter what I did, what adjustment I made to the nannies, how I brakes and exited corners, I just COULD NOT get this car to handle like I wanted it too. It just felt out of sorts. Now, it could have been the tires, having just been replaced with Hankooks. Most of the cars are on PS2s, except the Bently was on some Continental tire.
Digressing… the sound from this car was FANTSTIC! The exhaust baffles are opened up, so it’s loud, proud and makes an intoxicating sound. And the single clutch computer controlled manual trans (like the BMW SMG) was really fun and responsive, and shifted like a human would shift, not really smooth at all. It had a very nice firm engagement on the up-shift. Maybe my Bimmers clutch is going, or my SMG needs to be re-programmed, but I liked this Aston’s trans a lot.
What I was not so much impressed by was the very obvious lack of power. It really needed the bigger Aston mill with at minimum 500 HP to make this worth the $$$ to me. I have to say.. this car is really making me re-evaluate my desire for an Aston Martin down the road. I was hoping a Vantage would be so much more. Of all the cars today, this is the only one that scared me, really scared me into thinking I could easily bin it, and not because it had too much power! Color me more than a little bummed.
#5 Italian for WT*?!?
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Having returned to Alice’s, I jumped in the next car. This is the only one that I could hear over the Benz. Also uncorked a bit, and the only other row-your-own manual trans in the lot, outside the Lotus. I was a little apprehensive about driving this car, after the bitter disappointment with the Aston. I figured a vaunted marque would once again, show it’s flaws.
And I was not far off the mark, it’s flawed. It’s heavy (ish), It’s old-school manual… AND IT’S A BLOODY RIOT!! OHHHH MY GOD. damn damn damn damn DAMN.
Almost any day I’ll take lucky over good. And this time I was putting my butt in one of the hottest cars of the bunch, for a return run on Hwy 35. And, I had nobody holding me up. 😀 We rocketed along the ridgeline at ludicrous speed. Well, maybe more ludicrous noise than speed. Of all the cars today, this one hit every note you want for an exotic.
- Looks great
- Sounds great
- Goes like raped ape
- Crude
- Rude
- Socially unacceptable.
I fell in looooove. She’s not perfect. In fact this car also put me on edge. Much like the Lotus, it’s tight, stiff, had really noticeable bump-steer, real manual trans, NO rear visibility, it’s about 8′ wider at the rear than the front (or so it seems when you’re worried about dinging wheels that cost about as much as I pull down in a month). Aside from a close call with a pair of bambies, the driving experience was exhilarating!!
The car has no practical purpose. None. Zero. There is no place to put anything in the passenger box. The frunk is smaller than the glove-box on my old Miata, and there is NOTHING for storage to the rear, unlike other exotics I’ve examined. It’s just… a car. A small, low, wide, exhilarating Italian car. The thing feels like it has a soul. The soul of Satan but a soul none the less. This car put a serious case of smiles on my face!!!
The motor was super responsive. Re-reving the motor to coax it into a missed gear, was super easy. It was hard to drive, in just about every good way possible. If I’d had to pick from one of these cars.. it would be up there with the SLS and the next one….
#6 Godzilla
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Straight up. I’m not a big fan of Japanese anything (wait, I take that back, Yamaha is an exception). I’d read the articles, heard the rumors, listened to Klick-and-Klak blather on about the $1000 it costs just for the transmission fluid. It was the closeout car of the day. It’s quiet, it’s big, it’s not at all flashy. It’s like an appliance.
Like a twin-turbo charged fire breathing video game from hell is more like it. It’s easy to start. It’s really comfortable. It has 4 seats, and a truck that can old more than a 1/2 PB&J sandwich. The array of electronic doo-dads is mind numbing. 5 custom display screens with boost, temps, G’s, TPS. YOU NAME IT!! It’s any 10-year old video gamer’s dream. And it’s FAST AS ****.
I’d been warned. When those turbos really start to spool, things start happening fast. My God, of all the vehicles, only the Benz was close with off-throttle torque awesomeness. Despite being a “little” V6 she just about stole the show!
If you want super-car fun on a budget, and also be able to get kids to school and carry a week’s load of groceries.. and you’re on a “budget”. I don’t know how you could go wrong with this thing. WOOO LORDY!!
Popped the trans in race mode, set the suspension to normal (not comfort or race), selected some house music on the sat radio and set about chasing the Lambo down Hwy 9. OK.. so you just gotta let the statement sink in a bit.
Chasing a Gallardo, down the amazing Hwy9, in a GTR.
That.. for me, was almost as epic as hot-lapping Laguna the weekend before! Chasing a dream car, down a road I grew up learning to drive on, while in a car that would murder the Lambo in a drag race while eating sushi.
Oh my… I must say. That as some of the most grin-inducing 5 hours of driving I’ve every done! My how the world has changed for me since I moved back to CA!! 😀
Conclusion:
I’m going to do this again. Next time I’m taking one of the kids with me. One dad had taken his 11 y.o. out of school to do this today. It was his birthday… talk about a kick-ass BD present. At least I think it was!
I realize most of you have been buried with my non-stop picture posts from today… well, all I can say is…. meh.. I was excited, I love cars. so sue me.. 😀
Oh.. and to answer the question.. if I had to pick one of these cars…. which one would it be?
Well, I did have to pick, because I can only drive one car at a time… so I picked this one. She matches my Ducati nicely, NO?
I do have to return it tomorrow…. but the entire family sure had some fun when I got home!! Miranda was the first to take a ride up Hwy9 (which started 1/2 mile from our house.. which.. is sorta nice in itself) with me. Then AJ, and finally Deb went for a ride. Wow.. she had the biggest grin on her face as I ripped that thing up through the gears. WOOOO!!!! I think that if I manage to buy one, she’s not going to complain one freaking bit!!! But.. I don’t see that happening any time soon. Until then, I’ll just keep borrowing them. I think I’m going to grab the SLS next. 😀
A bunch more snapshots
Here are a bunch more snapshots from today!
Lamborghini special Event – Los Gatos, CA (March 2014)
March didn’t offer us the best weather for car gatherings, but that didn’t stop the gathering of some of the most unique Lamborghini’s in Northern California in Los Gatos.
What made the day truly special, as a visit by Lamborghini’s former test driver Valentino Balboni! What a treat to meet Supercar royalty.
The Cars
31 new photos added 12-MAY-2014
Current Reading List – Feb 2012
It has been a good many years since I have posted about my current reading list, so I thought it was about time to fire off another one. These are the books started, completed, being read or on my short-list to start (or in one case re-read) in the month of February.
The 4-Hour Workweek (completed)
I found this book amazingly insightful. Regardless of how much you implement in your own career, it’s a fantastic tome. Those I’ve gifted the book too have all said they really found it useful, interesting and a true paradigm shift in how they view life, career, family and finding a new balance between them that suits you!.
Tim laid out his own struggles in great candor, failures in life time management and how he found a way to over-come all of them. The book is also filled with testimonials from readers of his first edition. If you’re finding that you want more out of your life, struggling with the concept of retirement and wondering what you’ll do when you retire, this book may upset your world, but hopefully in do some will show you some options you might not have considered. Give this a read!
Design of Design (finishing up)
Over the many years in the role of software designer (originally trained in the 80’s, which is my biggest challenge to overcome), there has always been a nagging sense that some part of the process was not working for me. I adjusted, tried other methods, made adaptions, but the old Rational Model (aka Waterfall) of design always seemed to fail me. Now, I understand why! It’s a BAD MODEL. Dr. Frederick Brooks (father of the IBM 360) and now professor at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, rips open the old concepts in this book of his essays on design.
Covering a variety of other design methodologies, this book is not only a theoretical read, but an empirical one. Many real-world examples of design program successes and failures are laid out, almost in a case study format. This is been a very educational read. Lessons learned from this book have been put into place in current projects, and the results are already starting to be seen. Now I just need to start educating my staff and colleagues on these findings. Recommended.
The Creative Priority
I originally read this book in the last 90’s and found it very useful in understanding the creative process. What drives creatives and how to foster a creative culture. Sadly, over the hears of the Dot-Bomb meat-grinder cultural immersion, these concepts and skills have been lost. So, I’m pulling this one back off the shelf for a re-read. I plan to report on it soon.
Cassandra High Performance Cookbook
This is the latest addition to the list, having just arrived this weekend. I’m currently running a project to investigate the suitability of Cassandra to solve problems in a client’s current relational database solution (see my previous post about Cassandra for background).
This book was recommended by the primary authors and maintainers of Cassandra. I look forward to cracking this open and going head-first into this technology.
Amazing VW ‘Glass Factory’
Thanks to the mail list I’m on, this video appeared in my mailbox today. It’s a 6 1/2 minute (you won’t believe it how quickly you find it’s over) tour of a new VW factory in Dresden Germany.
Give it a watch. Although I’ve only had one VW, this same ‘passion’ (can that be used for Germans?) for construction of cars is why I never buy anything else.
Enjoy.
530i Options Sheet
While at the dealer on Monday, I was able to get a printout of the factory options on the car. It’s good to know that the extra ///M parts on the car are as-shipped from BMW, not some post-delivery badge engineering activity.
The highlights, for me, are:
Here is the full sheet:
Changing of the Guard. ML430 says goodbye.
Times change, needs change, and thus, my mind changes too. So, with some regret, because it was a good solid vehicle, I have bid goodbye to the 2000 ML430 SUV that has taken me to CA several times, hauled furniture, electronics and been a nice comfy way to get to work. But, it was also a gas hog. Averaging around 17 MPG. It starts to take it’s toll when you’re daily commute comes in at just over 75 miles (round trip).
But, I really didn’t want to be without my 4 doors. But I also wanted to buy something with a manual transmission. 4 doors, manual transmission, and NOT Japanese, those are almost completely exclusive requirements. Fortunately, not completely exclusive.
What amounted to accidental fortune, while negotiating with a local dealer on an OK (almost-nice) 500SEL the owner of the dealership had returned this vehicle, after personally driving it for months, making it available for sale.
No sooner had it arrived on the lot, and the finance guy suggests that maybe I should at least look at the Beemer that came in. There was a deposit ahead of me on the MBZ anyway, so I couldn’t yet test drive it. I’m not in the habit of saying no to people what suggest I take their nice cars for a drive. I am a gear-head afterall.
Within 10 minutes, I was in love. You see, this just happens to have a nice 24-valve 3.0L I-6 that is as smooth as silk, but not only that, it has a 5-speed MANUAL gearbox. As I rowed through the gears it was smooth, precise, confidence inspiring, and quick. Dare I say fast for a vehicle of this size! I made the test drive solo (I’ve never bought a car from anyone that insisted they go with me on a test drive.. it’s just not possible to really test drive a car with it’s owner on board.. honestly, it’s not), taking about 30 minutes to perform all sorts of tests. Speed, breaking, cornering, drifting, er.. turning, it all worked like a charm.
The 530i drives like a car 1/2 it’s size. How they manage to build them this way, I don’t understand, but, this being my first BMW, at this point, I’m thinking it’s not going to be my last. I almost purchased an ///M3 about a year ago, but another buyer snapped it up before I made it to the dealer in Bothel. No matter, life takes many turns, and sometimes what seems like a negative in turn can be quite positive.
We’re still on our honeymoon, but it’s we’re getting along wonderfully. I’ve driven it to work, and most recently out into the Cascade foothills, trying out it’s handling and real-world drivability. So far, I have not want, other than some new shocks, but that’s not an indictment against the car, it’s just that I like to freshen up all my vehicles with a really nice set of Bilstien shocks. Yes, Bilstien street valved shocks are just THAT good.
My next empirical test will be the check the mileage. The car has an on-board milage computer, but I don’t trust those things as far as I can throw them. Only Fill-Drive-ReFill-Calculate method is the one I trust. That will likely be the next post.
One interesting thing I have learned, and I must sincerely thank the private SF mailing list I am on for this, is this vehicle appears to have the factory sport package. This is evidenced by the ///M badged wheel, shifter and the very nice 3-piece BBS alloys (you can picture above) it’s wearing. I’ll check the VIN and see what I can find out about it, see if it is in fact a factory sport package, or if someone just did a little cosmetic and badge engineering. Regardless, I really REALLY like this car. But, I thought I might, considering I found myself laughing with great joy (dare I say giggling?) as I put my foot in the firewall and took off on the test drive.
Another thing I have learned, is that I need to be VERY careful, er mindful, of my speed in this thing. It’s very easy to being going a lot faster than you should be due to how quiet the car it, even at 90MPH, er.. highway speeds.
More to come…
Northern Lights Photography Mission – failure to success
Tonight, the Northern Lights were visible at latitudes low enough, to be seen in the Puget Sound.
Armed with my trusty Bogen carbon fiber tripod, my 17mm F/2.8 lens and a heart full of hope, I headed out to part of the county with a Northern facing beach. A few others were there to try to take in the spectical.
Sadly fires burning in Canada to the north, provided enough haze and smoke to obscure any chance of seeing this great sight. But that doesn’t mean I might not catch it on the camera (stranger things have happened).
Tonight, wasn’t one of them, BUT I did goof around with long exposures, lighting and moving objects.
This is what I captured:
Last shot. Reduced the time and waited for some departing traffic to pass me. A car came over the road in the opposing direction, but did not have it’s high-beams on, so shot was no totally washed out.
This has given me some ideas for other night photography projects. One I’d like to try is a set of long-exposure time lapse pics of the helicopters. So far, the opportunity has not yet presented itself.
Two of my favorite Porsche ads, ever.
The first one was basically me. On the wall of my bedroom, I have a pencil drawing of a 911 I did in high school.
VIDEO: → Porsche – The Boy
The second is the introduction video for the 993 (that last one I owned, so far). The cool thing was that I’d found the audio for the video, tossed it on my iPod and played it on my trip to CA. It just happened to start playing these tracks as I drive through the tree archway into Napa on a great sunny day. One of those top-25 memories I’ll die with.
VIDEO: →993-Are You Listening (1995)