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Vintage German Convoy on PCH (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Porsche)

Followed a convoy of older German cars up PCH into Oxnard recently. they seemed to be having a lot of fun, despite the foggy/hazy conditions (but how can you not have fun in a 190SL)?

Mercedes-Benz 190SL, original CA plates adding to the allure.

Which one of these doesn't quite fit in with the others? The Porsche 911 is a great car for this road though, even if it's a little too new to be riding with this crowd.

Impartial to white Mercedes Benz 280SL. The wheels seem to be from a later model 450SL. Mercedes is one of the few older cars where I prefer their stock look to any of the easy mods such as wheels, custom paint colors, etc. The symmetry of the W113 cars doesn't work right with mag-type wheels. 


Another Mercedes Benz 190SL. It's like a 300SL for people who still fall into the "Aspirational Buyer" category. Unfortunately, prices on these have been climbing as the 300SL prices have got stratospheric, so the 190SLs in show condition are even becoming out of reach at this point.

The orange BMW 2002 and black Mercedes 190SL (with yellow plates) make a nice contrast. If only the lupines and poppies were in bloom, it'd be a real mishmash of distracting colors...

Hanging out in the waiting room at Volvos Only...

The waiting room at Volvos Only is as big as the sky. Okay, so it's not really a waiting room, but it's always nice to be able to sit out in the sun in the middle of February, particularly while basking the the warm aura of Dean Pleasants' beautiful. Volvo 1800ES. Love those wheels!

No!! I said I wanted a HOOD ornament!!!

Actually, I can't think of a better way to advertise around Malibu that you're handy with a welding torch than to craft a pretty cool piece of sculpture and hang it from the back of your SUV. This angel is beautifully detailed and takes me back to my misspent youth in San Luis Obispo where such welded metal (juxtaposed against wood shingles) set the tone for developer John King's interior work downtown.

Lord help anyone who rear-ends this vehicle though...

Spyker C8 SWB, VW R32 MK IV

It's tough to melt into the crowd in a Spyker C8. They just don't lend themselves to anonymity. Even at Supercar Sunday they tend to stand out, so on a sidestreet in Hollywood it's a difficult car to miss. 

Not much in the way of pithy (or otherwise) commentary today...I just liked the colors in these photos.

Gumpert Apollo - Subtle it's not...

While driving home from a wine event recently my steely-eyed focus on driving was momentarily distracted as I passed by a tuner's shop in Century City. "Tuner shop" doesn't really do this place justice, seeing as how the tuner is Claus Ettensberger and the wheels he sells (and manufactures) can cost something in the neighborhood of the GNP of a developing country. This is the sort of virtual neighborhood where the security people drive around behind me to make sure that I belong there. Century City has no such restrictions, and since it was kind of late in the evening, I was allowed to gawk at the purty orange car radiating its speedalicious aura out through the showroom window.

The Gumpert Apollo is not particularly subtle. I mean, there are supercars and then there are SUPERcars, and Gumpert galls in that rarified category of >$400K+ automobiles that you rarely see anywhere, much less on the street. Pagani, Koenigsegg, McLaren, and Bugatti are other marques that spring readily to mind when one has become blasé about seeing yet another Ferrari 599 GTO or Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 parked at Neptune's Net on a Sunday afternoon. Some of these just plain ol' supercars lend themselves to a stealth treatment, but the Gumpert? With lines like these you might as well paint it orange because it's going to draw all sorts of attention wherever you go. Probably draws the attention of the local gendarmerie as well, but if you can afford a car such as this you can afford the Valentine One and/or the occasional ticket for going oh, 140 mph over the speed limit. 

Roland Gumpert was an Audi engineer so it's understandable that a modified Audi 4.2 twin-turbo engine powers this monster. A 6-speed sequential transmission puts its 750hp (in the Apollo S) to the ground remarkably efficiently and effectively, given that it weighs less than 2700 lbs. Carbon fiber certainly does wonderful things to "add lightness" to a car.  

The Apollo in any configuration is fast, setting a Nürburgring lap record at 7:11.57 back in 2009. The record has been broken by others, but what's a few seconds among friends?