A360P

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...

Cars on Flatbeds, Part 2

 

"It's always good to have a spare racecar on the truck in case something goes awry with the first one" is what I always say...

The BMW Z8 is my favorite BMW of the modern era. It offers exceptional performance combined with timeless design. This one appears to be in the process of being trucked off to the dealer for service work. Then again....

 

I'm sure that someone will get a lot of chuckles during the resurrection of this car. Its design is damn sporty (I love coupes) but there appears to be enough rust on the body that most of the panels are going to need replacement. Not inexpensive, but possibly worth the effort. Possibly not.

Okay, so maybe this one isn't exactly a car, but it's got an engine that would weigh down just about any car, only it's in a boat. Impressive to comprehend, I sorta wish Santa Claus would bring me one of these someday...

2012 BMW M5 in Malibu

One sees some interesting cars with some inspired paint jobs while cruising up and down PCH but this BMW with all its badges blocked out drew my attention around the end of February. Jonny Lieberman recently spied a similar car in Hollywood and reported in Motor Trend that it's the 2012 BMW M5. It was loud, fast, and very in control as it headed down the hill toward Webb Way, the hill where the LA County Sheriffs usually sit with their radar guns. No such problem that afternoon though.

I'm not sure that I like the flush look of the quad exhaust pipes but it's not like I'm in the market to lay out the kind of serious kale that'll be necessary to own (much less lease) one of these. I'd also prefer a two-door, given my druthers, and what the heck, if I were the designer, instead of the quad tail pipes, how about one big one in the center of the rear bumper to appeal to fans of the Pagani-Zonda? The black and white camo job above would also be kinda interesting to have on the entire car, not just on the new bits.

Leftover shots from this past week, omnibus edition

Sometimes, no theme takes shape from the cars I see but there are some interesting photos anyway. Narrative's overrated anyway, am I right?

The groovy psychedelic-like paint job on this big Mercedes-Benz parked on PCH is appropriately a little out of focus.  There was a guy in San Luis Obispo in the early 1970s who had his Jaguar XKE and Mercedes-Benz 280SL custom painted in a similar rainbow scheme. We thought he was kind of odd, but after all, he was in the film business somehow so such flamouyancy was to be expected.

Here's a Rolls-Royce mule, one of the participants in the daily BMW phalanx.

Speaking of BMW mules, here are a couple more. Pass the Borax, si'l vous plait!

 The Lotus Elise is a beautiful piece of machinery. Lightweight - and maybe even overpowered for its size and weight (but who's complaining?), I'd like to drive one someday around Encinal Rd and the other roads in the hills above Malibu. It seems purpose-built for this area. 

This E30 BMW M3 was restored to an outrageously high condition. It looked beautiful, and sounded even better:

 
Do I like this color? Eh, not bad. Kind of stealthy actually, but I still prefer something a little showier, like something along the lines of the Lotus Elise shown above. What's the point in having a car that was as advanced in its era as an E30 M3 and having it in a color that enables it to fade into the pavement?

Psychedelic Paint on BMW 6 Series Mule

Fell in with a pack of BMW test mules coming back from the market last week. Among the usual motorcade of beat-up 3 series cars was this BMW 6 Series Convertible with a crazy paint job. I much prefer this type of test mule camouflage to the usual dull black primer approach - it's a lot more fun to look at. From the auto manufacturer's viewpoint (so to speak) it also makes it more difficult for competitors (or spyshot photographers) to pick up any new styling cues when the car is seen on the street.

Spend too much time stuck behind this car after a long day at the computer and you could probably hypnotize yourself.

At some point I'm going to have to paint the Volvo P1800ES and this sort of design scheme could work. The Volvo is a 1972 model and a psychedlic approach would fit right in with its curvy lines. Might be a problem finding someone who could do such a piece of art on the car though...

Ferrari 250 GT Boano, Mini Mule, and Jay Leno (sans car)

Just another Sunday morning in Malibu....what appears to be a Ferrari 250 GT Boano just driving along PCH by Pepperdine. I like the low roofline and the way that the lines are flowing without any hard edges. IIRC, there was a little bit of smoke coming from the exhaust, but that's to be expected in this era (late 50s-early 60s) Ferrari.

But the Pacific Coast Highway has some practical purposes, at least as a test drive for BMW's Mini Cooper. Here's a development mule on the road to greater reliability for the entire lineup:

 

And finally, car guy Jay Leno shooting one his man on the street interviews:

 

The first time I ever saw Leno work was back around 1977 when I accompanied Emory Gordy Jr. and other members of John Denver's band when the singer was guest-hosting the Tonight Show. Leno had opened for them for about month's worth of tours and needless to say, the band members knew his routine. They knew it so well, that while he was performing on camera for the show, the entire band (including James Burton, Glen D. Hardin, and IIRC Hal Blaine) was reciting the routine word-for-word along with him in the green room. I admired Jay's consistency as well as the musician's ability to remember every word of his performance. All that I recall of it was that he had something in there about getting finger burns after taking the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading Course. Boffo material in its day I guess....

Pebble Beach Tour d'Elegance, Part Deux

As glorious as it may be to be in Carmel during Concours week, it can be a bit of a pain if you have to be working during the event and we were there to sell Torbreck wine, not gawk at extraordinary automobiles. Thus Matt Peterson (of J&L Wine) and I found ourselves parking on the outskirts of downtown on August 12th and hiking a fairly long distance into the commercial center, all because the Tour d'Elegance participants were stopping for lunch downtown. Not only were the street closed off so that the Tour cars could be displayed, but all of the parking spots for blocks around were taken up by the cars of the people who'd driven into the area to see the free show. Out of breath though I was, I had a few minutes in which to get some photos between stops at Casanova, The Cheese Shop of Carmel, and Le St Tropez. As you'll notice, the crowd was massive, making it impossible to get a good shot of the cars, but it's all part of the Pebble Beach experience.

This highly stylized Cadillac Biarritz Eldorado was parked on a side street. It's among the most memorable cars I saw all weekend...

Not unexpectedly, this Bugatti Atlantic received a lot of attention from the crowd. 

I'm a sucker for a Facel Vega. It goes back to my youth, where I used to walk past a used car lot in San Luis Obispo that had one for sale. It was offered at only $1800, but I was 16 years old and $1800 might have been a millions bucks, given my resources at the time (they also had an AC Bristol Aceca for $3400). Anyhow, this car in Carmel was beautifully restored and makes me think that I should have gone to much greater lengths to get the Facel Vega 30+ years ago.

The hike back up the the hill to where the car was parked was taxing in terms of cardiovascular workouts but worth it in terms of the cars we saw. It's sort of a preferential tossup between this BMW 3.0 and the Mercedes/McLaren SLR convertible parked behind it:

This Maserati tag-team of a Merak and a Ghibli was inspiring:

And this Mercedes Benz 600 was large and imposing enough to be the ideal transport vehicle to get us back to the top of the hill where our car was parked:

On the way to our next stop at Favoloro's Big Night Bistro in Pacific Grove, we saw a beautiful Bugatti turning onto the road leading to Pebble Beach:
And finally, the world's most conservatively colored Lamborghini Gallardo ever to leave the factory:

Acura NSX - A lesson on Economics

A friend of mine used to have an Acura NSX about ten years ago. He loved it, but his wife hate, hate, hated the car. It was too low to the ground, too fast, and wtf, maybe she was just the teensiest bit right that it wasn't exactly the most appropriate car for a middle-aged bankruptcy fraud attorney to be driving through traffic to work every day. He eventually acceded to her wishes ("wishes" is being nice- she kind of said she'd never ride in the same car with him unless he got rid of the NSX) and, upon the recommendation of one of his clients, bought a staid-looking, verging-on-dour 1996 four-door BMW M3.

After driving it a month or two, my friend thought that the M3 was "okay"and had nicknamed it "Pig Slow" and had come to grips with the fact that this wasn't a particularly fun car to drive in comparison to the Acura but that it was better than a lot of other choices. It felt heavy and slower than the NSX (big surprise) and he mentioned his lack of elation came to his client the next time they spoke. The next day, the phone rang and some guy with a German accent told him to deliver the car and $5K in cash to an address deep in the heart of the San Fernando Valley. After confirming that the address was legit, money was obtained, the car was delivered, and my friend waited to see what was going to happen to his car.

What happened was Dinan. Early Dinan suspension upgrades. Perhaps the car was chipped too. Fun by the buckets. When the car was returned, it looked exactly as it did when it went away, but for a slightly skulky, lowered look. It felt better, it felt more powerful, it felt fun.

A call was made to see if throwing more cash at it would result in more fun. The response was "ja, but you've got to go to driving school before we do anything that would probably kill you."  He attended the BMW race school and liked it. He attended again and drove real fast. He went up to Willow Springs for Danny McKeever's Fast Lane driving school and learned to drive even faster. The car still looked bone-stock but it was a screamer. It had all sorts of motor mods, 5 point harness, structural bracing, and it smelled like a gas can when he'd go full out in it, but it was a great car to run at Willow Springs on Sunday and drive to work downtown on Monday.

He got involved in SCCA races and began buying BMW racecars, a 320 here, an M3 there, a trailer and a truck to tow the growing stable of cars. He had a mechanic working almost full time for him, and he did well in the Southern California SCCA BMW competitions. This was financed not only by the immense amount of time invested in throwing scumbags into jail and retrieving money for investors they'd scammed, but by selling off a lot of incredible wine that had been amassed over 30+ years. Not a problem. He not only wanted to drive fast, he was good at driving fast (being fearless behind the wheel at a track helped a lot).

Now, a casual observer might say that he was already driving fast back when he had the NSX, but one might think that he wasn't driving with the proper appreciation of the act of driving, that the NSX makes things too easy. Yeah, he would have saved a ton of dough if his wife would have let him keep the Acura (to say nothing of the wine that's irreplaceable at anywhere near the prices he paid for the cases on release). He's had a hell of a lot of fun over the years with the BMWs, but who's to say that he wouldn't have been better off on a whole number of fronts had he kept the Japanese car? The $70-80,000 he had into the Acura has been far eclipsed by what he's got into his BMWs, but I've gotta think that the racing experience is something he probably wouldn't have had were it not for his being forced to get rid of the Acura.

I've seen a couple of Acura NSXs lately. Maybe it's a conspiracy to get me to buy one someday? By all accounts, they're great cars. I tend to prefer European cars to Asian cars (which is not to say that I would turn down the opportunity to drive a Nissan GR-R) but I'm not particularly into ideology, particularly as it pertains to cars.
The car above was photographed in the motor courtyard of the Inn of Spanish Bay in Carmel, CA last weekend during the Pebble Beach Food & Wine event. This could not have gone over well with Lexus (sponsors of the event), as this NSX was attracting a lot more attention than the Lexii displayed around the grounds. It was beautifully restored and issued a deep, throaty growl in the general direction of anyone following behind. There are a number of motor mods that can be done to up the hp and suspension upgrades can be found online. The NSX is a reliable car that can be driven hard on the track but also be used as a daily driver. The design didn't really evolved much from its 1990 introduction; late models look a lot like the early cars. It could probably be categorized as a semi-supercar that my mother could drive (assuming she could get in and out of it). Looking at the resale market, good examples have held their value better than expected, although nowhere near what the exotic supercars have done. Clean NSXs can be found for $25-50,000 on eBay....the red car above came from a dealership and looked real clean. Parts are available and it still looks like it'd be a blast to drive, whether on a track or just cruising down Olympic Boulevard on your way to your office downtown.

BMW Mules/Biggest Loser Marathon

Sometimes you just want to go to the hardware store but then events conspire against you to make it just a little more difficult than it should be. Take Monday, for instance....lots of traffic on PCH, people driving slowly in the fast lane to get a better glimpse of the water. Can't blame 'em, but I was in a hurry. It was just past Sycamore Cove where I spotted the BMW mule convoy:

These cars are out regularly, testing new innards for BMW. The bodies are taped-over (or maybe taped together at this stage) but it's the telemetry inside that matters.

There's usually 3-6 cars driving along at any given time. I suspect they drive a regular route to better get information on how a particular car's system holds up over time. It's all kind of mysterious but necessary. I would think that testing cars in this area is a little easier than say, working Death Valley, but maybe it's a fun job.

At the end of the above stretch of road, things came to a halt. They were filming a marathon for "The Biggest Loser" TV show and it was ending at Sycamore Canyon. The crew shadowing the contestants was sizable and mainly driving Priuses (Priui?)

Note the Highway Patrol presence, both in cars and on motorcycles - there were lots more where these came from...  Here's a shot of another runner with Mugu Rock in the background. In general, it's not a car commercial unless it's got Mugu Rock in it somewhere (at least not a California car commercial).

All in all, a slight delay in my travels is a small price to pay to live so close to such glamour. Right. I just hope that filming TV shows, movies, educational film strips, whatever brings enough money into the area (and to the State of California) that it justifies the hassle and irritation it cause the locals. At least the CHP officers are probably making some overtime money...

BMW 2002tii

Reasonably priced and eminently sporty the BMW 2002 was a benchmark of affordable exotics in the late 1960s through the mid 1970s. The 2002tii was the fuel-injected version, faster (and cooler) than the regular 2002. My sister had a 2002 for awhile and I enjoyed driving it the few times I had the opportunity. The first time I noticed a tii was back around 1980 when I was helping out during pre-production for a Jackson Browne tour. He was way into BMWs at that time and took delivery of a highly modified 2002tii one day during rehearsal. It would be interesting to find out what happened to that car, which shop did the work, and if it ever ran properly.

There's a lot of interest in this car, with an owners group called The tii Register maintaining an excellent website that serves as a resource for all things tii. 

Tons of other good info on the tii to be found at my2002tii.com, a site documenting the restoration of the owner's 2002tii. There are also some useful links to other BMW websites focusing on the tii.

The car in these photos was parked at County Line a couple of weeks ago when the surf was up. It's a nice alternative to the usual car used to transport surfers and surfboards to the beach. Not a show car, but a beautiful car to take out for regular drives.