A360P

2010 Porsche Cayenne Caravan on PCH

The problem with trying to get quick shots (spy pix or otherwise) of fast-moving vehicles is that I'm invariably driving 60mph+ in one direction while they're driving at 60mph+ in the other direction. Factor in the curves and hills of PCH, the 5-7 seconds it takes to awaken the camera (much less find it in the car) and I can't begin to tell you how many cool shots I've missed (the 2010 Aston Martin Rapide spotted in the Palisades last weekend being only the latest).

Case in point, a damn CONVOY of unbadged 2010 Porsche Cayennes were heading up the coast and I came upon them just north of Latigo Canyon road. Seven or eight of them were all lined up, probably for some sort of press drive. Between the time I saw the first one in a distance (a fleet of blacked-out test cars tends to be visible from at least a little distance away), five or six had whizzed past me. I was able to get the camera up in time to let the auto-focus do its thing and get the above photo. I've got no way of knowing where these were the Cayennes with the hybrid engines, or a diesel, V-6, V-8 or even turbo V-10 model, but I like the changes made to the body contours for this year. My fear is that the designers are edging closer to the look of the Infiniti FX nowadays. Not a major problem, but I find that swoopy-lined cars such as the Lexus SC10 and Infiniti FX put me more in the mind of Jessica Rabbit's ride (from Who Framed Roger Rabbit) than say a curvaceous Delahaye, Mercedes 300SL, or BMW Z8.

Alfa Romeo GTV 2000 (the first car I ever wrecked)

My driving record has been pretty good thus far, given the numbers of miles I drive and the types of roads I'm on. However, it is not without its blemishes, the first (and most memorable) being back in the early 1970s when an Alfa Romeo GTV 2000 became the first car I ever wrecked. And I wasn't even driving the damn thing at the time....

I was in the latter stages of suffering the slings and arrows inherent in being a high school student and had found part time work in a San Luis Obispo, CA hi-fi shop called Stereo West. This was owned by Cliff Branch and Tom Spalding, two guys who were both very much into cars. While my primary job was to dust and vacuum the stereo equipment and keep the shop looking vaguely neat and clean, I also got to wax their cars. Over the couple of years I worked there, I got to work on cars such as a Jaguar XKE, Porsche 911, Fiat 124, De Tomaso Pantera, Maserati Bora, and even the only street legal Porsche Carrera RSR in the country at that time. Thus it was that I was sent over up over Cuesta Grade to Tom's house in Santa Margarita to wash and wax his Alfa in preparation for sale to the manager of the Cigar Factory, a downtown SLO restaurant.

Tom lived in a place known as the Trout Farm, and appropriate name, given the fact that it was a real trout farm. There were concrete fish pools around the property and the whole place was built into a bucolic setting with sloping hills with lots of live oak trees scattered around the property. I began working on the Alfa, when it somehow slipped out of gear and gravity did its thing. The car began rolling and I tried to stop it (or at least slow it down) but to no avail. It gathered momentum and within a few seconds had rolled about 50 feet down the hill and into a steep creekbed where (fortunately) it came to a rest on a large oak tree about halfway down the hill. I recovered my wits enough to run up to the main house where I called Tom to give him the bad news. He was remarkably cool about the situation. He called a tow truck and headed out to see just how bad the damage was. It turned out that it wasn't catastopic, b the car definitely received a good dose of body work, with the result being that it was still sold to the guy who had already planned to purchase it, and I stopped doing house calls for car waxing.

Tom and Cliff wound up doing okay, eventually building Stereo West into a mail order stereo company called Warehouse Sound Company, and that split off into California Cooperage, the company that brought the hot tub experience to most of the USA. It was all sold off to various entities, with Cliff heading off to a career as a real estate mogul and political firebrand, and Tom driving in the Can-Am series for awhile before pursuing entrepreneurial interests in the computer world. 

The Alfa pictured above looks to be a fun car to drive on the weekends. The GTV 2000s (and their predecessors) haven't reached the sort of resale value that would justify a full-on restoration (which is not to say that people don't do it anyway) so from a distance, this car looks pretty sharp. Then again, it oughta, given that it was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro for Bertone. I really wish that I'd actually had the opportunity to drive one.

Porsche 550 Spyder

About a week after returning from seeing the Porsche 550 (replica or otherwise) in Austria, I was passed by an equally loud Porsche 550 (replica or otherwise) on PCH. I couldn't get a close-enough shot of the old CA license plate to know whether this was an original or replica, but the car seemed nicely done either way. No bumpers, louder than hell, and it looked like a lot of fun.

Porsche Carrera GT

(23 June, 2009)

While I tend to prefer Italian over German styling, I caught up with this Porsche Carrera GT a little further down PCH than the Lamborghini I saw at Topanga and I've got to say that I prefer the style of this car over the Murciélago. They're both roughly in the same price range, they do a lot of the same things well (like go fast), and I'm highly unlikely to ever be faced with trying to decide between buying one or the other, so why not be picky?

From this rear view, the Carrera GT reminds me of some of the "Cars of the Future" that GM, Ford, and Chrysler had designed for the big car shows. Looking like some sort of a cross between Buckminster Fuller engineering design and a dishwasher from The Jetsons, the car looks svelte and muscular at the same time, putting forth a rather sinister demeanor, albeit in a fun-loving, sunshine-enjoying sort of way.  While the Carrera GT is capable of all sorts of pyrotechnics and automobilic histrionics, this particular one was being driven in a decidedly non-spirited manner. It was certainly a nice day at the beach, so why not take his time? Only maybe next time he could be taking in the sights and the clean air in the right-hand/slow lane, so that people who haven't yet amassed enough screen credits to buy any Porsche (much less a GT) wouldn't have to swerve to get around him.

Yes, jealousy and envy are insidious emotions...I'll try to work on them.

Close Call for a Porsche 911

As I was driving back down from the Hospice du Rhône on Sunday morning, while passing through San Luis Obispo we caught up with three older Porsche 911s that were being escorted by a CHP motorcycle officer. They were moving along at about 55 mph and a truck pulled out to pass them.
He was going maybe 58 mph and after about two miles he hadn't yet cleared the three cars and the CHP guy pulled behind him to maybe hurry things up a bit. I'm not sure whether the driver saw the cop or just decided to pull back into the slow lane, but he apparently hadn't noticed that he hadn't quite cleared the lead car. Fortunately, the driver was paying attention, and as the trailer began crossing over into his lane, he moved over onto the side of the road, maintaining his speed (and presumably, his composure).

http://www.hospicedurhone.org/
The CHP officer then hit his lights and siren and pulled the truck over, and with the accident averted, the Porsches continued along to their destination.

I found the stickers on the back of the trailer to be more than a little appropriate: 

BTW, about 20 miles south of this almost-an-incident, the odometer on A360P went over 100K. So much for the warranty; I'm happy that nothing major has gone wrong with this car thus far. It either speaks volumes for the quality of VW's construction (at least where the R32 is concerned) or maybe to the value of proactive maintenance. My 1999 VW GTI VR-6 made it to 170K without anything dire occurring and I'm hoping to enjoy the same reliability with the R32.  

Going to the matte for the coolest car in Malibu

At least I think that it's the coolest car around here. The Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet is a breathtaking car in terms of its engineering and appearance, but "subtlety" isn't a word that springs to mind when you see one roaring down the road. While Porsche's paint schemes are not as diverse as those of say, Lamborghini, a Porsche cabrio definitely falls into the "look-at-me" category, even here in Malibu.

The issue was resolved by the owner of this circa-2005 911 by using a thick matte-black paint, seemingly applied with a roller and paintbrush. The rumor around town is that the paint was leftover from the Burbank skunkworks and had been developed for use on stealth bombers...given enough financial resources, almost anything can be done, so even though the "a bucket of pain fell off a truck on the 101" explanation sounds a little far-fetched, it could well be true. 

Everything on the car has been blacked out, and it's got some serious tinting on the windows completing the look. This sort of finish forces you to contemplate the car as purely as a machine, focussing on the art of the function (and the engineering), something that's rare out here. Not all cars look good blacked out like this; I'm not sure what to think about the Rolls-Royce Phantom I saw at the Toys 4 Tots show last December:

The car is just so big that the matte finish is unbecoming, as it's difficult to get away from the bling-factor inherent in a Rolls-Royce. This car was well turned-out (fantastic interior work) but aesthetically, it just doesn't seem right to me, whereas the size and shape of the Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet works just fine.