Mikey: Hi there, I’d like a wax
Wax Nazi: Yeah okay – yours the white M Roadster parked next to the 911?
Mikey: Yeah
Wax Nazi: When was the last time you had it waxed
Mikey: …
Waz Nazi then pulls out a little device, it looks like an oversized pager, it has a laser shooting out of one side and presses up to the paint on the hood, then shakes his head.
Wax Nazi: I am going to need to clay it… and what is this film all over it, its like a dusting of rubber???
Mikey: …..
Mikey: How much?
Wax Nazi: $75, be done in 3 hours.
Mikey: Here’s $80, Thanks!

Anyways, I went down the the Carmax dealership that had this particular car to go for a test drive. Lucily for me, the person I was set up with was under the impression that this was  “5 Series BMW”. A few days earlier I had test drove a brand new 2010 M5 at a proper BMW dealership and they neutered the car with only 400hp. I had no problems putting the car into sport mode and then use all 500 hp.

Now after I explained to the sales woman that I was going to drive this car aggressively and that if she had any issue with this that she could politely ask me to slow down, she agreed and I nailed it and left 2 black stripes 1st gear long.

It was a good test drive, only there was a problem. You see, I have had this image in my head of the M5 – an piece of insanity wrapped into two pieces of bread. I imagined that flooring the throttle of the 500hp would feel like setting off a bomb and riding a wave of noise into the sunset while trying to escape an army of banshees screaming at you full tilt. It was, but it felt like I was sitting in a holodeck instead of actually racing up Dante’s Peak.

If I can liken a car to a woman; the Z4M is a hot, awesome, nice woman that used to be insane but through years of therapy has come out on the other side for the better. Even though, you are never really going to relax knowing that there is only years of training between you and certain death. And as soon as you say the wrong thing, poof – you have climbed a tree in your little hottie and filling out an insurance form.

These imperfections give the car character – it’s the make-out session at a dive bar once a year, the last minute trip Burma for no reason, and the surprise lingerie sleepover party with all of her friends.

The M5 is perfect, it is so fast, and so capable and so wonderful that it a monumental achievement of everything human ingenuity can accomplish. The most amazing thing is that it is fast, sporty, precise AND it is a giant comfortable luxury car. So for the sake of argument, this is a car shows up with all of the same ingredients as the Z4M. She is gorgeous, awesome, nice, and great fun but unlike the Z4 – she is well adjusted, has a good family and went to finishing school. Oh sure, the M5 will play the insane game and go sideways and leave great big clouds of smoke all day long just like the Z4M, but you can tell that she thinks that it is all a bit juvenile. However, because she loves you she will go with you to Pamplona and run with you, and would never mention that she thinks that you are an idiot. That is your M5. It is a better car than the Z4M in every way, it just isn’t as much fun somehow. I was let down, not by the end result capabilities – but how it was delivered.

You might think that all of that excitement I describe with the Z4M  is something you really want a lot of, and you think that you would want to buy an old Countash, and that would fit the bill perfectly. Wrong, the older Lamborghini’s are the supermodels – all style whilst sacrificing everywhere else. I was recently driving through Palm Springs, and I saw a purple Lamborghini Diablo SV pulling left out into a 4 lane road it was gorgeous and sounded great. As he got into the middle merge lane he had to stick his head out of the sunroof to turn around and make sure he wasn’t going to crash into an oncoming SUV. I am not joking, as soon as he asked for the smallest concession she just folded her arms and made him stick his head out of the sunroof. I couldn’t deal with that sort of high maintenance. I don’t care how good she is in the sack, it is just not worth that sort of leg work to get to the grocery store.

Ultimately, I will have an M5 in my life. I logically know that there is no topping it in any possible way. But I have still never been to Burma.

These shoes are normally in the $100ish range and are quite difficult to locate, they aren’t the sort of shoes you would expect to find at Nordies or wherever. Additionally, they are fabulously hideous. No matter.

When at a track day over the weekend with some buddies – a friend of mine noticed that 3 of the people he was working a corner with were wearing the same Piloti shoes. The retold and dumbed-down conversation went something like this

Friend: Hey are all 3 of you color coordinating or something?
Dudes: No we all just wear Piloti shoes
Friend: Uhhh… that’s kinky
Dudes: Nah we got them at Ross for a smooth $20
Friend: HOT!

Now in discussion with said friend I realized that Ross carries items for a limited time and especially an item like this is sure to be a lucky, but rare find. Sunday he rolls into his local Ross and low and behold there are a pair in his size, orange no less.

So today after work I try my luck and I find that there are not one, but two Piloti shoes in varied forms of Lambo-Yellowness. I bought both. One of them is more leisure, and the other is race-ready complete with the padding on the right shoe capable of dealing with the complete flogging heel and toe requires.

Yes, I realize they are ugly. Thanks.

The automotive press are teeming over the wonder of modern engineering that they are calling the Prius.  It now gets 50mpg on the combined cycle, is bigger, looks fresh – and will be available to consumers in the spring. What else could a consumer want other than a $25-$30 thousand dollar Toyota Echo?

The problem here is that the Prius is a gimmick, it was not really invented to be anything other than a fashion statement. I imagine that some Prius drivers, on their way to the dealership were considering either the eco-friendly Prius or getting a tattoo on their forehead: “I <3 Polar Bears!”.

I think that Toyota have done a brilliant job in marketing the Prius, and an even better at keeping the bad press off of their cash cow.  Toyota gave their consumers a reason to feel good about their car purchase. This illusion comes in the form of “good gas mileage” when the car is on the road. What isn’t marketed, and what people don’t realize is that cars have an enormous carbon footprint not only when they are exploding your money in their engines – but also when they are built. This comes down to how they are made, the production and design process, who the manufacturers use as suppliers, how easily they can be recycled and reused, and even how they are sold. This is what you might call the real environmental impact of a car.  A couple of independent studies have investigated this “dust to dust” cost.

For instance, think about the super-awesome battery systems in a Prius – they are made from heavy metals like Nickle and Cadmium. They have to be dredged up from the bowels of the earth, cleaned with acid – go through several refinement processes and jump on a giant diesel freight boat and shipped to Asia where they are then put into the car. This is “energy expensive”. Also take into account that the manufacturers sometimes do specifically dirty parts of the construction of car parts in places where environmental standards are set by dictators in countries you have never heard of, and can’t pronounce. 

One such study publishes the actual “dust to dust cost per mile” for many cars. Each year they take into account the total global impact of a given car – given ALL information.  Their 450 page study found that the Toyota Prius’ dust-to-dust cost was $2.191 per mile.  To give you some perspective – a Ford Focus is $0.621 and Toyota Corolla is $0.748 and a Mazda 3 is $0.876. The turbocharged, fun to drive, and fantastic looking Mini Cooper S is a mere $1.894. Even my old turbocharged Audi A3 edged out the Prius at $2.181.

Now there is no question that ti gets worse from here on out. My new car, the M Roadster is a whopping $2.832. But that is nothing compared to the Honda Accord Hybrid which lands at $4.228 which just barely edges out the Ferrari 430 ($4.317) or the Lamborghini Gallardo ($4.444)

If people really wanted to help the environment they would pay attention to these studies and buy a normal, oil burning Ford Focus, or at least acknowledge that gas mileage and running costs aren’t everything. If people want to save the planet, they should go and do it for real – but instead they make the half ass, short sided, easy way out effort by just getting a car with a giant battery in it, which also happens to have a brilliant “green” marketing campaign. That way EVERYONE WILL KNOW that you care. A tattoo might of been easier. It would of at least been better for the environment. 

I think people like this sort of bliss, and that’s fine – buy what you want. But don’t come to me giving me dirty looks when I pull up to the local hippy coffee shop in my “gross polluter” – something tells me that you wouldn’t of given me that sort of hassle had I pulled up in an Accord Hybrid, but you should have. I would of definitely deserved it. 

Because I don’t want to crash into the ground, I watch Top Gear. It keeps my driving experience exciting, fresh. It helps turns an otherwise one time event into a hobby I can continue to enjoy for years on end. I know it sounds ridiculous – but I think about it while I am driving, but not at many other times – except maybe when I am watching it. 

For me, I see that peak as Seasons 10 and 11. Season 10 in particular was jam packed with incredible content. Everything about every episode was truly amazing. Just to name some of the highlights:  

• Driving cars across the English Channel
• Driving across Botswana in $1000 cars
• The M3 vs RS4 vs C63 challenge in Italy or
• The Amateur entry in the Britcar 24 hour endurance race
• Driving Cars to the North Pole in a Pickup Truck
• Finding the best driving road in Europe with the GT3RS, Lambo Superleitallian, and the Aston 24-Nurburgring edition

The team was in perfect sync. You get a real sense that the hosts, and the production crew had a great time making these films. I am sure, that this was a truly epic effort. They pulled out all of the stops and produced an amazing series. I can only imagine the budget involved with these episodes. I am thinking “Lost” – only with no advertising revenue.

Even the Clarkson DVD released that year, “Supercar Challenge”, was right on, perfectly produced. The right amount of hilarious antics, cars, and real-world reviews with commentary.

Top Gear Season 12 was a bit of a disappointment. It seemed forced, an esteemed viewer like me saw through the cracks and I began to see, that like every other TV show ever made, it reached a peak. Instead of letting the chemistry of the hosts flow to produce the hilarious antics, for whatever reason it seems fake – like they weren’t having nearly as good of a time as they did in prior seasons. The latest Clarkson movie – “Thriller” is the same way. It was a forced last-minute effort to pump out a DVD.

Don’t get me wrong though. I still watched each episode, more than once. The series also had some saving graces. The second hand semi-trucks and bus segments (I mean really, who doesn’t love watching a demolition derby with semi trucks and buses?) were good. As was the Vietnam special – where the three trek across Vietnam in motorcycles – from Saigon to the Chinese border.  Even with those efforts, the series as a whole felt half-finished. Like it was meant to be something greater than it was, but fell short for whatever reason.

A few weeks ago, at the end of Season 12 – a press release was floating around the internet indicating that the BBC would cut the budget of Top Gear for obvious global economic reasons. Obviously the budget of a not-for-profit TV network like the BBC can’t rival HBO. I would gladly pay $10 an episode to get back to the Season 10 quality, if that is at all possible. But I fear, that the Top Gear season 10 sort of chemistry that built those supreme examples of motoring television cannot be purchased with the almighty dollar, that instead they must be earned with passion. Here is one fan hoping that they haven’t lost it.

The first thing you need to know about these sorts of events, is that they are all day, and fantastic fun. I was excited – my friend Kayvan also decided to attend at the last minute with his ‘08 alpine white M3. 

With a mere 1250 miles on the clock on my M Roadster I was over the break-in period for the incredible 330hp S54 engine, but just. Not that it stopped me much prior to that anyways. 

Upon showing up at the event (at a paltry 6:30am) we queued up in the inspection rows to make sure our cars didn’t explode. Because all of our cars were new, we passed with flying colors.  The three of us paid our dues and ended up parking. 

The parking lot was filled with a wide array of cars. To name a few: 2 997 Porsche GT3s, A Ferrari 360, a few miata’s and other race cars towed to the track. About 10 new M5’s, 2 M6’s and a few dozen M3’s with a handful of the new ones. 

Austin, Kayvan and I were waiting for the drivers meeting, and a towed Miata showed up. Austin said to me: “Mike is that your guy?” it turns out that the man driving up towing that Miata was none other than a man by the name of Seth. An old friend of mine from San Diego that worked on my Mazdaspeed Protege equipping it with a front mount intercooler among other goodies. 

I walked over to Seth and we chatted for a good 30 minutes until the drivers meeting started. After the drivers meeting we began to do runs, we were clumped up into 4 different groups and each group had a turn doing various things – like driving, resting, and working the track. 

On your first 3 runs you have an instructor with you, the first lap is actually driven by the instructor, and the next 2 laps are driven by you – with the instructor giving you pointers. My instructor was very nice, she was helpful in helping me understand the track.

So the first thing that you need to know about driving an M Roadster, fast – is that it is incredibly hard to keep up with all of the machinery. The car is very lively, quick, and sensitive. It is setup to understeer if you aren’t brave. The only way to drive this thing fast is to drive very aggressively. That is, brake, gas + turn in. Doing anything less than this will cause a very boring understeer situation.  

However, if you really concentrate – and trust the car to save you, it will. The differential in this car is amazing and even with the traction control totally off , the balance of the chassis, tires, and LSD keeps you from crashing. It is a roller-coaster sort of ride. 

This car has 2 modes, granny-understeer driving and balls to the wall racing, there is no in between. When this car is in sport mode, with the traction control off it has a personality like a caged squirrel that just went through the paint mixer. It is crazed and ready to go. Grabbing on is a great wild ride. It is unlike any other fast car that I have ever driven.

Now the way the track was setup was excellent, much better than any other coned-like event I have ever been too. The longest part of the track is split up by a box-chicane but can be taken flat out if you are super brave. I got up to around 115 in this area (judging by my gearing position – at the top end of 3rd gear). The entry point to this long straight was a sweeping, long right hander that is taken at about 45mph, which means you launch out of it in second gear, sideways, all the way up until the shift point from second to third at around 75mph.

The track was a blast. 

After another few rounds of laps it was rest time for me, and track-working time for Austin. During this time – Seth had decided it would be a good idea to scare me. He walked up to one of the race cars (and I do mean RACE cars) and goes up to the driver and says: “This is big Mike, take him for a wild ride”. The driver was one of the instructors and was in an E36 325is with an S54 engine (built by Seth) with a FULL roll cage (I literally had to crawl in and out of it). 

This guy took me for a lap, and MY GOD this car was fast, in a straight line it wasn’t super-epic. But with the (hot) racing slicks, and incredible brakes it went around the corners with epic g-forces. The best word to describe is AGONY. He decided to take me for a few laps, after we came back in Seth was amused at my demeanor.

After this I went out to watch some of the cars running laps. The car I was particularly interested in was the Ferrari 360. Now it should be mentioned that Austin was working the track, and he was working a the end of the long straight described above. 

I watch the 360 run around the track, and when he gets to the box in the straight, he loses the rear-end (probably going around 90-100mph) and spins out of control – smoke in the air v8 wailing. Oh, and it was heading in Austin’s general direction. 

Austin later described this like the Indiana Jones scene where the giant rock-ball is rolling toward him, Austin bravely ran away and waited for the car to come to a stop. Hilarious.

After all of this fooling around it was time for the Timed Laps. I was grouped in a class called “M Stock” which consisted of M3’s, M5’s, M6’s – me being the only MZ4. 

You get 3 shots a posting a time, the first two laps I clocked around 101 seconds, which is what everyone else was running. On the last lap, I posted a 99.9. At this point not a single person had beat the 100 second mark. I was stoked.  After my class had run, two other guys in M3’s (one of them an instructor in the new M3) beat my time – I ended up in 3rd for the class. 

Here are some snapshots of the results with my records highlighted.

The next event is on December 6th. I will be there. I got a new camera, and a camera mount for the car so I can take videos of the track runs. 

A couple of other pictures to enjoy:

  

 

Think about how many 100k+ sports cars you see on the road. If you think about it really hard, you almost never see Ferraris or Lambo’s – you see more 100k+ mercedes sports cars than anything else, I see SL500/600/55’s daily. I see Ferrari’s around once a week. I think what Maserati have done with the GrandTourismo is give you the excitement of a supercar without all of typical drawbacks. Here’s why:

1. It has an automatic gearbox – Yes, having the sweet SMG clutch-auto transmissions is great for the track, ever try driving one around town? It is not fun, other than the Audi DSG (there are other variants of this spectacular BorgWarner trasmission coming in this years’s M3, and the ‘09 911 line) but for the most part high end cars are wither manual’s, or SMG’s. I’ll take the automatic for LA traffic, thanks.

2. It doesn’t have a volcano for an engine – With around 400 HP and a a 4,200lb curb weight, this thing has enough power to get you into trouble, and fun without melting the asphalt. I always feel sympathy watching people in their 650hp Lambo driving down the 405 – what’s the point? And because it doesn’t have the enormous engine, you aren’t afraid of using it.

3. It looks AMAZING – The visual feast of this car is fantastic, something you don’t even get close to with any merc, bmw, or other luxo-sports cars, it is simply STUNNING. Its exciting just to look at, and that is half of the battle won. No 9 year olds want a boring SL600 pinned up on their wall, but they would want one of these.

This is the recipe for success, lots of these will sell to poser soccer moms who want to look fast, and they will also sell lots of these to true enthusiasts who want to drive fast, but not die for the cause. Kudos.

I really like this sort of x-prize approach to innovation, I have remarked once or twice how the US Federal Grant system is flawed and a waste of money for short term goals. This sort of approach will give the private sector a chance to get real incentive to make leaps in technology.

I think that one of the real ways out of the energy crisis we have today is real leadership from our administration. What McCain did here is a drop in the bucket, I am talking FDR-style  ‘lets rally the nation and have every household give up sugar’ sort of leadership. That kind of leadership, with the right incentives, innovators, and operational backup have done great things for this country. They have built the atomic bomb, defeated fascism, and sent men to the moon. We need a nation wide effort to make real progress on developing clean, renewable, and cheap energy in order to save our economy.

My hope is that one of the Presendential candidates is secretly hiding this sort of effort, because I think if they came right out and said it, they would be thought of careless radicals and wouldn’t get a majority share of the vote. The problem with people (voters) is that they only care about themselfs, RIGHT NOW. Nobody ever looks at giving up something now for the long term. It makes me sad.

2010 Honda NSX replacement at the Nürburgring Nordschleife from MrBTG on Vimeo.

Carrera GT
Gallardo

BMW M5:

Life is good with these as

When I arrived I was greeted by friendly staff and the usual disclaimers and waivers to be signed. Lunch and drinks were served while I awaited for the 12:30pm start time of the event. One thing to note, there was this drink there I had never heard of before. Hint Water (drinkhint.com) is a water-like substance with a hint of refreshing flavor. It’s not like propel where its an obnoxious flavor, instead you get the slightest taste of the refreshing flavor in the water. I must of had 5 or 6 of these things while I was at the event. I looked into buy some more, but at $2 / bottle when bought online its a bit expensive.

In the lounge area there were flat screens that displayed promo material for the ISF, an ISF open for people to sit in, some fancy video game simulators made out of ISF  and a bunch of car magazines and various marketing brocures. Interestingly, the car magazines they had there had a rundown of ISF vs RS4 vs M3 vs C63 – in the test they ranked ISF 4th / 4th. Bummer.

Once it was time to get rolling they corralled everyone into a big room and went over on how the day would flow. About 75 people were split up into 4 groups that would rotate around the 4 stages setup at the track at California Speedway. The 4 stages were Full-Track Hot Laps, Relay Race, Time Attack, and Driving Line theory (in a classroom).

Without spoiling all of the details the Full Track Hot laps were great, I was able to get the car up to like 110 in the longer back straight. The Time Attack course had Timing loops and I ended up with the 3rd fastest lap of the day (yay!). In the end the day was fun, but not quite worth the $300 for what was essentially, a glorified test drive. Track time is fun, but it was limited and cramed full of people telling you how great the car was.

Some notes on the car. It felt like Toyota was really aiming at the M3 with this car, but like the other, German M3 wannabe’s it falls a bit short in several areas. Firstly, the engine feels a bit like a Tundra engine with cams, it is very similar to the characteristics of the LS1 in that regard – very flat, undramatic torque curve that is very drivable. Having driven a few of the old S54 powered cars, the M3 is nothing like that, there is a big sense of theater when you drive the BMW’s. The Lexus doesn’t have any of this. When you are thumping around the track there is no getting around the fact that the Lexus is HEAVY, while the excellent traction control system does its best to keep it from plowing through the corners with catastrophic understeer, it is very apparent that it is the cars defining handling characteristic. With that in mind, the traction control system does a very, very good job pulling the car in on tighter lines, especially in the slow corners.

It is also very apparent that the ISF had no limited slip differential, with all the torques trying to get put down  in the corners the lack of the LSD caused the TC systems to be unable to put down a progressive, smooth, and confident power delivery. The best I could describe it would be ‘jerky’ think of it like RWD torque steer, you can feel the TC stabbing at the brakes to no avail causing the car to weave a bit similar to torque steer as you exit a turn.

Onto the impressive bits, the car had fantastic brakes. The transmission was especially fab. I drive an Audi DSG for reference, and this transmission was equally impressive on both up and downshifts. The blips from the throttle are especially welcomed, well suited for agressive driving.

Overall I liked the car, it has a good balance between the raw, take no prisoners poise and balance of the M3 and a standard Lexus hovercraft. However, this car did not appreciate the brutal treatment of the track. As noted by other reviewers, this car seems most at home on loping up and down mountain roads. However, for that matter the IS350 or 335i would perform that same mountain-loping weekend with ease while keeping an extra $20k in your pocket and still keeping up with the extra 100 horses from the ISF while delivering similar excitement levels.

For the raw, bare knuckles experience, the Lexus has fallen short in providing adequate driving feedback, balance and poise to really deliver the excitement needed to be a true sports sedan.