Human-Generated Automotive Gibberish
Close to Home, Far from Bored
As will be obvious, we’re still figuring out what to do with this whole video thing. This time we kept it much more simple though; a local meetup, some local roads, and a longer chat about my current Corolla GT-S.
Where should we go next time?
High Fidelity or Soulful Grit? Choose one.
One of the best and worst parts of music streaming is that you don’t always know what song you’re going to hear. Maybe you’ve had the same song from the same artist on the same playlist for years but, one day, Spotify or the powers that be change which version they’re hosting. You pull up the app, hit play, and hear most of the familiar cues from the song you know and love. And then suddenly the nuances of whatever remaster or radio edit you’re listing to come through, and you recoil in disgust and/or pick up your phone to check that you tapped on the right song. You did, but what you’re experiencing is…different. That is what it feels like the first time you tuck an M42-powered E30 into a corner for the first time.
Making up for lost time by losing time on another roadtrip.
One would think I’d be happy having done the Tour de Del without any hiccups, but with a little extra time over the 2025 holidays I felt the need to drive the 86 to SoCal, again. This time I’d being going all the way to Los Angeles though for the Vintage Japanese Motoring Union new year’s hang, with some time in the canyons for good measure.
The best sports cars can be driven flat out without going into orbit. The 996 GT3 is arguably one of them.
You’re almost there. You already know, from the last few miles, that cranking on the lock at this point in the corner is going to scrub the front tires for no reason. The next two seconds feel like two hours, at least compared to the same experience in cars that don’t put the cart before the horses. Sensing that the front is still a little too light, you relax your big toe, letting the accelerator pedal come up a smidge and feeling the nose come down just enough as you turn toward the apex.
Sometimes improvement begins with starting over.
It seems fitting that one of the first posts in my attempt to revive this blog is about a return to Drift 101. The first post in this blog was published in 2016. The last post before the unintentional hiatus, from my first visit to Drift 101, was in 2018.
Re-reading my first post on Drift 101 elicits a few winces, as a lot of things do when reviewing a previous version of yourself. I vaguely remember the state of mind I was in when I wrote it, six months after the class, trying to impart the elation from the experience into the post and also relive it enough to encourage the continuation of my writing. It’s hard to say if I intended to take such a long break from this project, but when I found myself with a little extra time last year I knew what I wanted to do, go back to Drift 101.
Peace is just a disposable camera and a vintage car away.
You can’t pretend to live in the pre-digital world. There are too many reminders – your phone chiming with a text from your wife, the vague thought in the back of your head that your 10lb CD folder doesn’t have that album from your Spotify favorites, the sign at the deli in the middle of nowhere asking you to tag them in your Instagram post…
That said, you can choose to turn down the digital noise. For a few hours, maybe even a few days, you can go and “find yourself” without the self-medication that’s popular if not necessary between 5PM and 9AM on weekdays. And what better way to do it than with an old car you don’t quite trust.
One by one, cats eyes whiz past my left shoulder at such speed they’re nearly an unbroken yellow line. The universe shrinks down. All that exists is the heat, the wind, the noise, and my buddy just ahead of me in his first-gen NSX, a silver rocket amidst the rolling, golden expanse of Central California.
Transfixed, I admire the back of said Acura flowing over the slightly bumpy backroad, almost a mirage. Suddenly I touch the rev-limiter in a gear normally reserved for dyno runs. The noise abates and returns with purpose as I quickly find the next gear. My idiotic grin becomes a cackle as I briefly consider how many of these cars, both his NSX and the Integra Type R I’m piloting, are today normally relegated to garage spaces. Both seen and treated as retired athletes more suited to bask in former glories than ready-to-buck sport cars.
You really ought to drive your damn sport cars.
Almost all of us have done it. There’s a moment when you’re carrying just enough speed through a turn. Maybe it’s a wide open intersection or maybe it’s a tight corner you know well. You’re feeling sly, suddenly aware of all your driving talent, and you punch the throttle enough to step the tail out. If it was the first time you’ve done it this afternoon you might immediately lift off and flail at the steering to settle the car back down. If it was midnight in a rainy nowhere you’d probably been doing it for the last half hour and you keep the throttle pinned until the telltale flare of wheel spinning revs levels out, your grin so large it threatens to shatter the side windows. For those few yards, you felt you were drifting.
You weren’t.
Open road? Check.
Top of second gear? Check.
Weird ridge in the tarmac? Check.
Poorly matched shocks? Check, check, check.
We are cleared for take off.
Or at least that was the monologue as the Miata initiated a sideways twerk over the aforementioned irregularity in the road surface. In this car, on this part of the road, there are two choices. Hold off on throttle application until you’re well past to avoid the sickening pogo action of the R-Package Bilsteins on an undulating surface or….whoop over it and just deal. Miss Daisy isn’t riding passenger today, or ever, so whooping is the most often the choice.
There comes a point in a car’s lifetime when it is simply a used car. A pile of metal and rubber forgotten to all but the most dedicated owner or poorest college student. Cars that the California Air Resources Board offers you $1000 for every two years. That prompt a swipe left when included in your profile pic. That inform your co-workers that an older car to you is from twenty years ago, not five.
We’re in an odd spot, those of us who appreciate cars of this flavor. It’s even difficult to name this grouping of car so many of us are enthralled by. You can’t call them classic without fear of the homie with a ’70 Charger and matching torque wrench coming after you. Calling them vintage feels wrong, the very utterance of the word clouds your vision in sepia filters and sparks the uncontrollable urge to nonchalantly light a cigarette and exhale toward the ceiling.
I suppose we could call them…Rad.
