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A SINGULAR CAR-GUY EXPERIENCE Like New Years' Eve, Bastille Day and Halloween, this thing only happens once a year and it's an event and opportunity I look forward to with both excitement and anticipation. Especially since the whole thing orbits around the car business, car people, cool, ultra-cool and sometimes quirky or confounding cars and American car craziness in general. And also because it takes place in and around the charming & historic village of Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin (just read my novel The Last Open Road for all the inside dope) and the justly famous, handsome & always fabulous, 4.048-mile Road America racing circuit just a short walk, drive or pedal down the highway. Those two cojoined places have loomed large in my life--even before I started racing or writing about it in my novels and magazine stories--and I guess you could say I've experienced (and mostly enjoyed) an awful lot of ups, downs, and sometimes slideways episodes and learned a lot of life's lessons, both sweet and sour, in that particular corner of the world. Here's me (below) in a couple of the many cars I've raced at Road America--very few of which I owned--which took me, on various different occasions, to a whiff of thrills, joy and glory or to deep despair and the side door to the poor house... |
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Top Image: That's me co-driving event impresario Joe Marchetti's Ferrari 250LM in the July enduro at Road America in 1987. Joe started and produced that event, and he and his brothers ran the famous Como Inn restaurant in Chicago and he also dabbled in exotic sports and racing cars--mostly Ferraris--and he offered me the drive after I wrote "A Drivers'-Eye View of Road America" for his race program. He eventually became both partner and sponsor of the Alfa Duetto I ran with quite a bit of success on the vintage circuit. The 250LM was supposed to be Enzo Ferrari's answer to Carroll Shelby's Ford Cobra production sports car, but it was really a flat-out racing car with turn signals and marker lights added, and the F.I.A. (the overall motorsports sanctioning body) wouldn't allow the 250LM to run as a "production sports car" because Ferrari didn't build enough of them. Ironically, at the height of the "Ford vs. Ferrari" battles in the mid 1960s, a 250LM won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1965 after all the faster and more powerful cars from Ford and Ferrari either broke down, were delayed with technical issues or crashed out. Fabulous car to drive and the whole story is in my "200mph Steamroller" series of novels. Lower Image: That's me in a very good replica clone of a Bill Thomas Cheetah coming out of Canada Corner at Road America. In their day (1963-66) they had a pretty evil & awful reputation, as it had a short wheelbase, a wide stance, a willowy chassis, the engine (all 550-650 horsepower of it) was right in the middle of the damn car and the driver about sat on the rear axle. Bill Thomas wanted Chevrolet to get behind the project ($$$$) like Ford did with the Shelby Cobras. But GM wasn't having any, and so the cars were never properly developed and the whole enterprise ended ugly with a sheriff's sale. Given proper backing and if they'd built enough cars to be classified as "production sports cars" (see 250LM story above), I'm pretty confident they could have blown Shelby's Cobras into the weeds (the Cheetah had a bigger, more powerful motor, weighed less and had what could and should have been a better suspension package. But it never happened. I've driven three of them, and the first two were pretty scary. But the car shown above, oned by Ron Keck and usually driven by my ace-racer friend Brian Garcia, has been developed the way it should have been back in the day and is a regular winner on the vintage circuit. It's one hell of a fast car... |
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RETURNING TO OUR ORIGINAL TOPIC: Road America looms large for wife Carol & me. Looking back, I've spectated from the far side of the fences, corner-worked, raced, wrecked, won, lost, set a couple long-since-eclipsed lap records (no, really), broken stuff & blown stuff up, patched things back together in the middle of the freaking night (though they seldom stayed that way), wrote for the race programs plus race reports for the magazines afterwards. been a color announcer on the PA system, signed books in the magnificent Paddock Shop retail store (you should visit!) and spent more money foolishly but enjoyably on my sad but salubrious addiction to motorsports than anywhere else on the planet. I've also thoroughly enjoyed the charming ambience and lovely-to-laid-back accommodations in and around Elkhart Lake, and getting drunk as a hooty owl at Siebkens justly-infamous bar. In fact, I'm actually on the famous poster of Siebkens bar (that's me as the bartender) and I once needed to be bailed out of jail up there, too. And I do not lie when I tell you the fine then-proprietor of Siebkens who came to bail me out would have likely blown higher on the old breathalyzer than I did... Mind you, I don't do that any more (drink, I mean), but Elkhart Lake and Road America have become a huge part of both my racing/motoring-scribe life and career and also of our family history. Carol and I and young Adam would spend a week up there while he was growing up through the 1980a and 1990s--just enjoying the rustic, laid-back charm and swimming/boating/fishing/sailing on the lake and there would usually be a race event at one end of that week or the other and I'd get to go racing. It's something I could never get enough of... Carol & I used to walk all the way around Elkhart Lake almost every morning on a wonderful, woodsy little path that followed along the shoreline, passed some well-kept and inviting homes and cabins and went right through people's yards and along their docks, beaches and waterfronts. You can't do that any more because certain new-ish to the area and tight-of-rectum homeowners don't like people traipsing through their bloody property and have put up fences and barricades to prevent it. Which is a damn shame, and I hope the bastids find the same exact thing waiting for them when they arrive at the Pearly Gates... Change is not always progress. Hold that thought. But first, another wee back story. As many of you may or may not know, I've had some age-related difficulties with my eyeballs over the past couple years, and it had gotten to the point where I wasn't seeing so good anymore. Of course, being a man, I tried to just ignore it and soldier on and pretend that it wasn't as bad as it actually was. But I did quit driving racecars on account of I figured that's not a very wise endeavor if you can't see much past the hood ornament. Plus I noticed that lovely wife Carol was occasionally clenching the seat upholstery in a death grip and/or grinding her teeth like that scene in the old Hollywood Westerns when they're trying to cut the bullet out with no anesthetic when I was at the wheel. Especially at night. So I finally caved in an got myself some of that cataract surgery...and it worked absolute wonders! To be honest, I had no idea how bad my eyes had gotten until I had them fixed. What a difference! A blessed revelation, in fact! Hold that thought, too. FINALLY, THE BURIED LEAD: The point of this entire E-blast is that there's this wonderful organization called the Midwest Automotive Media Association (MAMA) that does car and car-manufacturer related events and is, among other things, a major player/contyributor in the setup, themes and production of the Chicago Auto Show. Plus it offers up many places and opportunities for those same car manufacturers to connect with, interact with, and try to finesse or inveigle positive stories and/or opinions out of The Motoring Press relative to their sometimes bewildering cornucopia of new models, new motors, new hardware, new concepts, new ideas and, failing all of that, new model names and trim levels that are (or will soon be) available on your local dealership showroom floor. It's a thoroughly symbiotic relationship, as the automakers need to "get the word out" to legitimate journalists and so-called "influencers" (translation: folks who push a lot of words and selfies out to their metaverse "following" but don't necessarily get paid for it). But we all enjoy thrashing the living crap out of cool (or even semi-cool) new cars, being the "first to know" about new models and technical developments and especially being fed, feted, flattered, housed and adult beverage-supplied far in excess of what we would normally do on our own stack of nickels. It's a pretty sweet deal. Not that motoring journalists are cheap. Just poor... So once every spring MAMA and its supporting manufacturers get together with the journalists and media types up at Elkhart Lake/Road America and wallow around in the horsepower glory and ampere-hours of transportational fun provided by their latest automotive confections. It's an amazing, informative and rewarding experience with an aware and attuned bunch of car people. Big fun, too. And nothing got ruined, wrecked, bent or blowed up this year, which says a lot about how far cars have come in this modern era. I may hate the fact that, in spite of being an actual mechanic at one point in my life and running a sports car shop with my wonderful but apparently also quite gullible young wife Carol when we first got married in 1974, I can raise the hood on a modern automobile and have no idea what the hell I'm looking at. Instead of an underhood area full of engine blocks, cylinder heads, wires, filters and widgets I recognize and understand, it looks like something an interstellar interior decorator has arranged and staged to handsome up the underhood space should company come over. That said, if you ran this same type of event back in, oh, say, the mid-1960s--you know, MGBs and AMC Marlins and Jag E-Types and Oldsmobile Cutlass 442s and Plymouth Road Runners and Studebaker Larks--nothing would still be running by lunch break of the first day... And yet these modern cars, in spite of their mind-boggling computer programs and infotainment interfaces and maddening complexities, can take everything a ham-fisted bunch of pencil-neck wannabe-racer/wannabe-off-roader paragraph troopers can dish out and not even break a sweat, boil over or piss coolant on their shoes in protest. And here's my first-hand and highly opinionated, only slightly reactionary view of the entire experience: Naturally I was eager to get out on track to see how well my newly revised eyeballs would work, and I'm happy--hell, THRILLED!--to report that I was back to carving up sweepers and clipping appropriate apexes almost as good as "back in the day." Sure, I've surely "lost a step" (as they say in the gym-shoe sports), since the normal trend for all humanity as it ages is that you move incrementally slower and slower until that day when you just don't move anymore. And now the specifics: |
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| First victim (I mean, "vehicle") for the track drive was the flamboyantly named Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat Jailbreak shown above. Now when I was young, we used to use machines like the one shown above to TOW bloody cars to the racetrack, not to get out there between the curbings and corner stations and drive the living snot out of them. I mean, sure, it's got a 6.2-liter SUPERCHARGED V8 producing something just north of 700 horsepower and feeding through an 8-speed automatic and all four wheels, but it also weighs in at something like 7000 lbs. (plus the loose nut behind the wheel at--well, that's none of your business, is it?--and the hapless "hired professional driving instructor" in the shotgun seat who is surely wondering why he didn't go into law or dentistry like his mommy wanted him to). In any case, that's a lot of metal, meat, flab and muscle to slow down for the inevitable corners, and it's frankly amazing how this behemoth gets around the blessed racetrack, and also how much poise it has and how solid and all-of-a-piece it feels while doing it. Sure, some of the hot dog, "look what I can do" journalists managed to overheat the brakes a bit, but what do you expect from a vehicle that weighs well over three tons and has to slow from 100 (or even 120?) and slow several times each lap for a 50 or 60mph corner? And the Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat Jailbreak (try saying THAT three times fast!) was still running fine and doing spirited street drives come the end of the second day's thrashing. It takes a lot of balls and belief in your product to willingly put it out there for that kind of evaluation and abuse. |
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Next came an experience I didn't quite get my hands and heart around. First, I'm a great believer in electric cars, and I think for everyday, around town and on-the-highway motoring, they represent a worthwhile and also laudable alternative to the gasoline- and diesel-burning (and polluting) cars I grew up with. Cue a tepid round of applause. But they're also DIFFERENT in terms of architecture, feel and driving experience, and they seem to have their limitations when you put one on a racetrack. So, first off, congratulations to Polestar (a truly international Swedish/Chinese electric-car company with roots growing out of Volvo) for having the confidence to put one of their new Polestar 4 sedans (or is it an SUV?) out on track at Road America. Because the plus and the minus of an electric vehicle in such circumstances are: 1) Instant, silent torque and LOTS of it! 2) Weight...and LOTS of it, too (albeit down low--which is good--as part of the car's overall structure). But the real crux of the thing is that the feel, driver-to-vehicle synergy and on-track response is both odd and even a bit eerie. While the controls are fingertip light, they don't communicate much about what the car is doing. But mash that right-hand pedal and the damn thing accelerates--eerily, silently--like an elevator car with a snapped cable. This is not so much a complaint as an observation regarding point-of-view. I'm a racer, and I expect--or maybe that should be "want"--the car to respond and give me feedback and tell me what it wants or needs me to do. As I always tell racing students in drivers' school: "think of it like music: the racecourse is the piece of music you need to play and the car is the instrument you have to play it with." But I can't do that (or at least haven't yet learned the rules and technique) with an electric. When I got back to the paddock, one of my car-guy compatriots asked "How was it?" "It's like trying to f**k a ghost!" The answer was out of my mouth before I had time to even think about it. And sorry about the language. I'll probably get an electric car in the fullness of time. And I'll enjoy the quiet and the feeling of helping out the planet and the humanity of which I'm a part. But I don't think I'll ever fall in love with one... You have to hand it to Stellantis, and especially to Kelley Enright, who very amiably and capably heads up the press relations arm that deals with all the scribes and media types in MAMA. The problem is that Stellantis is kind of a made-up, hodge-podge overall brand identity for a group of car companies that don't have much in common, and many of which are not even sold on these shores. Which brings me to a brief digression about "BRAND" versus "PRODUCT." Many decades ago, I was working in my dad's manufacturers' rep business in the packaging and labeling field. Our biggest customer was Sears Roebuck (who, back then, were the undisputed King Kong and Godzilla of the American retail scene), and I spent a lot of time on the road visiting various Sears-supplier shirt, pant and bedding plants scattered in small towns all across the once-Confederate southland of this great nation of ours. Mind you, this was back when there still was a thriving textile industry in these United States and before the lure of cheaper, often government-subsidized overseas pricing put all those time card-punching, church-going, beer-drinking, country music-loving employees at all those little smalltown textile plants out of work. One of our other big accounts was Spiegel, which, thanks to some very savvy & creative buyers, designers and marketing types, had risen from being a lower-end, almost bottom-feeder catalog retailor to a purveyor of latest-trend fashions and basement-rack prices. The head of the entire women's clothing department was a very sharp and decisive female executive named Georgia, and she was always interesting and enlightening in a no-bullshit way. So we and some of her entourage are out to lunch one day and I happened to ask her: "What's more important, PRODUCT or BRAND." She didn't even pause for a heartbeat. "The brand is the thing!" she answered with unassailable conviction. That didn't sit quite right with me. And I told her so. "You can build brand with good product," I argued, "but without good product, your brand is going nowhere but down the toilet." She favored me with a condescending smile. "You can always come up with a new brand..." Add that's the sad reality. Particularly in the world of fashion. And the car biz, like it or not, is all about fashion and trends and trying like hell to make something seem new and different and captivating. That's a hard thing to do. And even harder to keep doing year after year after year. Because, in the shared world of brand, sales and marketing, perception is reality, and if a product is perceived a certain way, no amount of truth, arguing or outrage will change what the public thinks it knows. Case in point is personally beloved brand Alfa Romeo, which dates all the way back to 1910, was the car of choice for the smart, stylish and savvy and won and even dominated all the great races in Europe between the wars and beyond. Yes, I'm highly prejudiced. I raced Alfas for years with considerable success, I've been guest speaker twice at the Alfa Romeo Owners' Club national convention, I love the cars and the history and what they're like to drive and you won't find a more brand-loyal or passionate group of aficionados (we call them "Alfisti") anywhere. Porsche, Corvette and Harley-Davidson included. But it's not a BIG group--at least not in terms of the number of folks who live here in the U.S. of A--and, once you get a nagging reputation for quality issues, rust, electrical gremlins or an iffy dealership network, well, it's a deep hole to crawl out of. I frankly LOVE the current generation of Alfa sedans and the sibling Stelvio SUV, and my Alfa friends who own them love them also. But there were none at Road America. Just the "Tonale" SUV (below), which is a nifty & fun pocket-rocket SUV with great feel and performance along with the sort of high-fashion style and exclusivity you expect from an Alfa Romeo. But how a car does in the marketplace these days has so little to do with what it is and so much to do with how it's recognized, talked about and perceived... Alfa is huddled under the Stellantis umbrella here in these United States and also in Europe, where they're highly thought of and quite successful. I think they deserve better on these shores, and I hope it comes to them, because it's obvious when you get behind the wheel that Alfa Romeos are designed and built by folks who flat love to drive.
Subaru is just the opposite. They build a very good, very solid, high-quality car with 4-wheel drive and more-than-respectable performance, they won some important international Rallye championships that don't mean as much on this side of the Atlantic and have done probably the best damn marketing job anybody has ever seen by focusing, not on the car, but on that warm, fuzzy feeling of taking care of Mother Earth, supporting our national parks, loving families, furry puppies, camping, tents, paddleboards and canoes and believing in the ultimate and enduring overall goodness of the human spirit. Well done! And nice job on the cars, too... But, to my head, heart and behind, there was nothing in the paddock or out on track at Road America that felt as willing, wonderful, right and friendly as the it's-been-around-forever Mazda Miata. THIS is what a sports car should feel like! When you're after the pure, unadulterated joy and sensual responsiveness of driving fast for its own sake, this is the one you still want. Really it is...
Drag Racing is a quintessentially All-American version of motor sports, and every kid who ever sidled up next to another kid at a stoplight (both of them probably in their mommy's or daddy's car!) knows what has to happen when the light turns green. And, like the classic, dusty-street gunfight in the frontier west--I'm thinking the opening sequence of every single episode of "Gunsmoke"--it's over in a hurry and nobody has to guess as to who won or who lost. Dodge has always been a bigtime player in that world (remember Dick Landy or The Ramchargers?), and that's why Stellantis' Dodge division set up their own drag strip and brought two very cool and very different but visually almost identical cars: a Dodge Charger SIXPACK Scat-Pack "traditional" stoplight terror and a same color/same body but electrically powered version of same. There's even a "soundtrack" you can dial up on the electric one to make it sound just as nasty as the wild-and-cammy fossil-fuel version. It was great fun as well as educational. The electric Charger has two electric motors, one driving the front wheels and one driving the rears, and it can really scoot and squall all four tires when you cut it loose. But the eeriest thing (there's that word again) wads if you did it with the sound effects turned off. It's like that thing in Star Trek (or was it Battlestar Gallactica? or 2001? or Spaceballs?) when they go into hyperdrive and the spaceship just silently explodes itself into the next galaxy. Very cool. But also very eerie... Speaking of what people are buying, I'm amazed that so much of the market is keyed in on big SUVs and luxury cars and pickups, rather than basic (or even fun?) people-movers. Middle-size SUVs I get, as they handle pretty nice and can carry a lot of people or stuff (or both) and yet drive like an ordinary car. Just sayin'. Besides the track lapping and the "road drives" on some of the neat country roads and highways up there and a lot of great catered eating and presentations on new products and ideas, there was also two really cool "off road" courses set up by Jeep (another Stellantis brand!) and you would not believe the narrow trails through deep woods or the ruts or the boulders or the steep hills or the axle-deep mud hole or... See pix below. What fun. And the cars & trucks took all that the terrain, the tracks and their ham-fisted operators (you know who I'm talking about) could dish out.
There's a lot more I could talk about (the go-kart races and the autocross--again, I liked the Mazda Miata best) and the Four Miles of Fitness where I rode my bike around for a lap and a half (until the shifter cried "enuf" and I couldn't get low gear for the steepest of the uphills) and all the delicious food we were forced to eat, but I think I should close with something that has and continues to really bother me. Some dashboards today have gotten awfully complicated (see image of a fabulous but near-incomprehensible Mercedes dash below) plus cars all have these "infotainment" screens nowadays and what I'm thinking in the back of my mind is that a LOT of accidents are caused by drivers who are not paying proper attention or are preoccupied with "other things," and that can just as easily be a dash screen as a cell phone. Mind you, I don't want to start a tsunami of do-gooder legislation here (those well-meaning folks screw up more than they fix), but it's something for the car companies to think about. As to governments...how about re-instating proper & mandatory drivers' ed classes in high school. I'd even send the kids to a good track school so they can learn how to keep their eyes high and moving and what to do on ice or slick pavement or if you find yourself going too fast into a cloverleaf or when some inebriated asshole pulls out of an alley in front of you? Those are learned skills and responses...only somebody's got to TEACH them... You can take my soapbox now, sonnyboy. I'm done with it now.
ABOVE: Me with one of Joe Marchetti's Ferrari 250LMs again plus a poem I wrote for his race program when I was kind of on staff to write stuff for him in return for cool stuff to drive! NEW BOOK UPDATE: Well, we're getting down towards the finish line on the new book, and MAY be ready to launch at Road America's big Vintage Event in July. No question we'll have prototype copies, but we may be squeezed, time wise, on the production run at the printer. I'll keep you informed. Also, because it's my first-ever "coffee table" book what with large format, gloss paper, lotsa beautiful, full-color (plus vintage B&W) photos and graphics, etc., it's going to be VERY expensive to produce. As we have done for every single book since we figured things out on the second novel way back in 1999, we will have (and are currently soliciting) advertisers and sponsors for the new book. And for all of you who may have a product, service, business etc. that might appeal to my audience, we can offer: 1) A display ad in one of my books goes out to that target market described above, gets seen and re-seen as the book is read, re-read, shown off, passed around to friends, etc. Even more unique (and unlike any other type of media advertising you can think of), a presence in my books--unlike magazines & periodicals--LASTS DAMN NEAR FOREVER! Really it does. 2) We are adding a "Gallery Section" for cool or unique cars. Or cars with a special sentimental value. And we have talented artistic types who can turn a snapshot of your car into something, well, memorable (see examples below). And, like the above, it lasts absolutely forever. Or longer than you or I are going to live, anyway... 3) Be a greatly-appreciated sponsor! For 250 bucks, you get your name (or somebody else's name as a gift?) on the permanent sponsor page in the new book, plus a copy to wave under everybody's nose when you want to show off and a VERY cool "Sponsor/Sucker" embroidered tweed motoring cap with our wonderful logo. You NEED one of those... CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE JUICY DETAILS! Questions? Comments? Wondering who to make the check out to? Please email thinkfast@mindspring.com or take a chance and try calling the TFI office at 708-383-7203. We may even answer...
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Catch the latest poop & pictures, the Jay Leno interview, Last Open Road swag & highly inappropriate attire from Finzio's Store and the lurid & occasionally embarrassing "ride with Burt" in-car racing videos on the hopefully now fully operational website at: |
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