The trip starts, as with many other trips, at SFO. I had a great opportunity to check out the current SFO museum exhibit of vintage Italian Motorcycles from the '50s and '60s. Molto bene.
Upon arrival at LAX, GKO airport shuttle (aka Grant) picked me up and whisked me off to dinner at "The Balcony" in Irvine. First up, sizzling black pepper beef.
Accompanied by spicy tomato garlic chicken. I'd give the food a thumbs up if you happen to be looking for a good "Asian fusion" kind of restaurant in the OC. They also have a good shaved snow kind of dessert that tasted pretty good but we ate too quickly without capturing an image.
On to the important things. The next day, we sat in traffic for over an hour before getting to downtown to check out the cars. Apologies to Josh for only being able to say hello and goodbye. Pictured above is a Morgan Aero Supersport. I've been really liking Morgan's design ethos as of late with their throwback styling yet incorporation of modern materials and performance specs. Very impressive for a relatively small company.
Another favorite of mine currently, Lotus makes some great modern cars. I had an opportunity to sit in an Evora, like that one pictured above before, and it is a lovely sports car. Unfortunately, just a bit out of my price range at the moment.
Mercedes Benz' brand new C63 AMG Black Series coupe. What a fiercely fast looking vehicle.
One of the great things about the LA Auto show, compared to a smaller show like SF or San Jose, is their ability to attract new car unveilings and one-off concept cars like the Jaguar CX16 shown above. I think it's got some real promise and proves that Jags aren't just the boring choice for old rich geezers.
Quite possibly my favorite from the whole show was the unveiling of the Subaru BRZ concept car which shows Subaru's vision for the new sports car they've jointly developed with Toyota. The car utilizes a chassis designed by Toyota, coupled with an engine and real wheel drivetrain developed by Subaru. I love the Rally Blue color and aggressive, STI styling even if the rear wing screams "boy racer".
And a pic of the back so that you can see the beautifully styled taillights.
New Beetle R. Faster, but still no chance of being my next car. Sorry.
I finally got to see the car I've been coveting for the past year: the VW Golf R. Unfortunately, I left with the feeling that the features you get do not justify the $15k more you pay for this over the standard GTI.
And now for Toyota's version of the car they jointly developed with Subaru. It will be sold in the US as a Scion and called the FR-S. This concept car is a beauty to behold, but having seen pictures of what the actual production car will look like, it's a lot less attractive than what you see above. Mainly, they really dropped the ball on the tail and made it look much cheaper than the elegant lights of the concept car.
Congratulations to Sebastian Vettel for another dominant Formula 1 season. All hail the beautiful car which he drove to so many victories on the GP circuit. What a beautiful piece of modern, automobile engineering. And many thanks to Infiniti for bringing us a F1 car to drool over.
The day after that, Grant & I managed to fit in a mountain biking session in Aliso Viejo with his buddies. The weather wasn't that great (windy and spitting rain) but we managed to have a pretty good time. Here we are at the halfway point (before I broke a bike chain and had to walk part of the way back).
Okay, on to the crazy part of the trip. Due to the heavy rain that So Cal experienced that weekend, the Sepulveda Blvd tunnel underneath the southern runways got flooded (see the above pic) and resulted in the most insane airport traffic I've ever seen. It took us almost an hour to get from the I-105 freeway exit to Terminal 1 (I was departing from Terminal 7)! I ended up hopping out of the car at Terminal 1 fifteen minutes before my departure time, getting yelled at by a police officer for walking in traffic in the process and sprinting all the way across the airport to Terminal 7 on the other side, through security and to my gate. Luckily things inside the terminal were a lot less hectic and it seemed as if most everyone was jammed up outside trying to get to the airport rather than crowding it up inside. Thankfully I can tell this story now and laugh about it because I didn't end up missing my flight (made it with a minute to spare), but at the time, it was pretty nuts.
As always, thanks very much to Grant for hosting me, providing transportation and spending your weekend with me. I also apologize for you having to sit through all that airport traffic to drop me off. I guess it was something neither of us could have predicted. Hope you all enjoy the pics. Take care and keep an eye out for my Thanksgiving post...coming soon(ish)!
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