A Proper Rally: DWA in the Sierras 2025
Ideally, you want your rally to have three things: fun roads, great people, and pleasant weather. But there is something extra that a great rally has which is hard to define; the so-called “X factor”. From the first DWA rally in 2017, that was the strongest attribute of DWA rallies. But something changed in 2020. On March 15 of that year, we convened in Sausalito under the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge and embarked on an epic rally. Unfortunately, you may recognize that date as an important turning point for a different reason: that’s the weekend the world shut down due to the Covid pandemic. Coincidentally or not, the DWA rallies were never the same since; we still drove our beloved cars together on gorgeous California roads, but the summer camp vibes weren’t the same. Back at work on Monday, we didn’t feel the rally withdrawals. But that all changed in October 2025 when the Sierra Rally 5 kicked off.
On Thursday, October 2nd, I was picked up by my friend Jon in San Jose, and we began our journey east toward one of the most epic mountain ranges in the world: the Sierra Nevada. Containing the largest tree in the world, the tallest point in the contiguous USA, and the largest alpine lake in the entire USA, it has a few impressive stats to go along with its stunning beauty.
(more…)Every PS1 Game – Gran Turismo 2
So you’ve just released the greatest racing game yet created, which would go on sell more copies than any other game released on the Playstation. What next? Well, you get back to work and improve it in every single way, of course. Released almost exactly two years later, Gran Turismo 2 is based on Gran Turismo but every aspect was tweaked and expanded.
Gran Turismo came in a double-disc case because it contained a huge supplementary manual. Gran Turismo 2 also came in a big case, but it actually had two discs inside: they split Arcade and Simulation (previously “Gran Turismo”) modes into their own discs due to the addition of so much new content.
(more…)DWA’s New Rally Flavor: Classic (2025 Edition)
Variety is the name of the game in the Driving While Awesome community. We are centered around a general love of cars and driving, but everyone has their own idea of what brings the most fun and sense of occasion. As many of us are into performance, our choices gravitate towards higher performance late-model vehicles. However, even someone like me who drives a car from 2018 will admit that classic cars are just cooler. When the DWA boys decided to convert the “Classic Rally” from using the “classic” routes (from the beginning of DWA Rally history) into requiring “classic” cars (pre-2000, which is coincidentally 25 years old), it made perfect sense.
For people like myself, this was a challenge; some rally stalwarts decided to forego this event due to simply not having a suitable vehicle. As I love co-driving, I took this opportunity to co-drive the mighty VOLOLVO, the Nordica-liveried LS1-swapped 1997 Volvo V90.
(more…)Every PS1 Game – Gran Turismo
The history of racing video games stretches back to the 1970’s, and as far as I’m concerned has two eras called “BGT” and “AGT”: before and after Gran Turismo. Released December 23rd 1997 in Japan and in the rest of the world in May 1998, it sold almost 11 million copies on its way to becoming the best-selling Playstation game. It was a cornerstone of the Playstation experience and redefined racing video games, spawning a franchise that is still going strong today.
Gran Turismo managed to outsell any Final Fantasy or Tomb Raider or Crash Bandicoot or even Metal Gear Solid. They did this by first making the most realistic looking and feeling driving game yet–and then they actually made it fun to play. You can jump right in to the “Quick Arcade” and play a traditional mode where you pick a car and track then go racing. But it’s the aptly-named “Gran Turismo” mode where Kazunori Yamauchi and his team revolutionized racing games.
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Star Road 