Star Road

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.

There are quite a few pre-2000 cars in the DWA community, and as you can probably guess, air-cooled 911’s are the most popular. They made so many of them for so long, they’re so customizable, plus they have the performance to match those looks; no wonder they’re the go-to choice for classic sporty motoring.

Of course not all the cars were that common; it’s very rare to even see a Triumph GT6 these days, let alone in fantastic condition out on backroads.

Okay well obviously, these are not backroads; this is the parking lot for our pre-rally meet, Woodhouse Brewing in Santa Cruz, California.

This is a great chill spot to grab a coffee or a beer. They have nice seating areas both inside and outside to hang out and enjoy the lovely Santa Cruz weather.

Even though this was a Thursday meet, there was an impressive turnout of local DWAers. I was very interested in comparing the sizes of these NA and NC Miatas. And look how reasonably sized the Elantra N appears even next to a tiny Miata. I think the facelift version of that Hyundai actually looks pretty badass.

After this, we rolled down to our hotel in San Juan Bautista. Shoutout to Hacienda de Léal; it’s a nice little hotel for a reasonable price in a great location.

Ah, the rally meetup. The phrase “summer camp” always comes up–we all have our busy lives, and the rallies are that unified vacation where we can all let our hair down together.

Here are the oldest cars to attend a DWA rally. It would have been amazing to see a Traction Avant and MGA out on the twisty roads, but after driving all the way from southern California, they encountered a mechanical issue and had to head home. (Don’t worry about the water on the ground; that’s just the radiator overflow)

A fun feature of this hotel is the giant AMOR sign in the parking lot. I had to get a snap of Lane posing in front of this sign; just look at the scale of that sculpture!

California is known as the world center of technology with Silicon Valley, and the center of the cinematic world with Hollywood, but don’t forget about The Cowboy Side of California: this state is also one of the leading producers of agriculture. These rallies are all about getting out of suburbia and exploring the beauty of rural California.

The early 911’s are actually slightly narrower than an NA Miata, despite being longer. Still, that so-called “compact SUV” Ford Escape looks gigantic.

This rally was also the debut of Art’s K24 swapped 1987 325is.

Digital gauges on your phone! I would like to see it in my cluster as usual, but for a quick solution it’s pretty neat that the ECU talks to your phone. This setup needed some tweaking; I don’t think we were doing 49mph when this photo was taken.

The swap looks great, like it belongs there. However, if you are an eagle-eyed engine examiner, you may notice something looks funky with the valve cover gasket. The reason for this is barely shown in this photo: see the breather tube coming out of the back of valve cover? That goes into a catch can. However, there was also another line going into the catch can–and no output. I pointed this out to Art and his “Rally of Troubleshooting” began. Without wishing to re-tread this story, I’ll summarize it by saying that there were some kinks in the installation, just like any swap project, and the boys from Beeline (who did the swap) worked very hard on the rally to take care of everything while still letting Art enjoy the car on the rally.

Kevin brought this rad 1975 Trans-Am, and I had to get a pic of Drew sitting in there wearing the perfect hat.

This was an optional meetup on this Thursday, the day before the rally was officially scheduled to begin. There was strong attendance for this meet; it’s always a good idea to stay in town the night before the rally starts so you’re not commuting an hour or two before driving all day.

Another reason that attendance was strong for this one was that we weren’t just meeting to hang out: we were doing a hillclimb up a dead end road, ending at the scenic Fremont Peak State Park.

The drive to the top is a high quality fun road with great visibility; a classic California hillclimb.

There was even a perfect viewing area to watch the other cars arrive.

The DWA rallies are a mobile car show; everywhere we go is a display of the coolest cars.

Seeing my childhood dream car out in the wild was a special treat for me; these Vipers still look exotic and have a strong presence over 30 years later.

Every once in a while I take a photo that comes out exactly how I wanted it: this is one of those times.

Contrary to most folks, I prefer driving downhill. There are some vehicle dynamics related reasons for that, but here’s another big one: downhill views are spectacular!

Back at the hotel, and Ryan was already digging into the first of many repairs, tweaks, and fixes to the E30.

I always feel a bit like I’m cutting meat with a spoon trying to take this sort of photo with my Nikon camera these days; it took major post-processing massaging in addition to some carefully selected camera settings (1/5 second–handheld! at f/2.0, ISO 5000) to create this image. Point your iPhone at this scene, however, and Night Mode will do all of that for you in seconds, automatically. I’m still waiting for “The Great Camera Merge” when a removable lens camera has all the processing power of a cell phone, or perhaps when a cell phone has a large sensor and a mount for “real” removable lenses; that will be a huge revolution in photography.

The next morning we were back at the park. Hardly anyone goes to the park at 8 AM on a Friday, so we had the whole thing to ourselves.

DWA is known for having a lot of Radwood-era cars and Porsches, but there were lots of other funky standouts as well.

Geoff brought his awesome modified Ford Cortina. He even let me drive it later, on one of my favorite roads. I’ve driven a mildly-modded BMW 2002, and the Cortina was more exciting in every way, especially the powertrain. The BDA engine is “lusty”, as the Brits say, and the four-speed transmission is firm and direct like a racing ‘box: the total opposite of a Porsche transmission from the same era.

Rally swag! Before the rally, everyone gets to pick up their rally guidebook and supplies. We got some snacks, hot sauce, cleaning supplies, and t-shirts.

Plus this rad metal badge cast by Forrest of Kooglewerks! He recycled a bunch of old aluminum BMW parts and melted them down to make these badges.

After the official drivers’ meeting, the rally was officially on!

I’m certainly biased because it’s my home, but I always find the rolling hills of California to be quite beautiful, especially in late winter when they’re still green.

The rolling car show is on the move! It’s definitely easier to tolerate traffic like this when they’re all your friends in their lovely cars.

Whatever happened to four round rear tail lights? Skyline “afterburner” lights are just gorgeous in their simplicity and function. The new GMA cars look oddly naked with just two round lights; note how much better the S1LM looks with four round lights. And what is Ferrari doing with their squinty rear slits for tail lights? They would look way cooler with quad rounds.

Some roads are derisively labeled as “transit stages” due to their relative lack of challenge compared to the extreme twisties that we usually like. However, I love cruising through these peaceful empty roads, encountering more cattle than humans. This is one of the many reasons I believe that all rally cars should have both a driver and co-driver: when you’re alone in the car, you tend to get impatient. When there’s someone else in the car, these are excellent moments of calm.

Warren was in his Dakar Yellow E36 M3, and I’m still getting used to not seeing him in the Dolphin Gray E30. That 3 plate is period correct and very cool, although sadly just one digit off from the mythical “DWA” plate all of us would love to stumble upon.

The junction of 198 and 25, also known as “The Crossroads”, is a classic meetup space. From here there are four directions to go, all of them fun.

The light in California is just magical. There’s just enough crap in the air, combined with ever-so-slight cloud cover, that even black cars photograph in a special way.

These guys are fully set up with Hotchkis gear and modern drivetrains, and are able to carry much more pace than I expected.

I love capturing the “behind the scenes” of other people taking photos; the alternate angle and history always fascinates me.

Chrome trim was a very common feature of this rally.

I suppose this is just the simplest way to engineer this, but water crossings always trip me out. I used to drive through them as fast as possible, but on one rally I blew out an under panel and all the grease from my rear axles, so now I just chill and let other people be the big splashers.

Okay, now we’re talking: narrow, bumpy, no center line, no guardrail, no advisory road signs. This is a road for proper drivers, requiring you to read the road in advance, with no safety net for your mistakes.

Even a little car going slowly makes a big splash!

The tarmac section winds its way up and down, reaching the summit with a fantastic view of the valley below.

This is a two-way road, and thankfully it’s at least well-graded and smooth because everything else about it is gnarly: loose slippery surface (on a hard packed base, at least), super narrow, blind turns, with just a soft mound of dirt separating the acts of “driving” and “flying”.

We then arrived in Parkfield, known as “The Earthquake Capital of the World”. It sits right on the San Andreas fault; just outside of town you can see a graphic depiction of how far the land has been displaced over time due to tectonic plate movement.

We are officially on the cowboy side of California! Ooo-wee!

There was a whole family in this 250C. It’s amazing that people use those huge trucks as family vehicles. At least in this area, there’s a good chance that 2500HD is actually put to work hauling things or driving on rough roads.

So many Porsches, but none are the same.

Some might consider it disgusting hoarder behavior, but I always enjoy when farmers leave their disused old equipment on the edge of their property for us city slickers to ogle. I usually end up just wondering how the hell these things work.

What a huge difference between the Volvo and BMW yellows; you can really tell how pale the Volvo hue is here.

An aluminum rally badge would look weird on a car like my BRZ, but it almost looks like a factory option on this Trans Am. How perfect!

Another magical old-style design: the pillarless coupe.

What a great location for a group lunch.

I always like to go up in the treehouse and survey the scene from up there.

Luckily it was nice and dry this year; that’s the parking lot where Drew got stuck in the mud and we had to push him out.

This 2017 snap is one of my all-time favorite photos I’ve taken. It’s technically interesting, with 1/40 second letting you see some wheelspin. But it’s also such a funny moment, with Drew looking helplessly out the window to the laughing, beer-drinking crowd as he realizes he’s stuck.

And yes, we did help him get going (well, I didn’t. Somebody has to take the photo).

Back to the future, we are on the road. One of my favorite things in the world is a road with no lines. We use lines for everything in the USA: everything is demarcated by different colors and types of lines that indicate where you can and can’t drive, pass, or park. And yet out here is proof that it’s not necessary: drive on the right side of the road, and only pass where and when it’s safe. You don’t need a line on the ground to tell you that.

Everyone knows about curves in roads that go left and right, but roads that go up and down are underrated. Modern civil engineering tends to flatten out roads when they’re built in the interest of safety, so newer roads just aren’t like this.

Back at the hotel, I spotted this nicely modded Civic Si. Those are real Rays Gram Lights, shod in Advan V601 tires, which are what I currently have on my BRZ. These are great Michelin PS4S competitors, giving almost the same experience (good grip, long lasting, good ride yet firm sidewalls, fairly quiet) but at a significantly lower price. Another great thing about California: since there are good roads everywhere, a lot of people own and drive fun cars. I’m really frustrated about the proliferation of SUV’s, and one reason is their terrible dynamics compared to cars; but then I have to realize that most of our country lives nowhere near a curvy road, so vehicle dynamics are irrelevant.

Another parking lot takeover. Funny to play “duck duck goose” with the rally versus normie cars. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to get over just how excessively large American trucks are compared to the size of vehicle that most people actually need. Oh and hey, someone rented a Mitsubishi Mirage; I wonder if there are more rental Mirages than retail-sold Mirages in the USA.

The parking lot party in full effect! Unlike some rallies which make a point of driving many miles, DWA rallies put an emphasis on hanging out with friends. In the afternoon when you’ve finished the rally route, you’re free to do whatever you want–including run back some of the route or explore the area if you wish. Most people, however, decide to chill out until the group dinner.

Bucket seats and a four on the floor. From this angle, there isn’t much to reveal that this thing is actually a beast on back roads.

Why even bring a Pontiac if you can’t stack your Coors empties on the hood?

We then went over to Big Bubba’s Bad BBQ, which was definitely better than it sounds.

It was within walking distance of the hotel (in fact, the Best Western in the background is where we stayed), but some of the cooler cars were asked to move over to the restaurant parking lot and enhance the vibe of the dinner meet.

It’s a pretty funky/kitschy place; it kinda reminded me of Cracker Barrel but with a wild west theme. We ate our dinner in “Cell 1” which was a replica jail cell that, of course, could not be locked closed in any way.

The next morning we were out bright and early, coffee cups in hand, ready to do it all over again.

Back on the road! Man, it’s tough to get motion blur in a shot like this. You tend to bounce around due to the car you’re in, so you have to use a faster shutter speed to ensure your subject is sharp. This one is 1/100 shutter speed with my 40mm prime and it actually has a bit of blur. On the next rally, I’m going to shoot with my 70-200mm lens, which will lead to a fairly different look.

Another “transit stage”, but still a lot of fun for me riding in a car with a good friend, surrounded by the cars of my good friends, in a calm and beautiful location. Oh and did I mention that it was March in California, so the weather was absolutely perfect?

Another short dirt road took us to a non-descript yet epic dirt parking lot.

Once again, we were back at Carrizo Plain, the largest single native grassland remaining in California.

There’s a path up a nearby hill that gives a great panoramic view. On one side, the parking lot where we came from.

On the other side, Soda Lake.

This is an ephemeral alkaline endorheic lake, so it was pretty cool to actually see some water in there.

Two more 911’s joined us at this point. A lovely Euro 993 Carrera 4S, and, hey that’s not a 911…

It’s a RUF! Hell yeah!

RUF is such a freakin’ cool brand. The Ruf family is full of lovely people who are true car enthusiasts, and over the decades they’ve created some of the coolest modified “Porsches” (in quotes because the cars even have RUF VINs!): all of the performance and luxury you could want, without any of the cheesiness that is so common among Porsche tuners.

Moving almost 30 years earlier, how about this lovely 1962 356 Roadster? Like the early Speedster models, it has a small chrome windshield instead of A-pillars attached to the body as in the frumpy Cabriolet. Yet you don’t seem to hear much about these compared to the very popular early Speedsters.

Moving about 30 years back from present day, how about this small white roadster? In fact, that’s the original model name of this car: Roadster. Only in North America was it released under the now-legendary “Miata” moniker.

To quote Sir Mix-a-Lot (or is that Mr. Sir Mix-a-Lot to me?), “Big coupe but still got balls”. The dream car, even for regular people, used to be a two-door coupe: the ultimate in personal luxury. Four door cars used to be trashed while people preserved the more desirable two door variants, but nowadays it seems like just the reverse. You can’t even get a two door VW GTI anymore, and big V8 coupes have gone the way of the dodo.

I always get a chuckle out of this plate on Max’s C4 Corvette.

There were a lot of yellow cars on this rally. Sadly, we never did the much-talked-about yellow car photoshoot.

Back on the road, we drove through one of the most entertaining bits of highway out there. First is a straight bit through the wavy hills. Nowadays, in the name of safety, they would slice deep into the hills and make a fairly flat and safe route; over 100 years ago when this road was made, they just picked two points and drew a straight line between them.

This means that instead of going through or around the rolling hills, it goes right over the top of them! Your car goes light over these crests traveling at CHP-approved speeds; when you start reaching unmentionable velocities you can achieve stomach-churning g force, or even airtime. Allegedly.

It takes forever to get here, but from this point forward is nine miles of some of the best tarmac in the entire world.

At this point, I put the camera away and just enjoyed myself. I was riding in Art’s E30 now and just soaking up the vibe. Everyone has a goal in mind when building their car; one of Art’s goals, as well as my own, is to make your car as fun to drive as possible on a road like this.

Another neat thing about this road is, despite being in the middle of nowhere, there is an abundance of cheap gas because this is oil territory.

The Chevron station here is huge: you could run an autocross in the parking lot of this place!

Then we finally did something I’ve always wanted to do: a photoshoot with the oil derricks! We drive by them so much but never stop. On this rally, we finally made the time for it.

Part of the draw is that they just look cool: giant, slowly moving machinery.

There’s also the symbolism. We’re all driving cars powered by petroleum. How do we get it? Where does it come from? Right here!

How can you give a car guy a loose surface and rear-wheel-drive and not expect this to happen?? Thankfully, I was far enough away to not be assaulted by the gravel machine gun.

The Ford Cortina and various iterations of the original Mini share something in common in my brain: the front ends both look funnier and weirder the more you look at them. They also have several different grille variations which I think adds to it.

It’s amazing how slammed these cars are, or at least how slammed they appear with the low rear fender openings. Most modern cars are pretty low if they are tucking tire just under the fender line; these cars have huge fat tires and are about to tuck rim!

E30 versus E36; which do you think looks better? I’ve always regarded the E36 as quite a handsome vehicle, but it looks like a bloated pig next to the simple elegance of an E30.

The difficulty of multi-car shoots seems to go up exponentially as you add more cars. Two cars? Not bad. Three cars? Hard, but doable. Four cars? Yikes, I could’ve spent a lot more time arranging them for this. Gotta spend some time on the kitchen table playing with Hot Wheels, I think.

This is a fun contrast between a classic car with no bumper at all, and the mid 80’s government-mandated gigantic impact bumper.

One of the cliches throughout time has been and continues to be, “All cars look the same now”. It’s called fashion sweetie, look it up. Cars have always looked similar to each other in every period; when something comes out that looks too different, it tends to be very unpopular.

I could probably make an entire book called “Classic 911’s Next to Things”.

I love the shape of these cars, and they are such a good comparison to so many things, especially other cars.

Speaking of vehicles that don’t look the same as everything else, the Tesla Cybertruck has caused quite a ruckus because it was literally designed by a small child, and not a particularly talented one. However, I only find it mildly ugly due to its crude simplicity; for me, the likes of the modern RAM and GM trucks are significantly more ugly in a disgusting way. The Chevy is particularly awful, with the lumpy hood and fake scoop, the squinty and weird proportions of the headlights, the off-center tiny bow-tie badge, and more.

Sometimes the parking lot party is more like a repair session.

Still gotta have the beers though.

Ahh, look at the big brain on Paul, bringing his soft chair outside.

More parking lot repairs were going on in this corner. Check out that (lack of) suspension droop!

One more morning in Paso: we gathered for the last drivers’ meeting of the rally.

Here’s another yellow comparison photo. BMW’s Dakar Yellow always seems so pale, but it looked positively vibrant compared to some of the other yellows on the rally.

Here’s one for the paint color nerds: Dakar Yellow (background) versus Dakar Yellow II (foreground).

After a bit of driving, we foolishly stopped to regroup here. I say foolishly because we passed another, larger rally hangout to get here that we should have stopped at.

Not only were there some, ahem, shenanigans taking place back there, they were in no rush to get moving. I stood by the side of the road intending to get some shots of those cars driving past, but almost no one showed up. I did see the “Friis Bros Racing” boys, who are actually a father-son duo.

I mostly ended up watching everyone leave from here.

I think it’s the law that you have to leave a gas station in a muscle car with both rear tires lit up and a turn of countersteer.

We waited a bit longer and only saw a couple more cars, so we decided to get back on the road.

…and that’s where the sidewalk ends for this one. There are no onboard shots from Sunday because I actually spent the day behind the wheel of Vololvo! This is one of the most fun cars I have ever driven, so it was a real treat. Drew is a good driver so I have no problem sitting next to him for a whole rally, but he very generously threw me the keys for the last day of the rally.

Unfortunately, Drew is not as good of a co-driver as he is behind the wheel. We were supposed to go to lunch together and that would be the final meetup of the rally; well, Drew routed us to an incorrect location, and I think we went around an hour in the wrong direction before realizing this. Since backtracking would take us the opposite direction from home just to arrive at lunch after everyone left anyway, we decided to continue heading back home to the bay area. It didn’t faze me because that was already quite an action-packed weekend. I got to catch up with good friends, take a lot of photos, ride along on a lot of fun roads, and even drive the Ford Cortina on one of my favorite roads. Getting to drive Vololvo on Sunday was the cherry on top. I can’t wait for the next DWA rally!

I took a ton of photos on this rally over four days of fun, so if you liked this post you can see a lot more at my Flickr.