Starlet Break
I’ve known Andrew since sometime in my college days, which I guess would be about eight years now. Back then, I remember going over to his smog shop at the edge of the Mission district with Art and just hanging out while we checked out Andrew’s cars or waited for an interesting customer to show up.
There are two cars I remember from those days, and he still has them both: a narrow-body Chrysler Conquest, and the KP61 Starlet you see here. The smog shop on Valencia closed down and Andrew moved to the north bay, but those precious Japanese classics remain.
The Starlet community is pretty small, probably in part because there isn’t a whole lot of aftermarket support to help the anemic 1.3L and the primitive chassis it powers. Andrew did the common mod of installing AE86 running gear; a 4AGE is under the hood, and the 86’s rear end was modified to mount up to the Starlet body.
Where the Starlet had triangulated rear links, the Corolla had parallel links plus a Panhard bar. Andrew says that without that horizontal link, the rear end does get a little bit of shimmy. But it’s not a serious track car by any means, so perfection is not the goal.
Its latest modification? These ingenious headlights. They look like period correct reflectors, and the only reason they stand out at first glance is that they’re so clean. But they hide a naughty, modern secret—they’re LED! That’s the perfect modification in my book.
My FR-S is the car I’ve owned the longest, at almost two-and-a-half years, and I’ve been itching to replace it for a while. Maybe it’s my attention deficit or lack of patience, but I always admire people who can keep cars for so long and keep working on them, because I just can’t. Let’s see what the future brings for the Starlet…oh, and maybe I’ll get some snaps of that badass Conquest too.
Rennsport Reunion V Recap: Track Action
Although I’m finally getting around to posting it now, the following events actually happened the day after the Jalopnik Film Festival, which I posted about a few weeks ago.
The event was Rennsport Reunion V, an epic gathering of Porsches and Porsche-philes being held at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. Unfortunately, Art and I were only able to stumble out of our hotel rooms in north Los Angeles at around 7 AM on Saturday morning, which meant this is where we pick up the action: in the early afternoon, near the end of the second-to-last race of the day.
Luckily, it was a very cool race: the “Eifel Trophy”, a class for Porsche’s road cars of the 1960s. Although technically open to 904’s, it was mostly early 911’s…
…with a few 914/6’s tossed in for good measure.
I love how these guys are really racing, and not just cruising around.
And just like that…it was over.
However, I was soon greeted with the reassuring sound of flat six thunder. Ahh, so nice to hear a modern race car that is naturally aspirated.
This was the Rennsport Reunion Cup, featuring modern GT3 Cup cars. I love how closely related they are to the road-going 911’s…pretty much as close as you’re going to get in this day and age.
Ok, I admit that I love shiny liveries. It’s amazing that in this era of computer-aided design, where photography is more common than ever, that boring color schemes are commonplace on race cars.
Well, you won’t see any of that here. This “art car” looking 991 was definitely my favorite.
I also liked this livery, representing the entire country of Mexico. Nice bold color scheme, but they missed a chance for some classic Mexico Blue!
This Distech-sponsored car was also very appealing, both as a whole and in the fine details.
Anything with fluorescent paint is really hard to capture. How does this look on your monitor?
“That one rental car company sponsored car just hit me!” Hertz? “Nah, I’m okay.”
I don’t really know why, but I thought this Turbo pace car was super cool.
That reminds me–let’s take a quick look at the 997 GT3’s still floating around. I love seeing the “old” cars still out there; the first time I saw GT3 Cup was when the 997.2 came out, and there were still plenty of 997.1’s and even a few 996’s in the field.
This time it seemed to be all 997.2’s, however.
I still think the 997 is the best looking water-cooled 911—the 996 is too bulbous and the 991 lost a bit of the “rear-heavy” look when they pushed the rear wheels back. But the 997 hits the sweet spot for me. The reason I bring this up is that I love to watch and shoot vintage racing, and there’s a lot of the “good old days” and “the way things were” vibe going around. But you know what? I love to remind myself that there is some great racing going on right now. And one day, 20 or 30 years in the future, I’ll look back and say, “Ah yes, I remember watching 997’s race in period. Those were the good old days.”
There’s not much more to say about the racing because I couldn’t really follow the action (not like I ever do anyway), so now I’ll just show off some shots I like. Down to 1/13 of a second with this exposure! Bright colors with high contrast shapes: that’s the recipe for a perfect livery from a photographer’s perspective. I’m 100% a slave to autofocus, so the more things my camera can focus on, the better.
If you like pixel-peeping, click that photo and check out the full-resolution version. Sure, it’s pretty tight in the frame, but it’s completely uncropped! I’m kind of proud of that for some reason. And it kinda blows my mind a little bit that I got nice motion blur at 1/200 of a second—I’m so used to shooting ChampTruck at 1/80 and the wheels are barely spinning.
From that to 1/20. Maybe you’ve already noticed, but I love buttery-smooth pans; freeze frames just don’t get my blood flowing.
One of the media outlets to which I send ChampTruck photos seems to have the complete opposite opinion; I used to throw in a couple slow pans in each batch of event photos I sent over, but then I noticed: their editor never posted any of them! I guess where I see a painting, some people might just see a blurry mess.
Doesn’t that Kelly-Moss livery look badass?
Actually, Kelly-Moss Motorsports had a few cars out there, like the blue 997 I’ve shown already.
Another slow one. This shot reminds me of Dino Dalle Carbonare…he has a lot of motorsport pans with a tack sharp front and the back just exploding out of focus.
Unfortunately, while the track would be open for several more hours, the only “action” would be in the form of parade laps. So at that point I retired to the paddock to check out the static displays. This particular GT4, one of many I saw over the weekend in various colors, was in the spectator parking, which of course can be just as fun as the show itself. But there’s no time for that, so I headed down to the paddock.
Next up: the Pit Lane Concours and as much of the pits, paddock, and special displays as I could capture!
Every Day News
Here’s a blog-like update on my day-to-day “grind”:
The future is here, and it has LED’s.
The Cars and Coffee of 2015
What a wild year for the so-called “Canepa Cars & Coffee”. Flipping through my photos of the first meet of the year, you can see that it was originally a pretty low-key event.
At the time, we all considered this a pretty decent showing. There were a few really interesting cars, and overall it seemed to be mostly Porsches given the nature of Canepa’s shop and racing career, past and present. As a Porsche lover, you won’t hear me complaining about that.
As would prove a theme for the whole year, we met some friends from the internet. Time and time again, it was proven true that it’s the cool people who come out with their cars, while the trolls are just sitting in their mom’s basement defending their leased Jetta TDI on the internet.
The flip side of the low attendance was that the parking was much more, erm…informal.
Yeah. Lots of vans for some reason. Back then, there was room for everyone in the parking lot.
And as you can see, the crowd was pretty sparse.
This is a Porsche 906, which is one of my all-time favorite cars that Porsche ever made. It was the last road-legal Porsche race car; the end of an era. And it turned out this lovely orange example was in for a full restoration that I would see unfold over the next several months.
There’s a guy who shows up early every single month in his Mk5 Golf R32 and leaves his hood popped. What is he showing off? The only mod is a short ram intake. Big deal. Anyway, this Volvo has every reason to have its hood popped.
At the July C&C, I met Drew, the owner of this LS1-swapped Volvo V90. In case you were wondering, that’s the engine from a Camaro SS, or a base model C5 Corvette. And it’s not stock. He didn’t build it, but you know what they say: dumb guys build race cars, smart guys buy race cars. Here’s another cliché: buy the owner, not the car. Apparently the guy who did build this car was some sort of meticulous mad genius who builds awesome cars and gets bored of them quickly. Perfect!
This Miura appeared at the July event. By this point, word was getting out about how cool the meet was, and some truly awe-inspiring machinery was coming out.
I had never, ever seen a Panoz Esperante. And I don’t think I ever will again.
This Cadillac blew my mind. I believe it was a 1906; so not only was it the oldest car I’ve ever seen at Cars and Coffee, it was probably the oldest car I’ve ever seen driving on public roads! An entire family of four showed up in it, no problem. They worked back then, why shouldn’t they work now? Amazing.
So why was the meet growing in popularity? The opportunity to walk freely around the incredible shop space was surely the biggest draw.
See what I mean? Every corner of the shop is filled with some awesome vintage car in varying states or restoration or repair.
Remember the 906? This was the state of it in July. Coming along nicely…
Due to various commitments, I wasn’t able to make every event. In fact, it’s only now that I’m looking at my photos and realized that I made every other event: April, July, and October. Given that the October meeting was the last one of the year, I definitely wanted to go. So on the early morning of October 10th, I woke up before my alarm clock, too excited to sleep, and bounced down to my workplace to pick up “my” car: a Pearl White McLaren 650S that I’d be driving for the day.
We were also accompanied by Art in his new-to-him E36 M3, his neighbor Kevin in a C63 AMG (not pictured yet), and one of our friends who we originally met on the internet, Gabe (aka ‘safegabe’) in his ’91 Civic Si. Point proven again: the cool dudes on the internet bring their cars to hang out, while the trolling idiots on the internet just sit at home, lonely and embittered.
I wish I had taken more pics when we first arrived. After just a few minutes, the sun was getting harsh.
Another friend from the internet, “Dave_Car_Guy”. He has quite an eclectic collection, ranging from a Datsun Roadster to a 930 to this Fisker Latigo CS (and a few more besides). We begged him to bring the Latigo, not because it’s necessarily the “coolest” car in his stable, but because it’s definitely the rarest: only one customer car was ever made!
Of course, you can read more about this car on the internet if you like, but here are some fundamentals to whet your appetite: it’s based on an E63 BMW series–a V10-powered M6, in fact. The original prototype was based on a 645i, and there were supposed to be 150 made, but only one was ever sold: the car you’re looking at. At an original cost of $216,000 not including the base car, you can see why it was a hard sell.
The rear end of the car is so much better resolved than the original Bangle design, but the jury’s still out on the front. I’m not really a fan of the Bangle E63/E64, so I find the Fisker touch to be appropriate. Also, the grey bus next to us with the deep red interior (and a table!) was awesome.
Rarity is king at meets like this. I’m glad Art didn’t bring his 993 out this time, because even though it’s a cool car in a cool and rare-isn color, there are always 993’s out there. Hell, there was even an Ocean Blue 993 there already when we arrived! But even though there were a couple other E36 M3’s, there weren’t any sedans. Although there was another slicktop M3; this insanely rare E36 M3 Lightweight that I’ve seen at every Canepa C&C so far.
There are some cars that you can see over and over and not get tired of; this lead sled Merc is one of them. I finally got the time and opportunity to grab some snaps, so I did what I could.
When the car next to it left, I jumped in and made my move!
This is a 1940 Ford I believe? I don’t have any pics of the front–it might be a ’39.
In front of that was another car for the “never get tired of” department. This long hood, glass window Targa has been at each C&C I’ve seen, but I never get tired of looking at it.
And in front of that was a lovely BMW in a similar hue. Man, I love blues like this; why don’t manufacturers offer colors like this anymore?
Or what about colors like this? I guess people in general aren’t bold enough to roll around in a pink muscle car anymore.
The term “classic” is thrown around pretty easily with European or American cars, but Japanese? Even though it’s a Corolla, this car is a legitimate classic in my view.
One of the original draws to the Canepa Cars & Coffee was, and remains to this day, the opportunity to tour the shop. You’ll always find a treat, whether it’s looking at this incredible Ferrari 250 LM and wondering what it was like to blast down the Mulsanne at over 170mph…
…or looking at this McLaren P1 next to it and wondering what it’s like to blast down the freeway at over 170mph. I imagine the experience in the McLaren is a bit more sedate, eh?
Of course, you also get the works-in-progress; priceless classic cars getting repairs as if they were just any old daily driver. Such is Canepa, where extraordinary vehicles are clearly quite an ordinary sight.
Like this hot rod. I don’t really know what I’m looking at in there, but I do remember the Gurney Eagle being one of the most beautiful Formula One cars ever.
I’ve tried to take this 288 GTO’s interior shot before, but this is the first time I’ve been able to pull it off.
Since this was right after the Rennsport Reunion at Laguna Seca (which I have about a zillion photos of–don’t worry, I didn’t forget about them!), the shop area was predictably filled with plenty of awesome racing Porsches.
Remember the orange 906? Well, here it is, looking like it just rolled out of Porsche’s factory in the 60s. Wow.
This pair of perfect 917’s was pretty awesome, too.
From that early 1970-spec 917 K-70 to this end of the line 917/30 Can-Am beast, it’s pretty interesting to think that those are essentially the same car.
I was in the back area and Gabe came up to me. “Did you see the LaFerrari parked next to you?” I walked over to see that there was quite a stir.
The Ferrari TheFerrari is another one of the current crop of exquisitely designed cars which really needs to be seen to be appreciated, because it’s actually all the things you can only perceive up close that really make it attractive. I think the same can be said of the McLaren P1, the Koenigsegg One:1, and even the Singer 911’s for that matter: they’re all about the details.
We cruised over to our usual meet-up location and had some lunch. Here are some gratuitous shots of everyone:
And with that, a great season of Canepa Cars & Coffee had ended. See you again in 2016!
Whoa! What’s that?? Remember to always keep your cameras out and your mind turned on.
Star Road 