Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Gone in 60 Seconds?

Before I left for Korea, I decided to put my cars into storage. The facility I chose is located in Sausalito, CA (about 10 minutes north of San Francisco) and specializes in the storage of classic cars. One perk about this place is that they've installed over 10 cameras inside the facility that you can control to view your car remotely via a Java-applet enabled website. Just for kicks, I panned the camera around the garage to see what else was in there. The following are webcam stills of what I found.

Sitting pretty, itching to be driven...

Zooming out, can you spot the twins?

Panning to the left, my car suddenly becomes vastly inferior
(Ferrari F430 on top and 911 Turbo below it).

Panning around to the other side, I found this Shelby Cobra.

In the other garage sits the S2000.

This place also trickle-charges your battery upon request.

Zoom out a bit and the inferiority complex again ensues
(Aston Martin DB9 on the left, Ferrari 360 Modena on right)

Pan a bit to the left to find a beautiful classic Porsche below
(who cares about the crappy Boxster, really?)

A bit more to the left to find a classic Ferrari, Z8,
SLK55 AMG and early model Porsche (clockwise).

Panned to the other side and found another S2000 and two early model Porsches.

A bit more to the right to find yet another early model Porsche.

Needless to say, if the crew from the movie "Gone in 60 Seconds" were to find this garage, mine would be last on their list of cars to steal.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Downshifting into 3rd



Ah, how I miss driving my S2000. Cruising along on the highway in 6th gear (where the S is fairly tame) at an unsuspecting 60mph. Step on the clutch and downshift it directly into 3rd gear and the RPMs jump up to 7,000 rpm (where the S2000 transforms into a complete beast), at which point I realize that I still have 2,000 rpm left until I hit redline. Once I reach it, I shift into 4th and come to the realization that I'm going well over 100mph with two gears still left to go. Words can't describe the sound or the feeling.