The cars and bikes thread!

[Raza]

Can't see any Raza esque bidders in the history?

Haven’t played my hand yet. I’m waiting to see how far it goes before I throw my hat in the ring. I’ll place my first bid about 45 minutes before the auction ends.

[Raza]

Again, where you live, they probably won't shut off roads temporarily for club events. One of our Friday lunch groups had the first C8 Z06 in Florida for seven months before another was registered in the state (There were only 23 built in the whole country that year). He will not tell us who he knows at GM to get that since one of the group owns 77 dealerships in five states in the southeast, and it took a year longer to get the first of the two he ordered. They shut down roads for many Corvette and club events around here. Half the group has a C8 of some type. One of the other lunch group attendees is the president of the board at Sebring so he can get us an hour or two on the track with a week or two notice. So you can go fast on public roads under controlled conditions. It took me three tries to ride the Tail of the Dragon in NC due to club events.

I don’t consider a shut down road a public road any more than I’d consider a track a public road. A public road is one where anyone can drive a car on it at any time. Shutting down a public road creates controlled conditions and limits who can be there to people participating in an event. That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s the same argument that you can take the car to a track and drive the hell out of it (which is where a car like the ZR-1 belongs).

I'm certain you know you don't just go out and top out a car the first time on a road. You work up to it. Dodge claimed the Charger Hellcat Red Eye (800hp) would do 203 mph, and the H1000 version (1000hp) is claimed to run in the 8-second range in the 1/4 mile (The same car basically with two very different purposes). There are about 20 pages of requirements to get these numbers and some of them do not come with the car. It's a brick compared to the Vette. To hit 215 in a ZR1 probably requires resetting or removing many of the aero aids and quite a few other things added and adjusted to get there since it is an estimate. Chevy claims the Z06 will do 195, yet as delivered, it is 20-25 mph less than that. The C8 needs the track alignment settings, not the street settings, to get the best lap times. The problem is that it will eat a set of $ 3,000 tires in 500 miles with those settings. I know on my Pompano neighbor C7 Z06, it was an over-year wait to get a set of tires before the pandemic. For some of these cars, you need to order a set or two of tires before you pick them up if you plan to drive them regularly.

I know I work up to it before I push any car. You have to spend a lot of seat time to learn the limits, how it reacts to your inputs, how the weight shifts under braking and turning, etc.

I’m not confident the drivers of any car, of any power level, know or do this. Considering how many times I’ve seen videos of “mundane” performance cars like base Vettes and Mustang GTs revving at the lights and then skewering off immediately into a tree or street lamp, I really have no confidence that the average driver of a car like this is spending hours learning the car.

As far as age, I'm not certain I believe that. Many GT and endurance race drivers are 40 and 50 years old. I'm also amazed that top fuel rivers that still have some of the fastest response times are between 50-80 years old. Kenny Bernstein was about 50 when he broke 300 mph in the 1/4 mile 30 years ago (I was there). John Force is 78 and still one of the best and has won 16 NHRA titles mostly at over 50 years old. Open-wheel drivers tend to be younger, but there are still exceptions there, too. Another of our Friday lunch group is a drag racer for hire, and he beats nearly everyone on acceleration tests in the same car. He is my age. He also races hydrofoils and other speed boats. Far harder than a car to drive fast.

Well, yes, you do have a point there. It’s not just age, I never meant it to be simply about age. But again, using professional drivers as a yardstick is not appropriate measure. These are people who have been training and racing likely their whole lives. F1 drivers cart from the time they can walk without that toddler wobble. Age is far less a factor for someone like that, who has been honing the skills required to drive fast at a competitive level their whole lives. It’s the same as me saying a 35 year old can’t pick up and start playing professional soccer and then you saying that Messi’s 37 and he’s still one of the best in the world. Yes, but both those things are true. There’s a fundamental difference between someone who has been racing their whole lives and someone who has been a hedge fund manager or investment banker and splashes out on an expensive car. I’ve been driving hard since I got my license, I’ve done track work, skills workshops, etc., but if you put me, a lifelong car enthusiast and pretty damn good driver if I do say so myself, head to head with a retired F1 driver 20 years older than I am, I would be embarrassed handily. These are people with natural skills and talents that have been honed over a lifetime of competitive racing. It’s not the same. None of us is John Force, nor Damon Hill, nor Randy Pobst. There used to be a show called “Pros vs. Joes” where a bunch of football dads pit themselves against retired professional athletes. I don’t have the statistics, but in the few times I saw that show, the Joes got trounced regularly. It’s a different situation when you’ve been training your whole life to do a thing. And there are always going to be anecdotal outliers, that one tree doesn’t change the forest.

And we both know, that most people who are going to buy a car like this are going to drive it slowly to the country club or to brunch or to brunch at the country club and that’s fine. People have money, they want to show it off, if we’re being honest, I’m in no position to criticize that. Flex away, septuagenarians, enjoy your thousand horsepower performance car. But there’s a reason cars like this have trunks designed around fitting a bag of golf clubs in them. Let’s not kid ourselves. There’s nothing inherently wrong about a 1000+ horsepower car. It’s just boring. And yeah, if someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing tries to use all that power on public roads, it’s dangerous. And I get that half the fun is the danger, so again, I’m not in a position to criticize that either. But if we’re talking real talk, that 1000 could easily be 500 or even 400 and 99% of buyers would never know the difference.

[Raza]

It's deffo called a birds eye view and makes sense! Simulated or not.

I’ve heard “bird’s eye” used synonymously with “top-down” many times. I’m not sure if it’s chiefly a British thing, which is why there’s a disconnect, but yeah it makes total sense. I remember the first time hearing it a lot was when Infiniti came out with a “bird’s eye” top-down GPS navigation system which was widely praised by the car press at the time. Birds fly, they look down to see what they just pooped on and laugh, it’s normal.

[geoffbot]

Very handy. Though my gf dinged it today even with the camera. Thankfully on the only part of the car with ppf so I'm hoping that saved it... Attachment 130405

Ppf off, small to the metal scratch, but pdr guy can't pdr it so it's £500 for a fix (I'm assuming bondo) and respray which he assures me will look like new and I believe him - great reviews. Not too bad...

[Raza]

Didn’t go my way. Good price, but I hit my walk away point in what I was willing to pay inclusive of fees and I walked. The hunt continues.

[geoffbot]

Didn’t go my way. Good price, but I hit my walk away point in what I was willing to pay inclusive of fees and I walked. The hunt continues.

Is the hunt fun? I forget tbh. The hunt for cars I'm never gonna buy is fun but...

[gnuyork]

Just as it's also unsafe to put EVs that can do 0-60 in 3 seconds in the hands of drivers who've never had a car that was half as fast as that in a straight line. And those cars don't handle any better than the ones they used to drive. One of my pet peeves. Along with putting yahoos in pickups that can go almost that fast and weight 8000 pounds or more...

Trucks trying to race me at stop lights... in my Miata... every time. I don't know why. I guess the car looks faster than it really is.

[happyscrappyheropup]

You're such a child! Love it

I've done about 75 miles on it. Really wondering why I didn't have an SM already. It's such a fun bike.

[Raza]

Is the hunt fun? I forget tbh. The hunt for cars I'm never gonna buy is fun but...

No, it is not.

[Raza]

Trucks trying to race me at stop lights... in my Miata... every time. I don't know why. I guess the car looks faster than it really is.

People used to want to race me in the Z4 all the time.

I mostly indulged them