Your time will come..

 

Looks like I missed a good meet. Oh well, getting my Z's was more important! Hope to come out to one of the future ones.

 

Is it more important?!

 

 

Hi Trevor,
There were actually 128 08 LP640 Roadsters that made it to the US. Far less than half that in 07, the first year the LP Roadster was built and a similar low number in 09. Of that seven or eight are green. Not sure the exact number because one wrecked back east, and I don't know if was totaled or not. Only two have the same interior and stitching. There are no large volume colors on the Roadster side compared to the coup where orange remains the most popular color. There are about as many orange, yellow, black, blue, etc. Green is only slightly rare. It remains the only LP640 Roadster in the state for now.

 

James, love all your photography! Really love the rolling shots too. We'd love to see Bear Creek Parkway become the official entrance route for this purpose. Thanks to everyone for again making this a terrific event.

 

Tom and Vick,
I've got a couple thoughts.
1) if we could define "exotic" based upon the number of cars built per year. Maybe make the cutoff around 1,000? Reducing it more may cut out too many great cars.
2) If we allow all comers, maybe we should begin sectioning off the area based upon nationality. So, Italian cars would include Ferraris, Lamos and Maseratis and German would include Porsche, BMW and Benz.
Thoughts?
Kevin

 

Getting close to the end.....

 

If you look up the term defining exotics in cars you will see a lot of different measuring sticks. Is rare exotic? Is a low selling price exotic? Would we include kit cars under this definition of low volume? Generally, we all know what "exotic" is, but everyone has a different idea who should be in that group. Someone said "European" yet the GTO can hang with anything European in my book and belonged right where it was today. The two SUVs (Desert Fire employees) didn't. We all get that. We are leaning towards a line judge, someone with car knowledge who runs the lots that day. We may have a very specific definition as cars show up between 8 and 9 AM, then open the lot to those in the gray area after that if there is room. That position of line judge can rotate. We just want someone with decent car knowledge. That person will be responsible for the cutoff based on traffic that day and how they want to deal with the gray area. There are a lot of issues when we consider our options, because we want to keep the cars together as much as possible and if we start segregating by country we start to lose some of the social interaction that makes it special. This isn't about Porsche versus Ferrari or one country against another. Yet, is an NSX an exotic?

Yea, there were two cars that decided they were "exotic" enough today and they clearly weren't in my book and ended up taking space for those more worthy of the term, but that's not too bad considering most others got it right who didn't crash the lot. We will see a lot more of the gate crashing problem unless we define it and we're getting a better idea of who fits and who doesn't so that definition draws closer.

I had a classics car guy come up and want to bring his classic club, and that could work, but that has its own issues regarding where to put them so we get interaction and have a decent forum for pictures. Some see this as a social gathering first, car event second and don't really care about how we display the cars or who we attract. To us that's Southcenter's kind of show and I've not heard how well attended it was today. Some don't even care if their car is clean or dirty. To me that's disrespectful of those who go through a lot of trouble and expense to dig out that truly rare exotic to show off to others or drive a long way just to see these cars. I loved seeing that Miura and the other rare cars that came out today and we want to attract more. But to keep drawing quality cars, we've got to set standards and work to uphold them as best we can. For about the 100th time, we want to be as inclusive as possible, (don't need the back-handed complements from some who still disagree), yet recognize that we have limits. We do appreciate any and all suggestions until we have it sorted out.

 

The one thing I would add is I would like to see more variety of cars.

Another thing that seemed clear from today was that there are more cars than parking spots. Can we cordon of a larger area?

Breaking it down into "show cars" and "track cars" still seems a viable option for separating the show cars without insulting the other wonderful cars that show up.

 

Last set:

 

What a turnout today was! I had a great time seeing everyone. I actually took the time to talk to people today instead of just focusing on taking pictures. What a change that was from the past events I've gone to. Later on I started taking pictures and will be posting those when they're done. I went on a drive with some of the Lambo boys (John, Tommy, Rick, and William) out to North Bend to take some more pictures. We had a colorful bunch of exotics in our caravan which turned quite a few heads.

I have to give a special thanks to both William and Tommy for letting me sample their exotics! I was surprised how well the LP640 handled on some of those back roads and when I had a chance to unleash all 657 hp, she MOVED, or hell, the EARTH moved! You could say that my face kind of looked like this, And like I told Tommy and the others, The LP640 may not have as much road feel as the Scuderia nor my 997TT but she definitely handled those tight corners with aplomb and utter ease. She's a beast and a very nimble one at that too. Thank you Tommy!

And then thanks to William for letting me take some more pictures yet again...I'm still experimenting with a series of different angles and ideas which I think you guys will enjoy seeing. It's also fun seeing the reaction of all the folks all over the place whenever I drove by in the LP640 and the Scuderia. A majority of folks must have gotten whiplash because of that.

James, nice job taking pictures! You certainly didn't disappoint!

 

Thanks Jason. I'm jealous that you got to drive a few of the Exotics. Can't wait to see your photos.

James

 

Actually your face was more like the entire time you drove. For the record, Jason's a good driver and we all had a great time playing on the back roads. It was the perfect day for it too.

 

We will figure something out, but we will be adding more space from the other lot. We're not expecting the weather to cooperate this next week, but when we have the next decent Saturday we will be doing that and we will need help directing and positioning cars.