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I've joined the dark side

For years, I promised myself I would never become one of those truck people. Yet for a variety of reasons, I now find myself in possession of a gargantuan Ford Expedition. It's fitted out with a 5.4 liter V8 -- an engine capacity greater than both my BMWs and my motorcycle combined. I can lie down flat on my back behind the front seats without bending my legs. It's so tall that as you climb in, you quickly realize that if you don't step on the running boards, you're not going to make it into the driver's seat. All of this just to tow a little BMW around every now and then. Sigh. Nothing exceeds, they say, like excess.

Why tow my car to the track? Well -- part of it has to do with safety. Earlier this year, I bought a new (used) M3, tricked out with race seats and a full rollcage. Though this setup is considerably safer on a racetrack, it does require that the driver wear a helmet at all times while driving it. Rollcages have the counterintuitive effect of rendering a car more dangerous for a helmetless driver; there's enough exposed metal near the head to help even a minor collision turn lethal. The idea of driving 400 miles strapped into competition harnesses and wearing a helmet didn't hold great appeal.

Reliability is another. There's only so many times one can drive finicky 18 year-old car for 400 miles, flog it for two days on a racetrack, and expect it to make the trip home without some significant breakdown. I did this for three years with my old M3, but I figured my luck would run out at some point. Finally, there's always the risk of the unmentionable, as my friend Will found out last summer.

Hence, a trailer and tow vehicle. I don't plan on using the Expedition for anything other than towing; it's too big, inefficient and unwieldy to be much use around Cambridge... so for the forseeable future, the 325is will still be in the picture.

The further you slide down the slippery slope, the steeper it seems to get.

Rite of Spring

Though it certainly lacks the artistry and profundity of a Stravinsky ballet, one of the very joyous signs marking the true arrival of spring for car geeks is the day you decide to exchange the squirmy, mushy winter tires in favor of a set of proper summer wheels.

Winter





Summer

It's subtle, of course. But it really does transform the stance of the car. Car designers didn't really discover the way wheels and tires could be used as design elements until the late sixties and early seventies. Some of this change was functional, of course; big advances in tire technology made much wider tires possible on production cars, and manufacturers modified their cars to suit. Just compare the spindly stance of this 1965 Porsche 911 with the more menacing, planted look of the 1973 911 Carrera RS, made just 8 years later:

Northern California in a Mini

On our way back to San Francisco after a day at Point Reyes, C remarked that "for some reason, all of our vacations seem to involve roads like this." So true. At that moment, "this" was a torturous coastal road just east of Stinson Beach -- you might have seen it in the one redeeming part of basic Basic Instinct, a car chase between two Lotus Esprits.

We had come out to San Francisco partly for work-related events, partly to see friends, and mostly to get out of Boston in the middle of March. I've been to San Francisco many times, but each time I return I'm once again reminded what an automotive fantasy land it is when compared with the northeast.

I grew up in Chicago and Vermont, went to college in Ohio, and have lived for the past eight years in Boston. These places don't have much in common, but one thing they share is an abysmally poor environment for cars in the winter. The combination of frost heaves, potholes and salt make for such a harsh automotive environment that few winter-driven cars manage to last much beyond their 15th birthday.

This is one of but many reasons it's always a pleasure to go somewhere else in the winter, especially an automotive fantasy land like California. When walking around San Francisco, it's rare when you walk an entire block without seeing some kind of cool old car. San Franciscans manage somehow to ward off the salt coming in from the sea, and use their horribly rust-prone antiques all year round.

The Mini at Point Reyes

The landscape north and south of the city is spectacular and beautifully preserved, save for a small number of windy roads that follow the terrain. For our drive to Point Reyes, we rented an automatic Mini Cooper convertible from Hertz (yes, it's impossible to rent a manual transmission car) and set off.

This Mini wasn't quite as engaging as the one we rented while driving through southern Spain last fall. The combination of an automatic transmission, plus the extra weight required to power and reinforce the convertible top together skim a few levels of fun off an otherwise appealing drive.

I also remain very disappointed with the interior. With the most recent updates, Mini moved the speedometer from the large center-mounted gauge to a smaller pod in front of the driver; but the only gauges remaining in the middle are an strange assortment of ancillary gauges like gas and coolant temperature -- an odd choice for the most prominent feature of the car's interior. The new 3-spoke steering wheel looks good, but the hard plastic spokes don't provide a very nice surface to touch. The constant shuddering and shaking felt over uneven surfaces also really made me miss the rigidity of a fixed roof. Despite its flaws, the Mini was a great companion for a fun day trip.

Muir Woods