Automobile November 2017

SEPTEMBER 29 Auto Mundial; Motorsport Mundial SEPTEMBER 29 Roadkill, Episode 70 SEPTEMBER 30 LIVE! Blancpain GT Sports Club, Catalunya, Spain; LIVE! Euroformula Open, Monza; LIVE! International GT Open, Monza OCTOBER 1 LIVE! Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup, Barcelona; LIVE! Blancpain GT Sports Club, Catalunya, Spain; LIVE! Euroformula Open, Monza; LIVE! International GT Open, Monza OCTOBER 2 Ignition, Episode 184 OCTOBER 3 The House of Muscle, Episode 12 OCTOBER 4 Modified, Episode 5 OCTOBER 5 Ferrari Challenge Europe, Silverstone; FIA World Rallycross, Germany OCTOBER 6 Auto Mundial; FIM Motocross World Championship, Great Britain; Motorsport Mundial OCTOBER 7 LIVE! Euroformula Open, Jerez; LIVE! FIM Speedway World Championship, Poland; LIVE! Virgin Australia Supercars, Bathurst 1000; LIVE! VLN Endurance Racing, Nürburgring OCTOBER 8 LIVE! Euroformula Open, Jerez OCTOBER 9 British Touring Car Championship, Silverstone;…

@automobilemag VOLUME 32, NO.7 NOVEMBER 2017 IT’S A SIMPLE question, one I get often when people find out what I do for a living. But it continues to be one of the hardest for me to answer. “What’s the best car you’ve ever driven?” After it comes, I usually do the hem-haw shuffle as I fumble around for a response. I’m doing it as I write this. You’ve perhaps struggled with the same question when it comes your way. Is it the car or the context of when and where you drove it? Should it always be a new car? A supercar? Something more attainable? I’ve found it nearly impossible to pick just one, so in a cathartic exercise of sorts I’m going to break this down by random category…

MASERATI MULTI70 TRIMARAN GIOVANNI SOLDINI TURNS HIS WEATHERED face to the Pacific and squints at millions of square miles of cobalt water. What the 51-year-old Italian is pondering is anyone’s guess, but there’s a good chance he’s thinking about the upcoming Transpacific Yacht Race, the storied competition that challenges billion- aires, thrill seekers, and bucket-list romantics to traverse 2,225 nautical miles from San Pedro, California’s Point Fermin buoy to the Diamond Head Lighthouse in Honolulu, Hawaii, relying solely on wind power. A legend in the world of long-distance sailing and a national hero in Italy, Soldini looks more like a puckish fisherman compared to the coiffed locals in Southern California’s tony coastal enclave of Marina del Rey. There may be buckets of seafaring adven-tures swimming in the memory banks behind…

FIVE OF US are in an inflatable boat, engine at idle, maybe 150 feet from the Land Rover BAR America’s Cup catamaran, which is sitting still in the crystal-blue water in Bermuda’s Great Sound. We are waiting for something to happen. Suddenly, a yell, and the Rover BAR boat takes off. Its hull quickly lifts off the water like a woman raising her skirts before she tiptoes across a puddle. Only the comparatively tiny hydrofoils make contact with the sea, scarcely leaving a wake. How the Land Rover BAR accelerates from a dead stop using nothing but wind power generated by its 78-foot-tall wing sail is simply stunning. Our inflatable’s powerful outboard engine roars to keep up. Thirty-five knots, or 40 mph, might not sound like much, but on the…

SURPRISING NO ONE more than myself, I signed up to get a Vintage Sports Car Club of America (VSCCA) racing license the other week. I should mention I do not have a race car, never did, and have no plans to acquire one. But that could change. Credit goes to peer pressure. These proselyti-zing vintage-racer types who continue to pop up when you spend time in the old car world? They can make things much worse by seeming to have so much fun. Blame, too, a growing sense of time slipping away. Somehow, after all these years, the obvious question, “Why?” was replaced in my mind with, “If not now, when?” The first step toward doing something I never thought I would do was attending a two-day VSCCA school at…

“THIS YOUR FERRARI?”Before I’d answered, the guy was pressing his nose against the passenger-door glass to look inside. I didn’t feel like explaining. (“Actually, I’m an auto journalist, so I regularly get cars to review, and that might be a Kia or a Volkswagen, but this week it’s a Ferrari GTC4Lusso.”) So I just answered, “Yes.” He backed away from the curb for a better look, a mirror image of his face now imprinted on the Ferrari’s window. “How much?” he asked, squinting at the car. “About $350,000.” For a moment the guy said nothing, his eyes drinking in the Ferrari’s lines. Then he turned, flashed a grin. “Smarter than me. One year I probably spent that much on cocaine.” If you’re driving a Ferrari—especially a new and relatively unusual…