Every year during the first couple weeks of June, Hot Rod magazine organizes a 2,500 or so mile rolling car show through the Midwest.  Hot rods, muscle cars, street rods, motorcycles, tricycles (man, I hope this one comes out!), Pacers (two years ago, there were three on the tour!), you name it show up for a week of celebrating what makes these cars great:  driving the doors off them on the Hot Rod Power Tour.  I was able to accompany my dad in the Pacer two years ago, but due to life changes, I missed it last year when he got incurably hooked on the tour.  This year though, I’m a little more planted and finally able to get the time off.

The best part about the tour is that it’s not just a week of a bunch of car shows, it’s about people that love their machines…fanatical if you will.  I’m going to be sure to have my laptop and camera in toe, so wherever my little MacBook can grab WiFi, I’ll update our twitter with happenings and every night I’ll post a Fanatics top ten to the site when I get back to rest at the hotel.  Not to mention, we’ll get some formal ¼ mile times out of the Pacer and depending on how she’s feeling after that, I might try for some autocross action.  It’s going to be a blast and I’m going to bring you all along for the ride.

Check back this Saturday as I set out on the 2009 Power Tour and watch our twitter for updates.

From time-to-time, we come across some seriously epic fails.  The best fails are those that make you think “what the hell was that guy thinking”?!? While we haven’t posted any fails on MotorFantics yet, I found the fail of all fails today and I knew it just had to go in the blog.  Who knows, if I find enough of these things, maybe we’ll make it a regular occurrence.  So, what did I find that could possibly be this good?   Read the rest of this entry »

So starting the day out with a walk through one of the best car garages that I’ve ever been in was a pretty amazing thing.   When I saw that the next stop was going to be at the Vel’s Parnelli Jones Racing headquarters, I knew it was going to stay good.  So after lingering at Dave’s garage for as long as I could, I finally made my way over to the Vel’s Parnelli Jones Racing building.  Once again the parking lot was filled with collector cars, but the real treasures where inside the building and upstairs.  There where old race cars that had been piloted by Al Unser & Mario Andretti and there was a Bronco that had been raced and won multiple Baja events.  Its hard to imagine a vehicle that could withstand multiple races down in Mexico…let alone one that could win the 1000 2 years in a row, and then the third year win the 500….that’s pretty impressive.   The vintage race cars where also incredible (speaking of vintage racing….Chris and I have some future plans along those lines) which sparked a little browsing online yesterday for some used Indy cars….THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!
Anyway, after spending about a half an hour at Vel’s Parnelli Jones, I headed to the last and final stop of the day, the private collection at Honda.  Inside they had samples of most of their historic landmark vehicles… as well as some legendary Honda Racing cars and motorcycles.  Now, I realize that we probably wouldn’t put an 1985 Accord in our personal collections but for Honda, we get it.  These are the cars that made Honda what they are today.   So have fun cruising the gallery…there are some pretty legendary vehicles in there.

We all have stories.  Stories that you keep in your back pocket in case you find yourself at a party or social gathering where you need something a bit crazy to bust into the social stratosphere.  Dan has tons of stories, and it’s always fun to hear him bust one out every now and then (alright, it’s more often than that).  My stories tend to be a little more subdued and revolve around something with a motor.  Regardless, yesterday, Dan and I experienced a new story that spans both of our typical genres to add to our social arsenal and boy was it a dusey. Dan’s a better storyteller than I am, but he’s involved in his usual shenanigans so I’ll do what I can.

We’re in the works of planning a new video. As always, I’ll keep you in suspense about the details, but I can say it’s going to involve rally cars in their natural habitat. That being said, yesterday we decided to head out to the desert and scout some potential shooting locations.  Some 60 miles or so out of Irvine (Dan’s stomping ground) is a little town out east of the Inland Empire before Palm Springs called Beaumont.  According to Google Maps, It’s got some really gnarly off road stuff that seemed more than worth checking out.  So after a morning of Cars and Coffee, we jumped in Dan’s 2wd (key for later) ‘99 Toyota 4Runner and headed to the desert.

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A few weeks ago, I introduced MotorFanatics to my first project car in a post comparing it to a Porsche 928. At the time, I’m sure it elicited a mixed bag of emotions among you faithful fanatic readers: excitement, confusion, anger (though I hope not) but I hope you found it intriguing none the less. In the same post, I promised specs and pictures to come and well, I do live up to my word.

As I had mentioned in my previous post, my first project car was being discussed days after exiting the womb. My dad’s a car nut, and I had no choice in the matter. It’s always been a part of me, and unlike many men, I’m proud to say it’s an AMC Pacer. Of course, it didn’t start as that. I always envisioned a boss Mustang, rad Camaro or sick Challenger. However, the thing about me is that I don’t really go for convention (yea, that and those three cars cost more than triple what the Pacer did). Having gotten the idea from Wayne’s World and finding a V8 coupe just days after it was almost fate that brought us together.

Beginning with a full rotisserie resto, we stripped our ugly grey Pacer into all of its unique AMC parts. From the beginning, my dad and I were building a car that would be a safe reliable driver for a first timer. I rebuilt my first engine (304, later to be replaced with my second built engine, a 401), and learned the ins and outs of body work, paint, suspension, wiring, you name it. It was a valuable experience, and what you see in this post and the accompanying gallery is the result. This is a fanatic job through and through considering that 99% of the work on the car was performed by us or friends in or their garages. This isn’t a 1800 hotrod. No sir, a lot of home-built blood sweat and tears are manifested in one of the most unique hot rods on the road. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the greatest things about living in Southern California, is the access to so many cars.  Now some may see the cars as a bad thing, and don’t get me wrong…traffic sucks.  But the benefit of having a gazillion people jammed into one area…is that there are literally millions of people who are motorfanatics, and the diamond in this situation is that many of them have the money to act on it.
As members of the automotive press, there are also many perks, and this last weekend was a great example of that.  We where invited to tour 3 private car collections on Saturday, the catch was that we weren’t allowed to know where we where going until that morning.  Unfortunately for my partner in crime, he was in Michigan doing among other things, testing his dads DSG transmission, and  driving their project car.  But you’ll read about that later.  Anyway, Chris couldn’t make the tour and the friend I invited to go with me, had a late night on Friday as well.  So I struck out alone to the address I was given, not knowing what to expect. Read the rest of this entry »

So over the last few months, Chris and I have had some pretty excited conversations about many things MotorFanatics….one of the things that we frequently talk about is if money was no object…what cars would we buy.  This conversation always includes the Carrera GT for both of us.  As well as an ever revolving stable of exotics, classics and everything in between.  One of the side topics that has been heavily discussed is paint colors, we typically agree on what would look good, but frequently disagree on the colors we would paint our own personal cars.  Red, Black, Silver, Orange, Green….you name it, we’ve talked about it.  Lately we’ve been talking matte, and we both agree that if done correctly, it is an amazingly aggressive look.  The problem is, would we really want to commit to that look?  One option is vinyl, covering a car in matte vinyl would give you that same look, and would also preserve the original paint, when we get tired of the matte look, we would just peel the vinyl off and go back to the gloss original.  Well, we haven’t pulled the trigger on this yet, but we have seen a few true matte paint jobs recently on an E93 M3 that had a complete matte paint job, and also an R8 that had matte side blades.  We may differ on opinions of many things…but we both agreed that these cars both look pretty awesome. Have a look for yourself here, and let us know what you think.

As MotorFanatics, we are many things. We are enthusiasts, we are participants, and I believe the most important part, we are dreamers.  We dream of roads and cars, and that day in the future where our dreams will be reality.  Maybe we already have our dream car and we are dreaming of later that day, or maybe the scheduled drive next weekend.  Some of us dream of a 69 Camaro or a 32 Ford and cruising the old strip.  Others dream of high priced exotics that many have never seen in person.  Whatever your dream, we all share the common bond that is the automotive fantasy.  While most of us will realize our dream in one way or another,  there are a few companies out there who have decided to make your automotive dreams their business.  I know, how intrusive.  Over the last few years, I’ve had a chance to talk to a few of these outfits, and they offer a pretty interesting option for MotorFanatics of all types.   About 2 years ago, I was put to the task of creating a video piece for myride.com on this subject.  So we decided to head up to San Francisco to check out one of these businesses that prey on the dreams of  so many, Club Sportiva.  Here’s the resulting video. If your not ready to commit to a video…we understand.  I’ll just say Gallardo, F430, and Golden Gate Park.
Last year I also made a couple trips to New York and once again, I wanted to visit some purveyors of dreams on the east coast.  Both Gotham Dream Cars, and The Classic Car Club of Manhattan caught my attention.

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Back when I was 15, and I was tasked with putting a coat of wax on the freshly painted Pacer (more to come on that next week, I promise). I went to the local auto parts store, and looked to pick a wax.  Mother’s, Turtle, none I never really had experience with.  I mean come on, I was only 15.  I settled on the Meguiar’s Gold Class carnauba paste wax, and it gave an excellent shine.  Right, I’m sure you now start to assume that I’m on Meguiar’s payroll, but I assure you that’s not the case (though, I’d take it if it was offered ).  You see, after that I tried waxes from all the other companies.  Mothers, Turtle, etc all worked fine…until I tried Meguiar’s Tech Wax.

Back when it was brand new, I bit the bullet and took the plunge on a $12 (yes, I remember the price) bottle of wax and put a fresh coat on my 99 Grand Am after a complete wash and clay bar in the fall.  Those of you in Michigan are very familiar with the horrid weather that ensues after the fall and after routine quarter power wash after quarter power wash, the tech wax held up.  When the first thaw happened the spring after and my red Grand Am was as shiny as it was when I waxed it the fall before, I was sold.

I swear, this is the truth and when we received the below press release from Meguiars, I knew we had to share it with you.  These are some pretty neat facts from Meguiars.  Yea, they’re kinda skewed to benefit Meguiar’s, but from my experience, every one is true.  And again, no I am not on Meguiar’s payroll.  Check it out!
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