By Jason H. Harper – Apr 15, 2010 (Bloomberg)
Porsche Sport Driving School: Fast!
On the side of a steep hairpin turn at Barber Motorsports Park racetrack, racing legend Hurley Haywood has his eye on me. That’s because I’ve come in waaay too hot and my Porsche 911, tires smoking, is hurtling sideways toward the spot where Haywood is standing.
Joggling the wheel to regain control, I give a sheepish wave to the iconic Porsche race driver and then roar away.
Having Haywood, who has won the 24 Hours of Daytona five times and Le Mans 24 Hours thrice, watch over novices is like having Celtics basketball star Larry Bird coach a junior-varsity team. Haywood, chief driving instructor, helped start the Porsche Sport Driving School and attends 20 classes a year.
The three-day Masters Plus program is Porsche’s most advanced course in the U.S., costing $5,295. Graduates get a race license to the Sports Car Club of America, allowing drivers to enter regional races.
Suiting up: Day 3 of the sport driving school
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By Jason H. Harper – Mar 04, 2010
Tim O’Neil appears to be either out of control or simply insane.
He’s sliding a 2010 Mitsubishi Evolution sedan sideways down an ice-slicked woodland road. Turning the wheel, he flies the $44,000 car off a snowy crest and lands downhill, about 16 inches from a massive tree.
I’m in the passenger seat.
A flick of the wheel and a stab on the gas and we slide the other way, averting disaster. I knew what I was getting myself into. Even so, my adrenaline is pulsing.
O’Neil, 50, is a five-time champion American rally driver and the owner of Team O’Neil Rally School & Car Control Center. His facility is 600 acres of closed dirt roads in the deep woods of northern New Hampshire. (more…)
Room with a View: From our Planet Hollywood perch
Jan. 7 (Bloomberg) — “Viva Las Vegas,” “Showgirls,” “Very Bad Things,” “The Hangover,” “Leaving Las Vegas.” All classic movies about Sin City and a fair representation of the Boys Weekend three friends and I had before the Christmas holidays.
It’s a ritual we have every year in a different place and it was a fait accompli, both unoriginal and inevitable, that it would eventually come to Vegas. Besides, with the incredible volume of hotel rooms — more than 145,000 — and friendly prices to fill them, 2009 was especially enticing.
Discounts are even better in the so-called shoulder seasons including January and February, when fewer tourists hit Vegas, according to data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Last year, hotel occupancy fell in every month from the prior year through October, the latest month for which statistics have been published, including a 13 percent decline in January from the same month in 2008. (more…)
By Jason H. Harper – Feb 04, 2010 (Bloomberg News)
A car with 'tude: Be sure you can handle it.
Thundering down a highway in a smoking-hot BMW M6, I flick on my blinker and slide into the left lane to pass slower vehicles. Immediately a minivan swings in front of me, throws on his brakes and sticks there at a steady 50 miles per hour, boxing me in.
Ah, the dreaded BMW hater, intent on taking the arrogant jerk in his Bimmer down a notch.
One of the fascinating things about testing cars for a living is seeing how other drivers react to you, for good or for bad. A vehicle is your personality on wheels, and once behind the wheel of a silver Rolls-Royce Phantom or a yellow Hummer, you may also find yourself taking on aspects of that persona.
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