The Ferrari 458 in all its glory
The security gate snaps out of the way and I fulfill a dream: I pull a blood-red Ferrari out of the entrance of the Ferrari factory. Better, it’s the new 458 Italia, the successor to the immensely popular F430 sports car.
Almost nobody has driven the mid-engine monster, and fewer still have motored out of the same entrance where founder Enzo Ferrari himself, wearing an ill-fitting suit, arrived every morning, to be met by a dog named Dick.
Still, the village of Maranello, west of Bologna, is less romantic than I’d imagined. It is dominated by the car factory and tourism amounts to entrepreneurs selling rides in rag-tag Ferraris and pizza restaurants festooned with the Ferrari logo.
Maranello, Italy — home of the prancing stallion
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Lost Coast byway: A northern route by the oceanside.
A fellow car journalist, well into his cups, recently told me about his secret road. Bless the Jameson Irish whiskey as he revealed its many twists and turns, lack of traffic and proximity to Los Angeles. He might even have mentioned the paucity of law enforcement.
I like cars, but I love roads. A classic Mustang ragtop is nothing without a canvas to drive it on. Now that long weekends are approaching and good weather has warmed mountain lanes, the great American road trip is calling.
My criteria are simple: Spectacular scenery; good food (check out Jane and Michael Stern’s “Roadfood” for the local and offbeat); and the primary route should be a back way rather than a freeway, preferably with more twists than an M. Night Shyamalan movie.
Land Rover LR4 off the track: Lost Coast
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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…)
Um, so, a conference. I don’t do conferences, because usually there are doctors or scientists or vacuum-cleaner salesmen attending them, but this week I am — Bloomberg’s Cars and Fuel Briefing in Los Angeles, on December 1, 2009. It’s in conjunction with the LA Auto Show. I’ll be moderating a discussion with the CEO of Edmunds, Jeremy Anwyl. We’ll be talking about cars of the future and what it will take for consumers to go to electric and hybrid cars (read: the cost differential). I’ve got a Jason H. Harper bio and everything. So official. So… geeky. I almost want to punch myself.
Oh, and in the garage (the LA garage, I suppose): The Audi A5 2.0 with manual transmission.
