Well, I knew this was going to be a long-ish post so I waited til this morning to come and write it. Pretty tired last night after all that driving. When you get to my age, 650 miles in 26 hours with 6 hours sleep is a bit much on the old body...
The journey down to Houston was eventful, but in a good way!
As we came onto the I-45 at Waxahachie, after taking country rounds to cut east from my place south of Fort Worth, there was a Charger R/T just passing; hearing the VTEC then seeing James and I come on to the interstate he had some fun with us up to a point. After we hit the 3 figure mark a few times he didn't want to play no more, but he did have his wife/girlfriend in the passenger seat so fair enough.
We came across a 997 Carrera S cabriolet and the three of us convoyed for about half the journey at just under the 3 figure mark. The girl driving the 911 was up for a bit of fun and where it was safe to do so we all blasted up to 'top of VTEC in fifth' lets just say
We attracted the attention of a state trooper passing in the other direction but we were only going about 25 over at that time. Even so, he came back after us but James spotted him on the horizon flicking his disco roof rack on to get other traffic out the way. He caught up with James who let him sit there on his tail at 79mph for a mile or so, at which point he turned off and let us go.
We kept our wits about us for the rest of the journey and found us some 'radar bait' to sit 1/2 mile behind in the form of a rented SUV travelling at 95.
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Originally Posted by RC45
I think it's safe to say that everyone got a good workout - and "most surprised" of the day award goes to the pair of R6's that we caught up to.... |
Indeed RC, as I said to you at lunch, "I hope I haven't broken the S2000 today".
Yeah, those sportbikes, I tell you, stuck behind them pottering along at 53mph! WTF?
They were nice and shiny though :roll:
Anyway, to echo what the other guys have said, what a fantastic day and I can't thank RC enough for going to the trouble of arranging it, letting us know where the cops might or might not be hiding, waiting around for us slower cars to catch up so we didn't get lost. A big up to the Vette-driving man!
Even gave me a chance to drag with him in a side by side roll on! :good:
I was 3 feet in front of the Z06 for about a second in the VTEC zone before RC realised what I was up to, and blew me away. Sameer's picture show the Z06 and S2000 'at it'
Thank's to Sameer for his boundless hospitality allowing us to stay at his place and taking us out for a couple of beers to a bar near his place on the Friday night. Thank you very much Sameer, and if you are in the DFW area in the next couple of months please let me return the favour!
Zman - while I stayed back to ensure you didn't get left a little bit, this really was partly due to not being able to get past you safely at many points! As you might recall, the times I did fly past were coming out of corners as I could carry more speed through with me. It is a testament to your driving and the Yoda really isn't that slow a car due to it's light weight. The exhaust sounds pretty cool too, although we both know it wasn't supposed to quite sound like that when Toyota designed the little beastie!
110 doesn't surprise me from a 1.6 5 speed Yoda, having had a '81 1300cc Corolla DX wagon at college that would do 108. Well you just have to try these things
The person that sneaked in and took your 110mph speedo pic remains a mystery to us all. Maybe your car disappeared for a few minutes at one of the rest stops...
Boxster v S2000
I had a drive in the Boxster on the way home on I-45. You can certainly feel the extra torque of that 3.2 compared to the S2000. The Porsche is very confidence inspiring although the only real corner I drove it round was the I-45 onramp. A much quieter car with the roof down than the S2000, but you sit a lot lower in the Porsche. Due to the MR layout, there is much more room in the cabin than the S2000 and all the controls are nicely laid out. The optional Bose / Becker Hi-Fi in the Boxster is just worlds ahead of the both the stock S2000 system and also the Z3 Harman-Kardon sub system (casting my mind back a while to recall that one!)
At WOT you can hear the boxer sucking the air in just behind and below your ears, and it's a beautiful noise. When James came past me a few times on the I-45 I could barely hear the car though, it is very discreet from outside and not cop-attracting, which is a good thing.
Basically, if I had 20k lying around I would be VERY tempted to swap my beloved VTEC in for a Boxster S.
When I got back into the S2000 after we swapped back I realised just how much more noisy my car is, and the lack of torque. However, as soon as I hit 6000 rpm, I was happy with my baby again
We did a couple of roll ons and the Boxster S admittedly pulls away from the S2000, but not by much. Going up a 10%-15% gradient incline (like an on-ramp) is a whole other story though - flat out thru 2nd and 3rd gear joining the interestate I could tell I was holding the Porsche back.
The journey back was pretty much roof-up until 3pm or so because of the heat. It was nice to hear my music for a change lol.
More 'radar bait' was found in the form of a Accord V6 Coupe and an A6 2.7T which flew past us at over 100 while we sat with cruise on at 85mph.
A quick call to James over the CB and we decided to use these chaps as our decoy.
Got home at around 4.55pm having left Houston just after 1. Saw a C6 Z06 on the last stretch of the journey on 287 (the road that takes you from my place to I-45) he dipped the clutch at 25mph and did us a nice little rolling burnout. That car is brutal!
I am sure some of the single guys might have been tempted to stop off here:
Disclaimer: All 3 figure speeds alluded to are of course in km/h and top of VTEC in 5th gear is 65mph due to my gearing
Right, I'm off to buy some new tires