Ferrari 328 GTS

This Fall, just as the leaves were beginning to peak, I captured a set of glamour shots of this pristine Ferrari 328 GTS that was headed off to auction.

With only 14,000 miles, this Spider with its 3.2L V8 and 5 speed manual producing a peppy (for its vintage) 266HP sounded like a healthy pony ready for a weekend cruise after its top-to-bottom restoration.  This model comes complete with a built-in radar detector and the complete Ferrari roadside toolkit.  In forever Ferrari classic Rosso Corsa Red, this near-mint 328 will be the highlight of any Italian car lover’s garage.

2024 DC Auto Show

It’s been tradition amongst my friends ever since college to visit the DC Auto Show every year - the only years I’ve not attended were the year it was cancelled due to COVID, and the one year I happened to be buying a car the same day of the show.

This year was no different; we made a day of it and explored the show as usual.  This year I did something a bit different, and took some video clips in addition to my usual photographs of whatever caught my eye - I treated this as an exercise to sharpen my skills with a new video editing suite, and perfect my HDR and high framerate workflows.

After the auto show, we all met up with some friends at our favorite cozy spot in the district.

2022 Porsche Taycan

Today I’m bringing you Fall pictures of a brand new 2022 Porsche Taycan in Carrara White Metallic with matching 21" Mission E Design Wheels.  This Taycan hadn’t even been in the country a week when I took these pictures, and was fresh back from tint and PPF application.

This was my last photoshoot before the leaves fell, and I’m glad I got to get that last Fall shoot with a car, since it’s an Autumn tradition amongst my friends to cruise our cars up to Skyline Drive for colorful photos - a tradition that fell through this year due to the quantity and timing of other scheduled photoshoots I’ve had this Fall.

This is a location I’d like to try again in the future, when the nearby construction is wrapped up and offers more angles and perspectives - we planned this shoot and didn’t realize half the area was closed off for construction until arriving, but made do with what was available.  As night fell, the Forza vibes really came out with the cool colors contrasting with the Taycan’s futuristic rear lightbar.

Anytime you stage a car, especially a performance car, you attract attention - this time was no different, with onlookers periodically stopping to spectate me staging the car and framing shots.  But this was the first time I’ve had wildlife get curious too - a 7 point buck watched closely over my photoshoot and his doe and two fawn foraging nearby.  It was pretty remarkable that a buck so large to elicit the sense of hunting season would be so calmly nearby at a location where DC is visible to the naked eye across the river.

Newport Car Museum

Foreward in 2021

These photos in this post are from 2018; long before SARS-CoV-2 was a concern or worldwide problem.

As with the photos I recently posted from my 2017 trip to Rhode Island, the following is a collection of photos shot in 2018 which I’ve had in my personal backlog to edit and write about for several years.  I only recently finished editing and composing this post alongside others from the same trip due to the sheer volume of images.

Newport Car Museum

In 2018, I went on a roadtrip to visit with my friend Alyssa and explore more of her home state of Rhode Island.  I’ve been several times before, but as with any trip to a place you’ve been before, you discover something new every time.  This time, one of those discoveries was the Newport Car Museum, which was highly recommended to me by numerous gearhead friends and car groups I’m in.

On a day to myself that I’d devoted entirely to exploring Newport, starting the the car museum, I was a little confused upon arrival, because the museum shares an entrance with a Raytheon office complex, but I’d heard that the owner, Gunther Buerman, formerly worked for Raytheon, so this wasn’t entirely surprising to me; from what I’ve read there’s no indication whether this is actually true, but the building that houses the Newport Car Museum was formerly a missile manufacturing facility on the Raytheon campus.  When I saw the cars parked out front I knew I was in the right place - there wasn’t anything super rare, but the SL550, Fiata, and modded A4 grouped together aren’t your super common econobox traffic.  I parked in their cluster of more interesting cars by the NPT CAR MUS flag.

The most stunning thing about the museum besides the collection it contains is the architecture and interior design.  Opened in 2017, the museum was less than a year old when I was visiting, but it felt so well-established already with complete and modern designed exhibits and offerings from every era and genre of classic, exotic, and notable automotives available in the United States.  It’s a large museum filled with almost 100 cars and numerous pieces of art and furniture from names including Salvador Dali and Charles and Ray Eames, and it still has room for further buildout as the collection expands.

Upon walking in with my camera wearing a Porsche polo, the staff thought I was an automotive journalist on assignment and offered me a private tour; if I had played my hand differently I could have taken them up on it, but I was honest and said I was just vacationing, not wanting to waste anyone’s time.

The first stop when arriving is a room with Forza 6 driving simulators you can try once included with admissions if you’d like.  I was the only person there, and gave it a whirl, but the game crashed / froze less than a minute from it starting, and the attendant instead of resetting it said “you’re done” and wanted me to pay ~$25 to “go again.”  This was my first impression upon entering the museum mind you, and it left a bad taste in my mouth.  I politely told him that it’s a racket to expect me to pay for something of theirs that’s broken, and moved on.  Luckily being able to enjoy the rest of the museum uninterrupted helped me forget the bad first impression.

The Newport Car Museum has some of my all-time favorites, such as a Diablo VT Roadster, only the second Countach I’ve ever seen, each major iteration of the Viper, the only XJ220 I’ve ever seen, the first second-generation Ford GT I’ve seen, and my dream car, the Porsche 4S Targa, though I’d prefer Forest Green Metallic, Mamba Green Metallic, or Anthracite Brown Metallic over Viper Green as displayed, despite my shirt matching in color.

The museum is also home to cars with race and movie heritage in addition to the rare and limited models on display.  Needless to say, the Newport Car Museum has something for everyone from every vintage from the 40s forward.  The staff was extremely friendly, and helpful in even pointing me towards other Rhode Island car collections and invited me to a nearby cars and coffee that I was unfortunately unable to attend seeing as it was after I’d headed home to DC.  I’m very curious to visit again the next time I’m in Rhode Island to see what additions have been made since my first visit.

After visiting the Newport Car Museum it was time for lunch, and I head to nearby Easton Beach to grab a lobstah roll on the beach.  After inhaling some chowda with my roll, I walked on the beach and explored downtown Newport before heading to the highly recommended Newport Cliff Walk.  On the way to the Cliff Walk I spotted another car museum I’d heard of, however this one wasn’t open the day I was there.  There was also some interesting beach traffic I spotted.

Jaguar Alive Driving Experience

After getting exclusive access to the new Jaguar F-Type at the 2013 Washington Auto Show, my friend Jake and I were invited by Jaguar to a track day in which we could test drive all of Jaguar's top end and most recent models, including the 550HP, $155,000 XKR-S, and the pre-production XFR-S, among others.  Unfortunately the F-Type was still unavailable to drive, although a beautiful orange example from the Paris Auto Show was on hand to demo under the reception tent. Events we took part in were a Timed 0-60 / Top Speed Run, Autocross Circuit, Traction Control Demo Circuit, and Free Drive of any of the available lineup (the XJL was VERY well appointed).  As Jake later pointed out, we drove ~$1,000,000 worth of cars in just a few hours time.

The day started out with being greeted by showcase Jaguars, including a 1967 Jaguar E-Type, with DC plates "ELATED".  The event attracted plenty of exotic cars in the parking lot, mostly Jags of course.

Not far away was the Orange F-Type V8 S, and one of MANY XKR-Ss (actually there AREN'T many; the XKR-S is a limited production run vehicle with only 100 examples being sold in the United States).

02

Our driving experience started out by road testing the XJ, which was very responsive, although the Eco feature that disables the engine in stop and go traffic was a bit strange (we later disabled it).  All the Jaguars had very sensitive brakes - not a bad thing, but something that took a few minutes to get used to.

03

Next we were briefed by Lorraine McKiniry, host of Velocity Channel by Discovery Network's "What's My Car Worth?" who gave a history of the Jaguar brand, culminating in the 2013 lineup, and discussion of future plans for the carmaker.  Then it was out onto the track, where first up was my 0-60 / Top Speed run in the XKR-S.  I reached 90MPH with a 5.5sec 0-60 time (unofficial - official times are forthcoming).  The track was uphill on cold, hard tires, so the XKR-S' specified 4.0 - 4.2 sec range wasn't possible given the conditions.  You can watch my runs and see the live telemetry below!

04

Next it was on to the Autocross Course and Handling Tests.  I had a more strict course instructor than Jake did, so I wasn't allowed as much freedom on the course as Jake was which was somewhat disappointing.  The result was a top time of 39.6sec compared to Jake's 37.something sec time.  The Handling Course in the XFR-S was much more fun however, mostly because I startled and impressed the course instructor with a massive drift - he wasn't expecting it, but he was shocked that I maintained full control around the entire turn in a textbook drift without the traction control engaged.  His reaction after I snapped the car back in line for the straightaway was "WHOA!!!... OK.... Um... I didn't know you could do that.  That was very good...  Wow!...  You handled that.... really well!..."

Unfortunately I don't have many pictures from this or the rest of the day... because I was too busy driving!!!

05

It was an amazing, fun day!  I wish we'd had more track time!  I think our performance on the course would have improved dramatically with just a little more time to become more acquainted with the cars; but this goes without saying!  I also had two people, one of them a Jaguar representative, ask me who I was writing for - I apparently looked like an automotive journalist for this event (not paparazzi, like so many other occasions - I'm so happy!).

Loved it!  I can't wait to do another track day like it!  Now we're looking into other events sponsored by Porsche, Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and others to experience more!