Tag Archives: test drive

Media Mentions

BMW M Track Days: Laying Down Rubber at Monticello Motor Club

Courtesy of The Drive: Since 2016, BMW has given general car enthusiasts and even more BMW M aficionados the chance to get behind the wheel of the newest BMW M vehicles at a track-day experience called BMW M Track Days. The high-performance event visits top-notch racing circuits around the country ranging from the FIA-approved Circuit of the Americas in Texas to the swanky Thermal Club in California.

As the owner of a BMW E92 M3 and all-around car enthusiast, I didn’t waste any time when I found out that BMW M Track Days was coming to the Monticello Motorclub. After reading the details of both eight- and four-hour programs, I registered for the $250 four-hour gig (eight-hour is $750) and prepared to have a heck of a time.

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Media Mentions

Ortiz wins Global Mazda MX-5 Cup Sunday on last-lap pass

Courtesy of Racer: Bryan Ortiz didn’t let an early exit in Saturday’s Battery Tender Global Mazda MX-5 Cup presented by BFGoodrich race get him down, instead he made it his mission to get the win on Sunday, which he did with a last-lap pass. For the second time in as many races, the Global Mazda MX-5 Cup race came down to a last lap pass for victory, with polesitter Nathanial Sparks finishing second and Joey Bickers completing the podium in third.

Ortiz, in the No. 4 Copeland Motorsports entry, said he had the ‘yo no me quito’ spirit of Puerto Rico, which means ‘I don’t give up.’ Indeed, he never wavered in the 45-minute race with zero full-course cautions. Though he and Sparks attempted to work together to pull away from the rest of the field, the top 15 cars stayed glued together for the first 30 minutes of the race.

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Media Mentions

Glickenhaus’s 003S Is an Absurd Road-Legal Racecar

Courtesy of Road and Track: Glickenhaus might not roll off the tongue like Pagani. It might not sound as exotic as Koenigsegg. But Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, or SCG for short, Jim Glickenhaus’s plucky, New York-based race team and supercar company, is easily in the same league as these boutique hypercar makers.

“You go to Koenigsegg for wild engineering, Pagani for works of art,” Glickenhaus tells me. “You come to us for race cars you can drive on the road.”

SCG has been running its 003 race car at the 24 Hours of the Nurburgring since 2015. Last year, we rode in the 003CS—for “Competizione Stradale”—Glickenhaus’s first road-legal car. Glickenhaus designed it to be a car that you could drive to the track, swap in a homologated race engine, race it, swap back, and drive home. It’s more of a race car you can drive on the road, not a road car you can drive on the track.

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Media Mentions

Getting Muddy in the Chevy Colorado ZR2

Courtesy of The Drive: Back in April, Ford announced it was essentially giving up on everything in its lineup that wasn’t a truck or SUV. Amurica, am I right? General Motors may still be sticking with sedans, but it’s massively invested in the truck market as well. Just four years ago, GM started rolling out a refreshed offering in a segment that had been all but abandoned in the states—the midsize pickup truck—in the form of the Chevrolet Colorado. Not long after (in model year 2017), customers gained the option of the high-performance, off-road ZR2 trim level. Think “Honey, I Shrunk the Ford Raptor”.

I got the chance to spend an afternoon in the capable little ZR2 beasts, on the muddy trails at Monticello Motor Club, with the woman responsible for making them what they are. Anita Burke, GM Vehicle Chief Engineer, is responsible for all (read: global) midsize trucks at General Motors. And after roughing up the ZR2 myself, I hitched a ride with her, determined to hear all the nerdy goodness that went into creating these pickups.

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Sampling A V-8 Mustang With Performance Pack 2

Courtesy of Automobile Magazine: Ford has changes in store for the Mustang Shelby GT350 designed to upgrade its uber-pony/sports car with handling improvements for the 2019 model year. The mid-cycle upgrade features new suspension calibrations, a new wheel design, new tires, and improved aerodynamics, according to Mustang engineering chief Carl Widmann.

The new tires are Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 measuring 295/35 front and 305/35 rear. These complementing new springs, anti-roll bars, and MagneRide suspension tuning, Widmann says, “for faster lap times.” The rear wing comes with an optional Gurney flap and the “blanking” in the grille—the blocked-out openings—has been optimized for better aero with sufficient cooling.

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Media Mentions

New Mustang Test Drive at MMC Delayed by a Tornado

Courtesy of arstechnica: In April, Ford dropped a bombshell on us, announcing that it’s going to cull almost its entire car lineup from the US market to concentrate on SUVs and crossovers. Not the Mustang, though. The Blue Oval’s sedans might not be selling well, but that’s not the case for its sports car, which has topped the sales charts for the coupe market for the third year in a row. On Wednesday, Ford invited us up to Monticello Motor Club in New York to try out the latest flavor of pony car, the Mustang Performance Pack 2. Think of it as the ultimate all-’round Mustang—a better daily driver than the hardcore Shelby GT350 but with almost all of that car’s ability on track.

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