What a weekend of driving and car bizareness
Discussion
Well, we are back from a long weekend with the Caterham Car Club of Germany. We put about 500 miles on the car, and we are about to wrap up our Caterham for the winter. The organiser put together a great mixture of tight twisting hill climbing, long sweeping curves, straights, views and even a meander at the end along the Rhine.
It was lovely to drive five Caterhams in convoy, and the group agreed that this was a good number of cars for a group. I guess with too many cars, it is hard to keep the tempo up without having to wait at traffic lights repeatedly.
But the eye openers were the other cars on the roads. It was the last weekend of guaranteed good weather before the seasons catch up, and a lot of folk were out enjoying themselves.
E-Type Jag, TVR Tuscan (with moody looking driver), Lotus Elise, classic Porsche Club, Lambos and far, far, too many new model 911's. And that is without listing the cars lurking near the Ring. And last week, I saw an Opel Ampera and.... a Sinclair C5 (in bits and on a trailer).
What made me smile (in a good way), though, was a close up nosey of that Elise (which parked in the place vacated by the E-Type). I had forgotten how much the curves undercut the edge of the car. It almost felt like the skeletal essence of a 7 (albeit with an engine in a different location) was hiding underneath. "Go on, push the shape a tad further. This bit of the car doesn't really need to be this big, or even needs to be there at al, why not just chop it off?" If there was an algorithm for defining the shape of a car with a few key parameters, you can imagine pushing the slider a notch or two further and getting rid of the pretense of doors, etc. "Just add lightness" isn't dead yet.
My other learning... I really need to do an advanced driving course. I am definitely the rate limiting step in this car-human equation.
Happy days, but time to go back to the tin top until April.
It was lovely to drive five Caterhams in convoy, and the group agreed that this was a good number of cars for a group. I guess with too many cars, it is hard to keep the tempo up without having to wait at traffic lights repeatedly.
But the eye openers were the other cars on the roads. It was the last weekend of guaranteed good weather before the seasons catch up, and a lot of folk were out enjoying themselves.
E-Type Jag, TVR Tuscan (with moody looking driver), Lotus Elise, classic Porsche Club, Lambos and far, far, too many new model 911's. And that is without listing the cars lurking near the Ring. And last week, I saw an Opel Ampera and.... a Sinclair C5 (in bits and on a trailer).
What made me smile (in a good way), though, was a close up nosey of that Elise (which parked in the place vacated by the E-Type). I had forgotten how much the curves undercut the edge of the car. It almost felt like the skeletal essence of a 7 (albeit with an engine in a different location) was hiding underneath. "Go on, push the shape a tad further. This bit of the car doesn't really need to be this big, or even needs to be there at al, why not just chop it off?" If there was an algorithm for defining the shape of a car with a few key parameters, you can imagine pushing the slider a notch or two further and getting rid of the pretense of doors, etc. "Just add lightness" isn't dead yet.
My other learning... I really need to do an advanced driving course. I am definitely the rate limiting step in this car-human equation.
Happy days, but time to go back to the tin top until April.
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