JDM Heaven at Tokyo's Venus Fort

We don't talk a whole ton about Japanese cars here at Automobiliac. Not that I have anything against them, but I can count on the fingers of one hand (maybe two) the Japanese cars that get me really excited. Thankfully nearly all of them are on display in one place: The Venus Fort in Tokyo! Venus Fort may sound like a border town brothel where girls wear chaps and six-guns and little else, but it's also the name of an enormous outlet mall in Tokyo Bay that is situated in the former location of a battery that guarded the port from enemy ships. The mall itself is a rather cheap imitation of the Forum Shops at Caesar's Palace, which is of course an expensive imitation of a Roman streetscape.  I started to question why my Japanese companion would bring me to such a place when there are so many fine malls in Tokyo.  My questions were soon answered when we rounded a corner to discover a Mazda Cosmo sitting there in all its low-slung glory. Now I had never thought much of the Cosmo from photos, but in person the car is so low and so sleek, it makes your jaw drop. It's spectacular --at once very vintage and incredibly fresh. The car has some American and some European motifs blended together very interestingly.  It's almost like an Alfa Duetto mated with a '63 Ford Thunderbird and had this surprisingly beautiful offspring.After admiring the Cosmo for a few precious minutes, we ventured further inside and discovered room after room of JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) cars that I had never seen before. It's always a treat for me to see and learn about cars I have no knowledge of so this trip was a real treat. In the back of the main room was the crown jewel of any Japanese car collection: a Toyota 2000GT. I don't think I had ever seen one of these amazing cars in person before either. With only 337 produced, they are rare as metric hens' teeth, so I spent quite some time admiring the car's exquisite proportions. I came away with my opinion cemented: The 2000 GT is the finest sports car Japan has ever produced and probably ever will. And given the astronomical prices they command these days, I think collectors agree with me.Also in the back of the museum is a shop for collectors called "Grease."  They carry a huge range of models in every scale, organized by country and by marque. There is also a wide array of literature in both English and Japanese. It was pretty overwhelming and I suddenly started feeling foreign money burning a hole in my pocket. To extinguish that fire I dropped some smoldering cash on a very cool book detailing the history of the 2000GT.Another section of the museum features American and European cars, but in this context, who cares, right? Downstairs there was some more JDM magic in the form of an original Nissan Skyline GTR sitting outside in the courtyard and looking very thuggishly hot. The GTR was accompanied by a Lotus Elan as well as a Le Mans Toyota racing car, which was shaped like a glossy red whale from outer space.  There was also a coffee shop downstairs inexplicably named after Alessandro Nannini.  The cafe was filled with F1 nosecones and other memorabilia, but the highlight was a glass vitrine through which you could look into the museum's restoration workshop. If anyone can identify the car on the left being worked on, I'd love to know what it is.Needless to say, the Venus Fort was a highlight of my trip. In addition to the museum, which I believe is owned by Toyota, there is also an immense Toyota experience space called the Mega Web, featuring all of the company's latest models. It's like a permanent auto show booth, and you can even test drive the cars on a closed trail outside the mall. Check out my whole gallery HERE. I apologize that some of the photos aren't up to my ideal artistic standards. The lighting in the museum is particularly bad for photography.

The Automobiliac goes to Racing School!

I haven’t been able to post too much the past week due to travel, but I have a pretty darn good excuse! From May 3 through 5, I was fortunate enough to participate in the Skip Barber racing school’s 3 day Formula Car class held at Lime Rock Park, up near the Berkshires.   Attending a racing school has been a dream of mine since I was a kid.  Of course back then, I saw racing school as a first step towards the career as a professional driver that was my naïve aspiration. But now that I am a bit older, it is way too late for me to seriously contemplate beginning a pro racing career.  My main goal in going was just to see if I could actually do it! To see if I had the courage and the skill to actually handle a racing car properly.  Despite driving karts and my PC racing sims sporadically for a number of years, I went into Skip Barber with a knot of self doubt in my stomach.  After all, daydreaming about racing some day was one of my favorite things, and if I found out I had no talent and was a danger to myself and to others-- well, that would basically prove that my aspirations were all foolish self-delusion.  But I maintained some optimism, and tried to just be open minded about learning as much as I could and trying to improve from day to day.  As long as I wasn’t the slowest guy there, my ego would be ok.

For those of you who have been to Lime Rock, you’ll know that as far as natural beauty goes, there are few race tracks in the world as ideally situated.  To say the scenery up in Litchfield County is achingly beautiful is just the start, because uncoiling through these lush, green forests and slicing through rolling meadows are some fantastic driving roads.  Sparsely populated by traffic and police, these ribbons of undulating asphalt give driving pleasure that matches the visual splendor of the surrounding landscape.  And you don’t even need to go that fast to enjoy it: The pavement isn’t always the best, so keeping your speeds down will not only save your oil pan, but this gives you the mental space to really look around and drink in the nature that surrounds you, not to mention all the quaint barns and colonial era houses that dot the pastures.  Needless to say, the drive up to Lime Rock is always one to savor.

I stayed at the Inn at Iron Masters.  It’s a decently clean and tidy motor lodge in Lakeville, about 15 minutes from the track.  I chose to stay in town because I wanted to have something to do in the evenings once the day at the racetrack was over.  Sadly, at this time of year, the place is something of a ghost town. I was the only guest at the hotel (which is more creepy than you think), and when I went to dinner, there usually were very few people in the local restaurants.  But I was up there to get away from the city, and I tried to savor my solitude.  But enough about that! Let’s get to the part you want to hear about!

A note to those readers who were classmates and instructors: I may have some details of the chronology of events wrong here, but bear with me.

DAY ONE

I got up early so I could prepare all my various accoutrements for the day. I really didn’t know what to expect, so I had to get all my gear, snacks, changes of clothes, etc. together in a state of anxiousness.  I was sort of chomping at the bit to get to the track, but I was still trying to plan for any eventuality. The weather up in the Berkshires is very unpredictable, and brief spells of rain are common, so I brought a change in every item of clothing I was wearing. I had two different sets of driving gloves, and 2 different pairs of shoes in case one proved uncomfortable in the car.  I had 3 bottles of water, my cameras, and a rain poncho. But I kept thinking I was leaving something behind. In the end, I naturally discovered that I didn’t need about 90% of this crap, but it was comforting to know it was there!

The drive to the track from the hotel is about as great a motoring experience as you could ask for.  It’s a blessing that most racetracks are located way out in the countryside, because getting to them in the early morning hours can be one of life’s real pleasures.  I took Salmon Kill Road, which goes almost directly from Lakeville to the track with no intersections and no lights.  The early morning sun glinted across silvery pastures of dew-covered grass.  In the distance, ethereal plumes of mist rose off the warming foliage.  All was right with the world, and the Alfa purred along like it too knew this was going to be a great day.

I got to the track early, and commiserated with the first of my classmates to arrive and one of the instructors.  The first instructor I met was Bruce MacInnes.  A most genial and fun-loving fellow, Bruce has coached everyone from Michael and Marco Andretti to Tom Cruise.  He is also filled with hilarious and wise aphorisms about racing peppered with raunchy humor.  I knew we’d get along just fine!  Gradually people trickled in, and by around 9 we got underway.  At racing school, your time is basically divided into four activities: Classroom time, Track time, Instructor ride-along time, and Urination.  The combination of trying to stay hydrated and being nervous as hell meant that pretty much all of us visited the bathroom 5 or 8 times during the course of the day! But they plan this into the schedule so it works out just fine.

After some initial introductions and classroom time, we suited up and went outside to learn about the cars we would be driving.  Skip Barber offers racing classes in an SCCA-style Mazda MX-5 (Miata) as well as the open wheeled Formula cars that we would be driving.  After one taste of the Formula car, I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would pay just about the same money to drive the hopped up Miata for 3 days.  Though hardly beautiful, the Barber Formula cars are clean and straightforward in design.  They are of spaceframe construction, with fiberglass body panels to smooth airflow over the car.  The Formula cars do have some basic front and rear wings to provide downforce, but they are shod in high performance BF Goodrich street tires rather than racing slicks.  Grip is ample, though, with a potential for 1.2G cornering loads on the skidpad.  The 4 cylinder normally aspirated Mazda engine is mated to a 5 speed sequential Hewland gearbox at the back, providing about 130 horsepower.  This may not seem like a whole lot, but the car weighs a scant 1100 pounds giving it a nearly identical power to weight ratio to the top of the line Corvette ZR1, which is a 600hp fire-breathing Ferrari eater. The Barber Mazda Formula car will reach 60mph in about 4 seconds, and stop with a 1.2G braking power.  Needless to say, the idea of driving one filled me with both excitement and dread as I strapped myself in.

Getting into one of these cars is a lot more difficult than you’d think.  The cockpit is really quite confined, and you need to put both feet into the car simultaneously while supporting yourself with your arms as you slide yourself into the seat like a lady’s foot into a 6-inch Manolo Blahnik pump.  You keep expecting your butt to feel the seat bottom along the way, but you sink deeper and deeper into the cockpit until you have surprisingly limited forward vision, and the cockpit sides swallow you up.  At this point, I got a slightly panicky claustrophobic feeling and thought “What the hell am I doing in here?! How could I get out of this if I spin into a wall?” Putting on the seatbelts for the first time only amplified this sensation, because the quarters are so cramped that trying to manipulate the belts and get comfy requires a lot of twitching, jostling and squirming.  By the time I was belted in, I have to admit I was pretty tense.  And that was when it started to rain.

The first in-car exercise we were to do was to simply explore the cars’ handling and feel in a consequence-free environment, so we fired up the engines and followed the instructor car over to the autocross course which is a smaller circuit inside the main racetrack’s infield.  I have raced karts on this track numerous times, so I felt a modicum of comfort in the fact that I at least already knew the layout. But when we got there, I discovered that they were having us go in the opposite direction from what I was used to, and had placed cones around the course to create chicanes for us.  The pavement was really wet by now, and I was having a lot of trouble getting the car to turn in on entry without sliding off the damp asphalt, but once the car was pointed in the right direction, I would lay on the throttle and feel the back end step out as I applied some opposite lock to control it.  As I started to try to put on more power earlier coming out of the corners, I discovered that I could have some real fun with powerslides. What a blast! And this was all without getting out of second gear. The feeling of claustrophobia melted away and was replaced by a feeling of exuberance.  I spun 3 or 4 times, but I was starting to learn how far I could push before the tires would lose their adhesion.

While the second group was picking their way around the sopping wet autocross track, Group One (we were divided into 2 groups of 6) piled into a 16 passenger Ford Econoline van like the kind you hear of college swim teams being killed in due to highway rollovers.  This was to be our first venture out on the “real” track so we could learn the line around the corners as well as the braking points and apexes.  A question almost every single person has asked me about my racing school experience is “Were you scared?” And the answer is a resounding “Yes,” but I have to say that the scariest part was not driving the racing car so much as being a passenger in these “van-arounds.”  Here we are, buckled to the velour bench seats while our instructor drives us around the track, cornering at speeds I daresay none of us would have expected this van could do even in the dry, let alone the wet! I could tell he was getting a kick out of scaring us. But in the end, it was really informative and we learned the wet line at Lime Rock.

As a lifelong racing fan, I was familiar with the concept of the “wet line” on a race track. But I had always thought that the reason for the wet line was to avoid oil that had accumulated on the normal racing line, as well as to get to the outside of the track because the crown of the road would cause water to drain to and accumulate on the normal line.  But it turns out I was wrong. I think few people probably know that the rain line is an attempt to go to a more porous section of the asphalt for added grip.  Over time, the sliding and rolling friction of the racing cars actually “polishes” the surface of the asphalt in the area of the dry racing line.  When the track is dry, this provides good grip. But when it is wet, the track becomes incredibly slick there because the water can’t settle into any pores in the track surface.  By driving on the “unpolished” section of the circuit, you have a better chance of making it around the corner because the rain is not creating a film between the tire and the road.

Now it was time for us to learn how to shift up and down through the gears.  The Hewland racing transmission is designed so that upshifts can be accomplished without use of the clutch, but I could never quite get the hang of it without an unpleasant jerking as the shift occurred. Plus I felt more like a 1960’s grand prix driver using the clutch, so I figured who cares if I am taking that extra 1000/th of a second to shift? I am here to have fun!  The shifting exercise was to practice snicking up through the gears to 4th on the main straight, then braking at a green cone, and blipping the throttle while heel-and-toe downshifting back to second gear. This requires the driver to have strong brake pressure from the ball of his right foot, while rotating the edge of his sole out to quickly press the throttle and rev the motor.  The harder you brake, the easier it is for your foot to rotate over onto the gas pedal.  It is important to have a robust blip of the motor (which the instructors transliterated into the word “yungah!”) in order to avoid engine braking.  Or as the instructors said, “You don’t want to be known around the paddock for having a small blip.”  The shifting exercise was the first taste of speed, and I must say it was pretty exhilarating to hear the buzz of the 4 cylinder transform into a growl and then a scream as you approached the rev limiter.  As the speed built up, I could feel a wonderful vibration through my guts, and my helmet grew light on my shoulders from air rushing beneath it. After many years of trying to practice heel-toe downshifts in my road cars, it was surprisingly easy to do it in the racing car where the pedals were close together and the engine revved so freely. It was mainly a question of working on the timing, to make sure that all your body is working in complete unison.

After the obligatory bathroom break, we then began our first lead-follow sessions.  This was a very special moment for me. After all the years of dreaming about what it would be like to drive on a racetrack, this was my first time to really see what it was like. We were limited to 3200 rpm, which was supposed to keep us out of trouble. But this point, the track was also drying out much to our collective relief and we were able to run on the dry line. In groups of three, we followed instructors who drove Mazda 3 road cars. The idea was to match the exact braking, turn-in, and line of the instructor vehicle.  This was really helpful in teaching the right line through the corners. The real challenge would be how to nail that line each lap while pushing the limits of grip.  While Group 2 was in the racing cars, we in Group 1 rode along with the instructors in the Mazda 3’s. This was really great because we could watch closely how they handled the cars, and how their feet moved on the pedals.

After more classroom time, where we learned about the physics of weight transfer and how that can affect cornering ability, we were given more seat time in the car, this time with what they called a “Stop Box.” The idea here is that we would drive around the circuit without any instructor car, but feel out our own braking point and racing line, guided by cones placed by the instructors.  The instructors would then watch us from various vantage points and give us feedback through a walkie-talkie when we stopped at the “stop box” on the front straight. Once we had received our feedback, we could then proceed on our way again for another lap or two.  Our rev limit was upped to 3600rpm. While one group was out on the track in the race cars, the other 6 of us would take turns driving one of the Mazda 3’s with an instructor in the passenger seat. As one instructor R.D. put it, tongue firmly in cheek, “This is always a highlight for us.”

Perhaps I should say a few words here about the instructors, since they put their lives on the line for us and rode shotgun!  For all the fun and excitement of driving the car, the Skip Barber instructors, Bruce, Rob and R.D. were pretty much the best fun you could ask for.  Their enthusiasm for the sport was contagious, and you also got the feeling that when you did something right, it really made them happy.  When you didn’t do something right, they never scolded you. But rather made you question why you were not doing it right, and tried to help you work out for yourself what you could do to improve.  By the end of day 1, I was routinely breaking the “honor system” rev limit rule through the back section of the track because I was getting more and more comfortable in the car.  Bruce pulled me aside, and I thought I was in trouble. He said, “You’re carrying a lot of speed through west bend, and I think you’re doing well with it. I am not going to stifle you, but you need to be careful.  If things feel good, that’s when you need to worry.  So keep your cool and focus on precision.  Focus on the proper line and the speed will come.” So I tried to follow the zen master’s advice, and it really helped! When I got back into the racing car for the last run of the day, I tried to put the advice into practice and I felt much better.

Stay tuned for Days 2 and 3! 

FULL GALLERY HERE!

I haven’t been able to post too much the past week due to travel, but I have a pretty darn good excuse! From May 3 through 5, I was fortunate enough to participate in the Skip Barber racing school’s 3 day Formula Car class held at Lime Rock Park, up near the Berkshires.   Attending a racing school has been a dream of mine since I was a kid.  Of course back then, I saw racing school as a first step towards the career as a professional driver that was my naïve aspiration. But now that I am a bit older, it is way too late for me to seriously contemplate beginning a pro racing career.  My main goal in going was just to see if I could actually do it! To see if I had the courage and the skill to actually handle a racing car properly.  Despite driving karts and my PC racing sims sporadically for a number of years, I went into Skip Barber with a knot of self doubt in my stomach.  After all, daydreaming about racing some day was one of my favorite things, and if I found out I had no talent and was a danger to myself and to others-- well, that would basically prove that my aspirations were all foolish self-delusion.  But I maintained some optimism, and tried to just be open minded about learning as much as I could and trying to improve from day to day.  As long as I wasn’t the slowest guy there, my ego would be ok.