[s-cars] MIA (no cement shooz)

[Frank Amoroso]

Greetings Gents,

My apologies for being away from the game here the past 7 weeks. Things
have been far busier at work this year. Also, I have become more
involved with the Audi Club and writing automotive reviews / stories for
a local newspaper has taken up a great deal of my time. The regular old
spring / summer social calendar hasn't helped much either. Add to that
my full mailbox last week and I missed out on all posts from late Wed.
to early Fri. (did I miss anything on Thursday posts?).

Anyway, I was in Austin a couple weeks ago and I got to spend some time
with Jimmy P. (his current ride certainly doesn't pribble down the road
like his old one) and Eric F. Many thanks to both of them for their
hospitality and letting me pet their Cayenne calipers and pads. We also
had some great Texas BBQ and Jimmy kept things exciting by getting me to
the airport ~50 minutes prior to my flight! As an aside, I must have had
5 lbs worth of BBQ over a three day period.

Last weekend I was in Dearborn for the Ford Centennial Celebration and
it was a ton-o-fun. I got to drive all of the '04 MY Fords (was let down
by the lightnin', liked the Cobra stang w/ stick, and loved the SVT
focus with Euro appearance package that had perforated  leather Recaro
seats a la B6 S4 for ~$20k!). Although I have to say that the '05 Ford
GT (nee GT40) is stunning beyond words. I got to crawl all over the
three pre-roduction versions that were built for the event, and sit
inside them (they were presented to the press in a wind tunnel in the
finsihing formation of the '66 Le Mans and they were covered with
checkered flags and then they cranked the wind tunnel up and blew the
flags off the cars. VERY COOL!). It moved me. A regular lotto hit would
precipitate: GT2, RS6 Avant, Vanquish, and Ford GT.  A powerball would
add the current crop of top supercars: F1, Enzo, SLR, Carrera GT.
However, I gotta admit that italian exotics have started to piss me off
what with their stupid maintenance costs (see the Enzo in the last C&D?
$6k brake pads? that's a load of shite).

Anyway, I've got about 10 emails that I need to respong too yet. If
anyone is waiting for anything from me please ping be again.

Happy motoring,

BTW, been driving a Volvo C70 Cabrio this week (and have gotten a lot of
compliments on it, including one young lady who offered to trade me her
shirt for it) and the wife is jones-ing for a 4 seater cabrio (weather
has been terrific in CO). Perhaps an M3 cab (needs to be an automatic!),
or an older Audi. Maybe get the Audi and do the full RS2 front end:
hood, bumper, etc? Big wheels & porsche brakes. All show & no go. Anyone
know of any cars out there that have had this done?

Frank at s-cars.org