MAMA Spring Rally 2010

MAMA SPRING RALLY
Road America Race Course, Elkhart Lake, WI
May 2010
By Steve Purdy
TheAutoChannel.com
Detroit Bureau

It’s the week before Memorial Day and we’re suffering the hottest week of the season with temps approaching 90-degrees. The Wisconsin farm country is lush with spring growth and the farmers are just putting in their corn and soy beans. We’re here because the Midwest Auto Media Association (MAMA) is hosting their annual spring driving event at the famous Road America road course near the beautiful resort town of Elkhart Lake.

The concept is a great one for journalists and manufacturers. Bring all the cars and all the journalists to one place at one time and let ‘em have at it. About 80 cars and nearly that many journalists gather here to play.

Well, I say “play” because in this business most of us really enjoy our work. How could we not? Sure there are a few curmudgeonly guys who like to pretend this is just a job, and a hard one at that, but they’re not fooling anyone.

Jim Jackson, Tom Appel and their pals at MAMA, the Chicago based auto writers association, put this whole thing together. They gather the vehicles - cars, SUVs, pickups, crossovers, anything in the consumer market – and get the manufactures to cover meals and lodging for everyone at the lovely Osthof Resort on the lake. The manufacturers’ people and support folks run the numbers up to well over 120 participants.

Here at Road America we have access to one of the best road race tracks in the country – a 4.05-mile road course of twists, turns, hills and a couple of good, fast straights with great views of this rolling, glacial section of Middle Wisconsin about 50 miles northwest of Milwaukee. The two straights will accommodate well over 100 mph for those who like adrenalin, lots of tight twisties and a long, sweeping, 180-degree bend that keeps you right on the edge of your seat - literally. Good thing we’re strapped in tight.

Additionally, we have the scenic country roads surrounding the track on which to drive the less track-worthy cars, three challenging off-road venues on the track property, plenty of paved areas for autocrossing and even a dedicated go-cart track. We used them all enthusiastically.

Day one is spent on the track and country roads, rounded out with a few hours on the go-cart track. Day two is taken up with off-roading and autocrossing plus more time on the country roads. The format may seem a bit chaotic, in that the cars are gathered together in the large paddock area and we just jump into whatever car is available and go. If there is a special car we’re interested in we just wait our turn. Or, in the case of the “boutique” cars we have to make a reservation and not everyone will get a chance at those. The boutique cars are Rolls Royce’s new Ghost, Aston Martin’s Rapide and V8 Vantage Coupe, Lotus’ new Evora (more on that later) and the Bentley Supersports, a massive sophisticated brute of a performance luxury car.

Here are a few notable cars I drove:

• Infinity QX 56 - This huge, three-row-seat SUV from Infinity is on a brand new, body-on-frame platform. It felt like a massive luxury truck because we sit so high, but it drove like a limo. With a new 7-speed transmission and a direct-injection, 5.6-liter V8 it had plenty of grunt in spite of its girth. And, best of all, its air conditioner put out so much cold air my glasses nearly frosted up.


• Subaru’s fast and quirky, 300-hp, all-wheel drive Impreza WRX - This is the car that has dominated rally racing around the world. I took it on the racecourse and found it disconcerting because it handles so much differently than anything else I had driven. Once acclimated to the car, however, I’m sure it would have been a hoot. It revved so quickly that I found myself often into the rev limiter before I could shift into the next gear.


• BMW X5M – “M” in BMW-speak, as you probably know means high performance and that’s not an exaggeration with any M version of a BMW I’ve ever driven. This mid-size SUV is fast, functional and classically Teutonic.


• The Corvette Grand Sport was perhaps my favorite of the day. I’ll nickname it “The Adrenalin Pump.” It has a six-speed automatic transmission with a manual mode we can control with paddle shifters on the steering wheel. I didn’t like their actuation as well as most systems but they worked well once I got the hang of them. I took it out on the road rather than the track and got up to about 50-mph in automatic mode, then started downshifting with the paddle shifters one gear at a time until I was at a little over 4,000 rpm. I think that was second gear but my attention was elsewhere. Then I punched it. A set of baffles in the exhaust system open up instantly when we do that so we had and auditory thrill to go with the neck-snapping thrust. It just seemed to explode. Wow!


• On the track my favorite might be the long-in-the-tooth Mazda RX8. The current generation is about 6-years-old now; according to our Mazda media relations guy, Tom McDonald, with whom I’m breakfasting as I write this, and it’s the only rotary-engine car in the world. It is, of course, a low-production, niche vehicle for Mazda. On the track I knew to keep the revs up and was into the rev limiter at 9,000-rpm often. The sound and the feel of that rotary engine at full scream is something to behold. The car is very grippy and easy to drive.


• A disappointment was the good looking new, Lansing-built, Cadillac SRX. This one was the 2.8T. That’s a turbo 4-cylinder with not nearly enough power to motivate this nice crossover SUV. It certainly has style and panache, sharing the bold and brash a styling language of the Cadillac brand – best looking vehicles from GM in years.


• Another less than impressive ride was the new Buick Regal. The fellow getting out of the car just as I was getting in commented, “If Buick is trying to shake the image of an old man’s car, they won’t do it with this one.” Granted its soft beige color and plain interior doesn’t do anything to allay that image, but many of the design elements move the brand forward and have potential of being something special. In the meantime, GM ought to rethink the ergonomics of the shifter, steering and a variety of other too-soft tactile elements of the car. It will not fare well against others in its class. And, the user interface on the HVAC, nav and other controls is just about the worst in the market. We’re assured GM knows that and they intend to fix it right away. Of course, very soon Buick will have a GranSport version of the Regal that will go a long way to legitimizing it with the under 70-year-old customer.


• 
  The SLS AMG, exotic super car will go 0 to 140-mph and back to 0 in a couple hundred yards, claimed one of my colleagues who was still flush from his drive. I didn’t realize until it was too late that it was not just for display but do drive as well. Bummer! Entirely built by AMG this coupe looks a bit out of proportion from some angles but with the wings up and in the morning light it looks mighty sexy. Certainly, there are some styling queues from the original SL300 Gullwing. This one has brake discs as big in diameter as the wheels were on the original SL300 Gullwing.


• Our friends at Cadillac brought the beautiful new CTS-V Coupe, which garnered my (and many other) “Best of Show” honors at the Detroit auto show when the concept was introduced. The finished production car ended up just about identical to the concept car – an unusual accomplishment, indeed. Sadly, we weren’t able to drive this one. It will be at dealers later this year, though, with 556 horsepower in ‘V’ livery.


• The experienced folks at Land Rover massaged the dramatic and challenging off-road venue through the woodsy hills on the backside of the Road America property. I jumped in the Jeep Wrangler because it is the smallest, most agile, and potentially the most fun on this kind of course. Torrential rains the evening before, we hoped, would make the course extra tough and messy. The clay-based two-tracks were a bit greasy but not treacherously so. We had lots of fun on the off-road tacks because we had many first-timers with big eyes.


• I’m sorry to say that we ran out of time before I got a turn on the track with the new Lotus Evora, though I did get a “walk-around” with their guy, Kevin Smith. The Evora is Lotus’ first all-new from the ground up platform, a bit bigger than traditional Lotus cars, designed to be versatile enough to accommodate a variety of automotive applications beyond just the usual Lotus sports car – light weight, amazingly rigid .




And that, my friends, is just a sampling of the cars I drove on the track, the country roads, the off-road course and the autocross track. I’d be here at the computer until next week if I tried to tell you about everything I drove, so I’ll just leave it here.




Accolades go to Wayne Kung, Rolls’ media relations guy and accomplished autocross driver, who took first place in that competition for the second year in a row driving the MINI. The course was small and tight so the MINI had the advantage over such competitors as the Mustang GT and the MB E-Class AMG – brutes both. Wayne gets to keep the autocross trophy that for some reason has a woman bowler on top. Not sure where that one came from.

I agree, this can be hard work - demanding, intense and competitive. But, I suppose, someone has to do it.

© Steve Purdy, Shunpiker Productions, All Rights Reserved