Blade Edge

My friend Andrew works for the folks over at FCP Groton, which is a European car parts distributor. They held a car show in Old Saybrook, Connecticut mainly to feature European cars but ended up gaining enough momentum to allow pretty much anything to roll in and set up on the show lot. So Andrew invited me and the 370Z along with his Volvo 850 sport wagon to roll on up and look pretty. The trip up to CT for us only took a little over 2 hours thanks to the wonderful Interstate 95, which had a ton of volume on it heading northbound on a Saturday. Luckily it never really stopped, but a few times it slowed to a crawl and for the most part it was around 65mph.

The show was fun, mainly because everyone is happy to talk about their cars and there are always plenty of cool cars to be seen. Notable standouts include the longest-running production car on record, a Ferrari Testarossa, a GTM kit car, a Lucra LC470, and even a Noble showed up briefly but did not stick around for some reason. Which sucks because those are rare cars here in the US and it would have been awesome to see one in person. I must say – not bad for a first car show by FCP Groton! They obviously did a great job getting the word out.

I enjoyed sitting around next to my car and having people come walk around and appreciate it. Of the ones that I talked to, more than half told me this was the first time they had ever seen one in person, which was awesome. A lot people of course asked about the Rally, and many thought I was on the TV show, which I find most people don’t realize is totally different from the actual rally. There was also a GTR, a 240SX and a 300ZX that showed up. The owner of the 300ZX happened to be the leader of the Connecticut Z Car Club.

Coming home from the show (Andrew stayed to hang with the FCP crew) a Pontiac G8 tried giving me what-for, but I lost him behind me in traffic. A Scion Tc managed to give me the slip by being a lot more willing to squeeze in between cars and jink and juke all over the damn place. What looked like a Honda Prelude chased me a good 12 miles until finally getting ahead of me for a brief moment, then I passed him back up at around 120mph. As I exited that freeway he flashed me his lights, and I put on my hazards and waved. Then on the parkway home a Porsche Carrera 4 tried to play, but hung back after I passed him. I kept an eye on him though and when he broke out of traffic I shifted to 4th and put the pedal to the floor – he still almost caught me. Almost. Again, flash of the headlights and a wave from me as I exited a few seconds later. It’s nice to engage in a little friendly competition to liven up a drive – so long as you know when to let the crazy people (like that Scion) just go on ahead. When I wasn’t chasing/leading, traffic was heavy volume again – going 60-80mph on a highway for me is like taking a mild sedative, and I almost fell asleep a few times.

At the end of this month, the local Z community here in Jersey is having a car meet/show that I plan to attend – there I’ll be able to see more than just my 370 on display 😛 Looking forward to it.