Where to Buy Slow Car Fast Right Now!
Our trip to Monterey, how to buy Slow Car Fast and much more this week.
A weekly newsletter by Ryan K. ZumMallen | @zoomy575m
Happy Race Day, especially to the driving instructor who expertly guided his student around a lap of the 12-mile, 154-turn Nürburgring track… blindfolded.
It’s been a big week. As of Monday, our debut title Slow Car Fast, the nonfiction eBook and paperback exploring modern car culture, is available immediately.
The eBook is compatible with all eReader devices and costs $14.99, with a $3.00 discount for using the “RACEDAY” coupon code. Limited numbers of the paperback version are in stock for $22.99, which includes $3.00 shipping and handling.
In the run-up to its release, we brought Slow Car Fast to Monterey for the massive annual Car Week. Thank you to WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, which set up space for me and other authors to sell and sign books for fans.
What a treat to introduce the book in such an historic place for motorsport, alongside legends like Hurley Haywood, John Morton, Silvia Wilkinson and Mitch Bishop. What’s more, Slow Car Fast is now in stock at the official track store! Thank you to our Laguna Seca hosts and especially everyone who came to say hello and bought a book.
Learn more about Slow Car Fast and me personally on the latest episode of the Cars Yeah! podcast with Mark Greene. I really enjoyed chatting with Mark about my own personal story and taste in cars, plus tidbits about the book and more!
You may recall I also appeared on The Smoking Tire podcast a while back. Now, host Matt Farah has reposted a short clip of our discussion about self-driving cars — or lack thereof — and where the future of automation is going. Check it out!
Culture
The iconic video game Need for Speed returns with a new edition: Heat. While we wait for the release, its official app is gaining a lot of steam among enthusiasts. You can modify, paint and share the car of your dreams—all for free! It’s a very smart tactic and increasing awareness before the game drops in November.
Also, make sure you check out the incredible creations of @the_kyza, an illustrator on the NFS project. Some of these are more interesting than the game.
Speaking of video games, preorders are open now for WRC 8 — the latest version of the rallying sim. A new WRC has huge ramifications in the gaming world. This will be watched closely.
We usually don’t cover new cars here at Race Day, but for the Audi RS6 Avant we’ll make an exception. Audi will bring the steroid-sleeper station wagon to the U.S. for the first time in 16 years.
Enthusiasts and journalists have been clamoring for this for a long time. Will it translate to long-term viability? Call me crazy, but the buying power of Millennials and their noted taste in niche performance could pack a surprising punch.
Tickets are open for Leadfoot, the absolutely insane hillclimb event held on a farm in New Zealand each February. Imagine if Goodwood had a free-soloing cousin. That’s Leadfoot.
Monterey has to be the only place you can pull into your hotel parking lot and find a Lamborghini 400GT parked next to an overlanding Lamborghini LM002.
Video Reel
Cool video following a serial BMW collector and his decision to bring his fleet out of the shadows in recent years.
Donut Media dares to ask the question: Why did the Lexus LFA fail? (It didn’t.) Is it ultimately good or bad? (It’s good.) Is the engine enough to save the car on its own? (Yes, obviously.) We may never know the truth.
Carfection already has an RS6 video if you’d like to see the big boi in motion.
Here’s the good stuff: Top ten overtakes of the F1 season so far.
Race Results
Formula One is in the midst of its summer break. Need a primer to bring you up to speed? Here’s the head of Mercedes to provide a quite insightful rundown.
Lots of smoky goodness from the Formula Drift event in St. Louis last weekend.
Officials called the IndyCar race at Pocono early due to lightning conditions, but all anyone could talk about was the scary crash on the first lap. Pocono has a reputation for danger and some called for its removal from the calendar. [Highlights here]
I’m obsessed with the IMSA prototypes I not only saw at Laguna Seca during the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion, but actually watched race against one another.
I mean seriously, look at these things.
Look at them!
Ask A Millennial! Ben Schneider, 24
Cars & Coffee is everywhere. What began in SoCal with hot-rodders who didn’t want any rules has quickly spread across the country. People like Ben Schneider are the reason why. The 24-year-old has taken an entrepreneurial spirit to building Cars & Coffee St. Louis into a vibrant show. Here’s an edited version of our conversation:
It’s the lack of expectation. At your normal car event you show up at a certain time and have to stay because you’re waiting on awards. I call ours a networking event for cars. Your main purpose of being there is to meet car people, see what they’re driving. You don’t have to worry about whether my car is nice enough to bring. A lot of people are intimidated, especially when you have to pay to enter. When people show up to our show they’re not worried about being judged. I’m always reminding people everyone’s invited. If people think their car isn’t nice enough, I’m not doing my job. No matter what you pull up in, everyone gets out and shakes hands.
Social media is definitely how you reach younger enthusiasts. I decided to be the face for Cars & Coffee St. Louis. Having a face and someone you can connect to the brand helps. Then going out and creating authentic content using my face and personal IG account I was able to spread the word that way. People come up to me at shows and say, “We love your Instagram stories!” That’s the first comment.
No matter where you go, at Cars & Coffee you kind of get the same vibe. Car people are just passionate. You can walk up to anyone and have a conversation. People are very kind around here — this is a blue collar city, union city, there’s a lot of hard working men and women out there and they work their ass off and buy the car they really want. They want to show it off and attend events and we get that. There’s some people that don’t drive the nicest cars and everyone’s still supportive. I like to think that’s because of some of the message that we’re spreading.
Auction Results
A funny thing happened on the way to the auction block. In a truly bizarre development, RM Sotheby’s somehow botched the totals appearing on the board during its sale of the 1939 Porsche Type 64 in Monterey.
When the auctioneer said $13 million, the screen read $30 million. Then $40M instead of $14M, and so on. This happened all the way up to $70 million dollars, when RM corrected the totals and started the auction over.
But it was too late. People booed and walked out. The bidding petered out and the car didn’t meet reserve. It’s a stunning mistake on absolutely the biggest stage of the year. It’s also a sign to me that there’s a lot about the auction world we don’t know.
Elsewhere, an extremely rare McLaren F1 sold for $19.8 million. That makes it the highest auction price for a McLaren ever. But it’s about $3 million lower than its estimate and arguably a lot lower than it deserves given the heritage and exclusivity.
The truth is that sales were down across the board all weekend. The combined total from all auction houses was $246 million, a whopping decline of 34 percent compared with last year, according to Sports Car Market.
A sign that billionaires are shoring up in preparation for a downturn? Declining interest in museum-quality specimens? Buyers turning away from traditional auction houses? Nah, it must be:
And Finally…
The final chapter of Slow Car Fast describes the tale of the lost Bugatti that was abandoned by a Swiss playboy at the French border and tossed into a lake for 75 years before a miraculous excavation. It’s an elegant tale of recovered beauty.
A stolen ‘83 Firebird filled to its roof with mud is less elegant! But it’s still fun.
Drive hard and be safe.
Want your event included? Shoot me a note with subject line “Race Day” at ryan@carrarabooks.com.