NoCoast Grant Hughes Ultra Moderator Location: Whitefish, MT Join Date: 01/11/2006 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 6,818 Rally Car: BMW |
So we had our honeymoon in France. It was a really good time. Flew into Paris, directly onto a train and to Avignon in Provence. Had a Renault Clio 1.5 CDI rental car. I won't go too much into the trip here, but the car really impressed me.
1.5 liter, common fuel rail diesel engine, really close ratio gear box, light weight chassis and decent braking. Four corner discs, 260 front, 240 mm rear. Didn't check calipers but probably nothing impressive. It didn't matter with the low weight. The engine was stupid torquey, but no horsepower. Power was pretty much dead around 4000, but the close ratio made it quick to sprint to 100 or 120 km/hr, but was in fifth gear and losing accelerating ability about then. Fuel economy is reported to be around 60 miles per gallon, but I didn't track it with my driving style. I can tell you that gas is fucking stupid. Luckily we only burnt through a quarter of a tank, but that still cost us 20 Euro to refill ($28 US with weak dollar). The rental car company said it cost 108 Euro to fill the tank! Needless, not many big cars around France. Lots of wee cars. Lauren got a big lesson in chassis that WRC cars have been based off of, as well as F2000 and Super 1600 cars. We saw them all. Peugot 206, 307, Fiat Punto, Suzuki Swift, Renault Clio, Megane, Ford Focus, Fiesta, etc. The new Ford's don't look nearly as good in stock form as the WRC version. Same could be said about the latest Fiesta, though I saw one trim level that looked much better. Anyhow, move on to the driving. We did a few days of driving out in the coutryside and I made sure we took a route that would take us over a little mountain pass and a super tight and twisty tarmac road. Holy shit, those roads are tarmac rally dreams. We left the Abbey de Senaque, which was a the bottom of this canyon and surrounded by lavender fields. We have a 20 km drive ahead of us that I planned that took us up a little hill, down to a valley, then we turned and drove up a little mountain, over a pass, then back down. It was all tight, twisty tarmac. So after about the first three clicks this Renault is suddenly on my ass and passes me. So, naturally I keep up with him. He's got a buddy in a Swift right behind me. The speed they were driving these roads was nuts. In my stock Renault I pretty much needed to take rally type lines and there was occasional oncoming traffic. After about 2 km I pulled off and let the other guy pass and let them have their fun. I didn't feel comfortable with a rental car and new wife to drive as quickly as they were around blind corners on roads that were barely wide enough for two cars to pass. Anyhow, we continued on at a brisk pace and did manage to scare a few tourists and passed quite a few cars by the time we got to town. I never had any desire to do tarmac rallies, but now that I have driven a real tarmac rally road I can't wait to do one. Not in the US though. Probably Rally Guadalajara is the most realistic. As we got to the end there was a house with a garage and a few guys that looked around my age (25-35 range) and a historic Citroen rally car. We passed it and I stopped and wanted to back up to go talk to them, but there was a big truck full of logs barrelling down on me and we were both getting hungry so we kept going. As we were leaving town I bought a French rally mag. I'll try to scan some stuff in from it, but on the calendar there were like 9 rallies. For the month of July! The weekend of the 7th and 8th had 5 different regional events on it alone. I'd located Col de Turini on our map and had we had another day down in Provence we were going to go to Monte Carlo and drive that famous stage road. We settled for the much closer Col de Mur which ended up being fun. Maybe next time though. Here's some Google Earth placemarkers for any interested. http://www.nocoastmotorsports.net/GoogleEarth/Col%20de%20Mur.kmz Also for Rally Idaho, which you can see how stupidly fast that rally is. Jimmy Bolin averaged over 100 MPH on a 4.4 mile long stage at Idaho. Not really a good comparison or fair comparison. Wonder if anyone has Google Earth for any East Coast tarmac rallies. Is it Tennessee that's tarmac? I can't recall. http://www.nocoastmotorsports.net/GoogleEarth/Idaho%20Rally.kmz Grant Hughes |
NoCoast Grant Hughes Ultra Moderator Location: Whitefish, MT Join Date: 01/11/2006 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 6,818 Rally Car: BMW |
NoCoast Grant Hughes Ultra Moderator Location: Whitefish, MT Join Date: 01/11/2006 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 6,818 Rally Car: BMW |
john vanlandingham John Vanlandingham Mod Moderator Location: Ford Asylum, Sleezattle, WA Join Date: 12/20/2005 Age: Fossilized Posts: 14,152 Rally Car: Saab 96 V4 |
Congratulation on the marriage and glad the Honeymoon went well. More piccies or ban!
I told you the story about spectating Monte Carlo '93 with a friend who had co-driven since he debuted with me in Jun '86,and he'd been on the roof 4-5 times with Dave Clark and Paul "The Pom" Morgan and he was absolutely terrified at poor ol me's driving on the little "D"roads. We had a 1.1 Fiat Uno so you had to mash the gas HARD to get it to go so mash I did but we were still getting passed everywhere including by service barges! And yeah, everybody is all wooot-woooting the Idaho thing but I looked at several stages in car and looked at the averages and for fuck sake the length of the "stages" at about 2 1/2 minutes each and I thought "Bogus". WHAT THE FUCK IS THE POINT? It's open country HIWAY. I aint as "anti-tarmac"as I sound,but I's sure as hell anti stupid and that shit or THOSE roads were stupid. But everybody is so excited,no way could one say anything,it would be poo-poooed with "You weren't there! When's the last time......" John Vanlandingham Sleezattle, WA, USA Vive le Prole-le-ralliat www.rallyrace.net/jvab CALL +1 206 431-9696 Remember! Pacific Standard Time is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time. |
DR1665 Brian Driggs Super Moderator Location: Glendale Join Date: 06/08/2006 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 832 Rally Car: Keyboard. Deal with it. |
Congrats, Grant. Wishing you both the very best for the future!
Looks like a great time. More pics, if you will. Brian Driggs | KG7KCA | PHX, AZ | 89 Pajero alterius non sit qui suus esse potest |
NoCoast Grant Hughes Ultra Moderator Location: Whitefish, MT Join Date: 01/11/2006 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 6,818 Rally Car: BMW |
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derek Derek Bottles Ultra Moderator Location: Lopez Island/ Seattle WA Join Date: 12/20/2005 Age: Possibly Wise Posts: 853 Rally Car: Past: 323, RX2, GTI. Next up M3 ? |
I hope you made it down to Arel and to La Baux (SP?) those are some nice place to bike between. Let us not forget Pont De Guard...
Them roads were a lot of fun to peddle down - I have never driven on them so I have little idea how that would be. D In the long run reality always wins. |
gkd George Doganis Mega Moderator Location: San Diego Join Date: 03/25/2007 Age: Ancient Posts: 94 Rally Car: Civic |
I was in Monte Carlo too June 24-29, but it was for work. The good part was that my work involved driving an SLR, a CLK63 AMG and a CL65 AMG among others. While driving the SLR I kept thinking that nobody staring at me could guess that I would rather be driving my econobox rally car.
In Monaco, the number of performance cars driven by poseurs is sickening. At least I saw one F40 that smelled, sounded and looked like it had just finished a six-hour race. Probably owned by a retired race driver. George Civic Rally Car |
Anders Green Anders Green Elite Moderator Location: Raleigh, NC Join Date: 03/30/2006 Age: Possibly Wise Posts: 1,478 Rally Car: Parked |
NoCoast Wrote:
> Is it Tennessee that's tarmac? I can't recall. Yup. http://rallytennessee.com/ I too had little interest in tarmac rally until attending one. Cheers, Anders Grassroots rally. It's what I think about. |
mothra Matt Smith Senior Moderator Location: Wilmington NC Join Date: 03/31/2006 Age: Possibly Wise Posts: 546 Rally Car: xr4ti |
Anders Green Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------- > NoCoast Wrote: > > Is it Tennessee that's tarmac? I can't > recall. > > Yup. > > I too had little interest in tarmac rally until > attending one. > > Ditto. Matt Smith Racing in glorious black and red My daily life is a Saab story (sold!) |
Andrew_Frick Andrew Frick Professional Moderator Location: Greenville, SC Join Date: 05/18/2007 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 684 Rally Car: Rally Spec Ford Focus |
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