All blacked out, nice rims, I prefer the 2-door model, but still, one of my favourite vehicles, this.
Non-car nerds: it’s not a pickup truck, it’s a Ford Raptor.Despite it’s size, it is nimble and can do all the stuff a pickup in your imagination can do. You’re looking at about $65,000, easy.
I travelled with Ford to Alberta this summer, to test their 2013 pickup truck line.
Click here for a couple videos of me off-roading in a Raptor, both as a driver and passenger (I lose control of my neck).
That’s the media day version though; wouldn’t want to be here on a normal attendance day, too many humans.
It’s intense, an auto show, very fast paced. It’s kinda… you get on a shuttle in the morning, beautiful cars and click click hundreds of photos, lots of laughs, then all of a sudden you’re back on the shuttle, it’s dark outside and you’re going “woah”.
The media room. All those people leave their laptops just sitting there unattended, while they’re in the show photographing. Nice that it’s possible, I could never.
Left Tuesday, I was at the auto show with Ford again (two years ago they’d invited my blog [video], this year was with the newspaper)
We stayed in Santa Monica.
The * was me.
The famous Santa Monica pier was about 300 metres away.
I never made it though; I took these photos from Dan.
It was a fast trip – travel Tuesday, spend Wednesday inside here…
… then dinner and fly out the next morning.
Watched “Now you See Me” on the plane (so good), then wrote my column (talking to X-Copper about speeding tickets, to balance out this week’s talking with the toughest enforcer on the force).
Landed around 8; dinner catch up and laughs; then home, unpack, and power my apartment back up; jacknife on the phone with a BFF while she regaled me with her adventures; and now this is me.
Thursday night, best night of the week.
I’ll cheers you after I hit publish, then upload my column, then tomorrow I’ll blog the auto show.
xo TTYT
Ford invited me to an event a few weeks back, Ken Block was in Toronto, and they’d set him up a course.
Non-car nerds: Ken Block, world-class precision driver and drifter. Sponsored by Ford, GoPro, Monster. Co-founded DC Shoes.
Watch him drift all of San Francisco:
He drives a 2013 Ford Fiesta ST RX43, outputting 650-hp and 650 lb-ft of torque, 0-100 km/h in 1.8 seconds.
Then, total luck, this happened:
We went around the course, it was about 90 seconds that felt like 2.
For such a maniacal sport, it was so calm in the cabin, surprised me; there’s less movement required than you may think.
We flew around, I let myself get tossed around in the Gs, the entire cabin filled with smoke, and Ken drove so hard the car broke, making ours the final run of the day.
And then…
Above is the file list, no Ken footage, just poof: missing. No explanation, that’s hard on a stomach. Imagine writing that email to Ford… then one to Motoring TV… omg of all the footage to lose, in all the lands…
Adding to the disappointment: the footage of me driving the auto-cross course was also gone, and I’d driven so well that day.
Ken released his latest video, Gymkhana SIX. Wrote about it on Autonet yesterday, here. It’s ridiculous, go watch.
In 1937, Ford was the first to produce and assemble their own wagon (as opposed to outsourcing anything).