Automotive Exceptionalism

From the one car show I went to this year. Tons of serious exotic hardware there but these two stole the show for me. Both V-Specs.

A very cool Morgan seen at Audrain Museum’s “Cars and Coffee” a couple Sunday mornings ago.

It’s really unbelievable what some people have stashed in their garages!

Maybe a stupid question but I’m not super knowledgeable about these. Is that a kit car?

From the same car show I posted the above Skylines. The new GT is insane. These were the only cars I took pictures of that day.

Ain't no supercar nor will necessarily get a fella laid but I like it... so much so, it saved my & family's lives and in the process was totalled, so I bought another.

Meet Pablo-
First new car I ever purchased. At the time we had just relocated from Portland Oregon to Athens Georgia... we were leasing a car and the lease was nearly up. So I negotiated a fantastic deal with a dealer in South Carolina. Picked it up on a Wednesday, turned in our leased vehicle on Thursday, and Friday evening took the family and me out for a drive around Athens.

20 minutes later Bambi decided to commit suicide and hoof-picked my brand spankin' new 2018 4Runner TRD Offroad-Premium as her weapon of choice.
Full airbag deployment.
I had never been in an airbag deployment accident up until this evening... trust me when I say, You don't want to either.
Wife was next to me, daughter in the back with our mini-doxie in her lap.
Driving along and smiling, and my wife (a Trauma RN who never overreacts to anything) screams "DEER!" at the exact moment the interior of my brand new Toyota explodes into a cannon of sound and smoke.
We come to a dead stop. Definitely shell-shocked from whatever has just occurred... I cannot see anything inside the cockpit. Totally confused and disoriented. I look to my wife through a haze of something and feeling the vibration of my skull hear myself say "ARE YOU OKAY?" but it's whisper soft even though I know I am shouting it. I look over my right shoulder and feel my skull vibrate enough to know I've said the same to my daughter - who I can't really see at all.
"THE CAR'S ON FIRE!" My wife again. Other than this time I don't need a second to process it, and immediately reach across her lap, start to find her seatbelt latch - realize she's already found it, and open her door and more or less throw her out onto the highway with an adrenaline spike I've never encountered before or since.
I start to crawl over the center console to rinse/repeat the same on my daughter and our mini-doxie Theo but realize their door is open and they are already out.
Time for me to jettison too... I cannot. My door's airbag, which runs from the interior roof to 3/4's down the driver's door, hasn't deflated. I cannot get to the door handle.
Very strange what my brain does... calm and very slow motion kicks in. Ears are still pinned shut from the deployment with severe ringing but I can hear sirens off in the distance and wife & daughter screaming "GET OUT!" and I, again, feel my skull reverberate quietly "Trying, fυcking TRYING!" at the top of my lungs.
Dawns on me "Kill the engine Scott" so I do. Oddly too - I hit the Hazards. And then I more or less realized I was using the brand new Toyota key fob to try and stab the airbag to deflate it when my brain realized I had a small pocket knife on the keychain as well.
Pop/Hiss and I threw myself out and onto the highway... and sadly right on to Bambi (still breathing barely and surprisingly with no visible injuries). She was staring at me and laboring very hard. Distinctly remember feeling terrible over her, laugh at me or not - definitely no Alpha Male bullshit in me... I said "I am so sorry" to the deer.
About 10 seconds later an armada of police cruisers appeared ~ turns out there was a Friday Night Sobriety Checkpoint ahead of us down the highway and three cruisers, each with two officers, had first heard and then seen the entire fiasco, and immediately set out driving up the highway the wrong way on the shoulder.

Car wasn't on fire after all - between my wife wearing sandals, the engine revving, the radiator bursting and overheating the motor, the firewall insulation being damaged and the corn starch released from the airbags deploying she assumed (and cannot blame her) we were burning.

Went without a vehicle for two months (pain in the ass but we are a walking/bicycle commuting family mostly anyway) while insurance paid out/tried to figure out where the title was (car was so new that the title was still up in South Carolina at the dealership and had never been sent to the State of Georgia DMV) but eventually ordered and took delivery of the same identical vehicle albeit a 2019 model year.



Received one hell of a 2nd degree burn from the driver's side airbag deployment (which I still have to this day in scar form)...



Meet Levi (son of Pablo)...

Yikes! Bad time...but nice story!
I've only totaled one car, and oddly enough, it was the first new car I ever bought myself too, a 2012 VW GTI, but I at least got to enjoy it for 3 years.
Well, I didn't total it, but a 16 year old who just got a Ford Focus less than 24 hours before ran a red light and T-boned me on my driver side.
That one was pretty wild. was at an intersection waiting to turn left. Got the green arrow, looked both ways, put the car in 1st and proceeded into the intersection.
As I'm starting my left turn (big intersection) I peer left with just enough time for my brain to process what is about to happen, and no shit, I remember saying "oh a Focus" lol. And then BAM! Hit me square in the middle of the car, but just far back enough to spin me around 180 degrees.
I'd been in a few accidents in the past, but nothing too bad. And honestly, I don't even consider this one to be "that bad" because it could have been so much worse. I walked away without a scratch. A little sore, but otherwise fine.

Way to easy to get a drives license here (USA) and way to easy to keep it once you have one.

Glad you were OK.

Still don't have the Bronco (literally any day now though) but today I got an email from Ford with it's "baby pic".
They take a picture as it rolls off the line. However this is before it goes to the mod shop because as pictured here it is missing front brush guard and roof rack.
But this put a big smile on my face. A year in the making and I finally got to see it! Fingers crossed I get to pick it up in the next few days...

I remember the anticipation when my best friend ordered his BOSS 302 in 2012 and it wasn't even my car.

I totally understand, because this wasn't originally my car either hah!
I don't remember if I said it already, but this started out as my father in laws order that I ended up taking over.
He ordered it last December to replace his wife's car. She ended up with something else a little over a month ago while they were still playing the waiting game with this one.
I was always very excited for it because it was EXACTLY the spec I would have built. Which is why when she wasn't going to take it, I jumped on it.
However it is going to be the wife's daily. I'm hanging on to my GTI for a little bit longer still.

Was able to pick it up this afternoon. It is indeed exceptional in my opinion.

The looks might not be for everyone but what is sleeping under the hood and throughout the rest of the car is awesome. And yes, it's fun as h*** to drive.

1995 Chevrolet Camaro that went strait to Lingenfelter from the dealership to get the Camaro LT-1 383 CID package then came directly to Southern California. A "Lingenfelter Camaro" for short.

If you're unfamiliar with Lingenfelter, and curious, the current owner was on a Jay's garage episode a while back along with the owner of Superformance (they make the licensed Cobra replicas). Here's the vid: