I feel compelled to share with you my recent unexpected petrol head experiences whilst away in the States with Genie. This chain of events was not planned, but unfolded as the trip went on.

Some of you will know Genie and that although she’s lived in the UK for 19 years she comes from the other side of the pond. Her family now live in Edwardsville, Southern Illinois near to St Louis and the first few days of our stay were here. Route 66 passes through and one of my life’s ambitions is to drive the length of said route from Chicago to LA, more than 2000 miles all the way, as the words of the Rolling Stones record goes. Well we didn’t manage that, but I did have a go in her late father’s 1951 MGTD (This was before turbo Diesels!) for around half an hour and along a short section of “66”. This coincided with the FBHVC “Drive it” day on the 23^rd April, where in Britain everyone with an “old car” was encouraged to get it out, even if only on the drive. Well as the TR8 was 5000 miles away back home, I had to improvise didn’t I ?

From here we travelled to Las Vegas for a week. Amongst the highlights we hired a new ’06 spec Mustang convertible in red. What a nice car! All yours brand new over there for about £15K! Check out the nice retro dashboard! We drove over 300 miles in the day out into the desert, up into the mountains Hoover Dam & all that, costs of hire, with max insurance cover & a surcharge for covering over 200 miles, £85. What a bargain.

We met a couple of English guys who told us about a test track where you could hire nice cars and give them a thrashing. We tracked this down and found there was a purpose built sprint track and you could drive around the course, with an instructor. It had a Christmas tree starting light system and digital display for your times. There was a selection of motors and you could complete 2 x 2 timed laps in the same or 2 different vehicles. I chose a brand new Corvette and a Pontiac GTO, both sharing the same 6 litre, 400bhp engine! Genie chose a Pontiac Solstice and the GTO. There were loads of others to choose from, including a huge Supercharged 480bhp saloon I can’t remember the name of. There was also a challenging off road

course you could drive a Hummer around if you wished in place of 2 laps of the sprint course. All up cost? $10 !! That’s about £6, for the 4 laps. I still can’t believe it. If you were prepared to queue you could have as many goes as you like.

So Daniel, I propose for our next evening social…….