Ethan TuftsCar and Driver
“People are going to think we’re the most random car club ever,” said Eric Robi, backing a yellow Mach-E GT in between a ’99 Miata and my ’81 Turbo Trans Am.
“I’m not sure anyone is going to think we’re a car club at all,” said Ethan Tufts, leaning against the fender of his Acura Integra (also a ’99 model) and looking over at Brad Hansen’s silver ’96 Corvette. “We just look like some people in cars who parked near each other.”
Which to be fair, we were. But we were also people in cars who parked near each other after going for a drive together. So basically, we were just some matching jackets away from being a car club.
The drive was my idea. I figured Super Bowl Sunday in a year when Los Angeles was hosting (and playing in) the game would result in a day of empty streets while sports-y types buffaloed chicken wings and yelled things about balls at their televisions. Even though the game started in the afternoon, we met early, in the pinkish light of sunrise. The tan velour cabin of the Trans Am took on a rose hue, part sunlight, part the warm red glow of the check-engine light. “It’ll go off soon,” I assured Brandan Gillogly in the passenger seat, and it did. Then it came back on. I consider it ambient lighting, like the colored strips that garland the interior of the S-class.
The Trans Am was the oldest of our strange crew. Last of the second-gen F-bodies, it looked more ’70s than its 1981 VIN would suggest. It also looked huge and gaudy next to the sleek arrow of a fourth-generation Vette designed during the time when aerodynamicists figured they could just poke a small hole in the air and shoot a car through. Hansen uses the Corvette as his daily driver, choosing it after test-driving “probably 25 different cars of all kinds.” Tufts, who owns probably 25 different cars of all kinds, brought out the Integra specifically for the roads we were taking. “It’s perfect for ‘slow car fast,'” he said. “Steering is great, chassis is fantastic, engine likes to rev . . . VTEC never kicks in though, because it doesn’t have it.” This led to a discussion about the trend of car companies announcing their proudest tech on the outside of cars, all of us familiar with DOHC VTEC callouts and “fuel injection” brags. The Trans Am proudly declares itself “4-wheel-disc-equipped” on both door handles. “It makes me feel very safe,” Gillogly said.
We swapped cars a few times, perhaps the most dramatic difference being going from the Trans Am to the air-conditioned and big-screened comfort of the Mustang Mach-E GT. Robi is another multi-car owner, and while the rest of us waxed nostalgic with our choices, he’s all in on the brand new. “I was resistant to the idea of an electric for a long time, but I thought it would be interesting to see what it’s like to be part of the early experiment,” he said. The difference between the Mach-E’s heft and the Miata’s featherweight was a topic of conversation as well. Both cars were delightful to take through the turns, but as Derek Powell said after a long uphill stretch, “I’m not powering out of any corners in the Mazda.” Gillogly never drove the Miata—at well over 6 feet tall, he stuck out the top like a Playskool Weeble Wobble.
At our last stop, we tried to decide if we felt that traffic had been lighter than usual. We’d had some good empty stretches, but then, we’d chosen some less traveled roads. Back along the ocean on Highway 1, it certainly wasn’t a ghost town. If anything, it might have been busier than the average Sunday, although the variety of cars proved we weren’t the only car club—unofficial or not—to make a group venture of it. Gangs of 911s crowded the shoulder by Mugu Rock. We saw so many vintage SLs on our way south it started to feel like a glitch in the Matrix. Also, a Cosworth Vega, all black and gold and glorious. It may have been more interesting than usual, but there was still plenty of traffic. Perhaps I just chose a popular section of town, and other areas were less bustling?
I called up Brian Douglas, a traffic anchor and airborne reporter for KNX news radio, and asked him if I was imagining things, or if traffic was surprisingly busy for a game weekend. “It depends where you were,” he answered. Near the stadium was, as expected, “a madhouse,” but the freeways around the stadium were lighter than he expected. “There was a big push to get people to use public transport and ride shares, and I think a lot of people did go via shuttle or train,” he said. As for my hopes of taking over uninhabited mountains and owning the coastal route, Douglas pointed out that it was an unseasonably warm 90 degrees in February on a Sunday, so I might not have been the only person who thought a beach day sounded like fun.
“You know what was really busy?” Douglas said. “The regional airports. I’ve never seen so many private jets. They had ’em all parked up like Tetris.”
We never saw any private jets, although we did stop at the Port Hueneme naval base where they had several fighter jets on display. Our car club split up and headed home at a time when anyone going to a party should have already been there or else all the gauc would be gone, and it became clear that while Los Angeles may love the Rams enough to set off lots of fireworks when they won—neighbors, my dogs hate you—this is not a town where everyone watches the game. The Los Angeles market ranked 26th in the country when Super Bowl ratings were released.
As I crept along in single-digit-speed traffic, it did give me time to chat with the driver of an ’85 Mazda RX-7 stuck beside me, so it wasn’t all bad. Car folks, it seems, can’t resist a sunny Sunday, no matter what else is happening.
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