| Author | Message | ||
| Leo Martinez (85frii)
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Ben and Larry, I'd like to thank you two for putting another great excursion together. The drive up was fun (a little excitement coming out of the gate), the Museum was informative and lunch hit the nail on the head ('cus I was very hungry). I even checked for convertible top leaks and had a wiper check too (rain on the way home). All passed!!! Looking forward to the next one. Thanks again. | ||
| Ben Lobenstein 90 TR (Benjet)
|
Thanks one and all for joining us on Rally 4. I hope that everyone enjoyed the day as much as I did. It was great to see so many new faces at our outing. I'm glad to have met you all, only sorry that we didn't have more time to become aquainted - that's why all of you will have to come back out next time. We actually had planned for several more cars, but alas the threat of rain scared quite a few folks away. I already know my car isn't made of sugar. I managed to only take a few pics which I've posted here: http://arariti.quirt.com/rally4/index.htm As well Danno (in his red 355) took quite a few, they are viewable here: http://arariti.quirt.com/rally4/Danno/index.htm Fred wrote up a nice summary on the Lamborghini List, which you can read here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lamborghini_info/message/9194 -Ben | ||
| Ben Lobenstein 90 TR (Benjet)
|
In case anyone missed the email I just sent out here is a public posting... Greetings fellow Rally participants! I know that many of you are wondering, since you haven't heard a word yet about the weekend's upcoming Rally 4. Larry and myself have just about finalized all the event details for Rally 4! We have over 30 cars planned to attend (18 Ferrari's, 8 Lamborghini's, and a few others). We WERE set to release all the details of meet up points and drive to everyone in the next day or so. I say "were" since today (Tues.), the weather media are announcing (an 80% chance of) RAIN for our main date (11/10). We know that most owners would be hesitant to take their cars out in the rain. While I don't have a lot of faith in those that do weather forecasting, we've decided to let it get a little closer to our outing date before we officially postpone it to the next weekend. We will make our decision around 4pm Thursday 11/8 and email everyone by dusk that day. If you have not heard back by late Thurs or Fri AM, please email us ASAP. If there is a VERY slight chance of sprinkles we'll probably decide that it's good enough and be a go for this weekend. There are some minor drawbacks to postponing it until the following weekend (it could also be rained out, etc.). At this point it is out of our hands. That's the news for now. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. If anyone CANNOT make it on the backup date (11/17), please let me know. Many thanks for your continued support. -Ben and >>Larry Your Rally Hosts | ||
| Ben Lobenstein 90 TR (Benjet)
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Folks - I just got back into this timezone and all the final details are being worked out - Larry - You are still working them out right? (only kidding)... Art - SHAME ON YOU for saying that foul four letter R-Word! Doug will need to RSVP (or you can do it for him). As we only will have enough seats at the lunch table for those who have informed us that they are coming. Bruce - It shall be a great day. All the final details are going to be annouced Wed/Thurs. When we know FOR SURE that it will be NICE outside (weather). Julian - Sorry to hear that, your presence will be missed.  -Ben P.S. Car count is now ABOVE 30. | ||
| Bruce H. Corum (Drbrucecorum)
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Ben, my wife and I wil be there either date, lets nail it down. Let me know if I can help. Bruce | ||
| arthur chambers (Art355)
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Ben: If its not raining, I'll be there. Diane may or may not be there, but I'm also going to ask my friend Doug, who has a 348 TS (92) if he wants to go. Let me know the meeting point, etc. If there is anything I can help with, just let me know. Art | ||
| Julian Pham (Julian_Blk348)
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Ben, Just found out that I'll be out of town the weekend of 10/10 so 10/17 is better for me. Julian | ||
| Ben Lobenstein 90 TR (Benjet)
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Any more want to come out and play? I'd like to have an idea of how many we have in this group by 11-01. Thanks, -Ben | ||
| Ben Lobenstein 90 TR (Benjet)
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You are hereby cordially invited to participate in the following event: FerrariChat.com Bay Area Exotic Rally 4 - November 10, 2001 (Nov. 17, 2001 backup date) This will be an ITALIAN EXOTICS ONLY event. If you didn�t manage to get to any of our past events, here are some links to thoughts & pics of our last outing (Sept. 8, 2001 � Rally 3): http://sis125.berkeley.edu/928/ev-rally3.html http://arariti.quirt.com/rally3/Danno/index.htm http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lamborghini_info/message/7824 http://209.196.179.161/discus/messages/1121/2151.html?1000346602 Our next event will be.... A trip into automotive history, we will begin the morning with a drive (multiple starting points) out to The Blackhawk Auto Museum. Once there we will have the opportunity to place a dozen or so cars on display on the entrance patio directly in front of the museum. We would like to have a good cross section of Italian cars for the 12 (in color, make and model), this will be a great photo opportunity. We will be given a docent led tour of the museum and of course allowed to wander it on our own. While our past events have been free to attend, the museum requires an admission fee. We have managed to obtain a discounted group rate of $6 per person, which will be payable directly to them on site. Following this we will head to a local eatery for a lesuirely lunch where we can talk all things Familia de Automobilia. After lunch a nice ride/rally around the rolling hills and sweeping turns of the Tri-Valley area. Not nearly as aggressive as our last outing. At this time we are seeing who is interested in joining us (we had about 35 people in 22+ cars last time), and who will be free for that day (11/10 or 11/17 if our initial date becomes a bad weather day). Please RSVP if you are interested. We are still getting this outing organized. Thanks for your participation. Respond with the following: Name Nov 10 AND/OR 17 works for me? (if one is bad let us know) Car: Year Make Model Color Number in car (so we can have a running total of people) Coming from Area/City That�s it for now. Hope to see you then. Also please feel free to forward this to anyone who you think migh tbe interested. -Ben P.S. I will be out of town until Sunday so I'll be responding beginning next week and if you wouldn't mind cc'ing Larry Michaels (my esteemed co-host) in your replies, it would be appreciated: [email protected] Thanks again. | ||
| Lawrence Michaels (Lxmichaels1)
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Hi everyone, I'm about to start planning the course for the November "Pony Gallop". Ben & I agreed to keep this outing to "Italian Exotics Only" this time I think that means: Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini and maybe some "scarce" Alfa's and who knows what else. I'll plot this one to be a bit easier on the cars and passengers. More details to follow. If November 10th is a bad weather day then November 17th. >> Larry | ||
| David Harris (Dakharris)
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If you want a Ferrari-only event, join the Ferrari Club. They plan wonderful Ferrari-only events. Under 5000 units seems OK, but I'm not crazy about Japanese cars (I never claimed to be PC). I would like to participate in a group that keeps its average speed under 3 digits. Traveling at sustained speeds over 80 mph on urban freeways is unsafe. One participant exited the freeway from the number 2 lane and crossed over the painted island, cutting off a couple of vehicles and making quite a scene. More than unsafe, it was crazy. When the public sees 20 exotic cars showing blatant disregard for traffic laws and fellow travelers, we damage our image. I hope 100 cars show up next time, but they should be broken into flights of 10 and possibly take different routes. Finally, Los Altos is 50 miles from my home. I'm fine with driving that far to meet-up because I have chosen to live where I live, but I don't need a 250 mile tour lasting all day racking up 350 total miles (2 full tanks of fuel). A 100 mile tour on twisting backroads would be enough fun for me. | ||
| Ben Lobenstein 90 TR (Benjet)
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I think we also should recognize that this is all just trial and error. We put the call out for "exotics" with a 2 week notice. This is what we got. If we hadn't had all the other marquee's we would have had about 12 Ferrari's, while this isn't a bad thing necessarily, we just wanted to see what we would get as an experiment. Larry and I are re-thinking this and certianly welcome the input of those who have participated in the past (or even MAY participate in the future). Your comments are welcome (either publicly or privately). I should note that we had another 50 or so folks (mostly FCA people) respond to me (I'm still getting emails about it) that were unable to make Rally 3, and would like to know (SOONER) when we would be out the next time. So... is bigger (more of us?) better? We have been talking about doing mini-rallies (less than 10 cars) and then doing bigger events as well (seperately), do we want to out-do ourselves (in quantity?) Lot of questions have now arisen to which there are no clear cut answers, but WE ARE LISTENING.... the 2 main issuses are: Do we want this (or any events) to be: A> Ferrari ONLY B> Italian ONLY C> Exotics ONLY What is your ideal group size in number of cars? D> Less than 10 (small number of attendees) E> 10-20 ish (could be split into two groups?) F> As many as we can get out on any given day feel free to add if you have other suggestions/thoughts. -Ben | ||
| arthur chambers (Art355)
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Larry: I'm up for it. I like the idea of seperating into two groups, one a cruiser the other somewhat faster. The only thing I would consider is the possibility of rain that late in the year. to that end, I would set up a notification system if there is forecasted rain as to alternatives. Maybe we could schedule this to end up at an indoor go-cart track to let out some of the energy at the end of the ride. If you need assistance with organization, please let me know. Art | ||
| Julian Pham (Julian_Blk348)
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I think of this event as a fun/social event, a chance to get together with other exotic car lovers. I welcome anyone who's interested in coming with us and chat ferrari. If you're fortunately to own a ferrari, then consider yourself luckly and allow others to join in and share your pride of ownership. Let's keep this a friendly event and not alienate people by trying to make it an exclusive gathering (yes, read snobbish!) Julian | ||
| Danny R. West (Dan_West348ts)
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Tom, I agree with you. I also believe that it should be a Ferrari only event. After all, the "mini rally" started out as four guys with Ferraris meeting in the Bay Area. All four of the guys met each other on FERRARICHAT.com. Ben, I hear what you are saying. However, after looking at the pics I thought the P-cars and Renaults made the pics look ordinary. Lambos were OK though. That's my 2 cents. Dan | ||
| Ben Lobenstein 90 TR (Benjet)
|
Tom - We had ALOT of interest from other marquee's, and we didn't want to be so exclusive (read snobbish) that we can't enjoy other vehicles. So we came up with the aribtrary "less than 5,000 produced per year" which would even include certian MBZ 560 SEC's, which most of us we wouldn't consider exotic. We wanted to get as many folks/cars as possible to participate. The 928's are front engine, water cooled 8 cyl. cars, that's pretty odd for the P-car family. We had 2 or 3 in attendance (Rally 3). The black one is a '87 928S4 (4,791 made and 1,967 imported to the US that year), he is working on a 328 restoration project, and the white is '90 Porsche 928S4 (3196 produced world wide, 620 imported to the US that year). As for the Renault that was an '85 R5 Turbo2, only ~205 of these cars were documented to have been imported to the country and there were only 4100 of these cars ever made by the Renault F-1 Team factory during the entire production period from 1979 to 1986 (more than half of the total produced were allotted for professional rally racing in Europe). I'm pretty sure there aren't any local car clubs that would have the R5 as a member and to my knowledge there are only 2 or 3 of them in the Bay Area. Let's see the P-car, Lotus or NSX clubs invite US (Ferrari's) along on one of their drives, gatherings or rallies! I guess we are just more freindly! and trying to rebuke the notion that we are such a stuck up bunch of (gold chain) guys. A Ferrari ONLY drive/rally isn't out of the question, but for now I/we just wanted to get the exotics out (of the garage) and onto the road where they can be enjoyed by those driving and those seeing them go by. It's something to think about for this and upcoming events. Maybe we'll just do Italian cars only then open it up once or twice a year to all exotics. I just don't want to go back to having only 5-10 cars. But Tom you do make a good point. Back to the drawing board, for now. -Ben | ||
| Dan de Gruchy (Danno355)
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I'm up for Nov 10. I like having the event open to different makes. Its fun to see the other cars. I also like the idea of breaking the main group into cruising/speeding groups. Let me know if you want any help organizing parts of the event. Danno | ||
| Tom Antal (Intenso)
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I'll try to put this as best I can without sounding like some sort of snob. For me personally, I am only interested in doing a ride with Ferraris. And to be honest I'm not even that interested in having 30 cars show up. If I wanted that I could attend that parade with the FCA events. I just wanted a fairly spirited ride, a smallish group so we wouldn't spend half the time pulling over and seeing where every one is, not to many cars to attract unwanted (CHP) attention, and have lunch somewhere without knocking out a wall to seat everyone. The joy is to ride with people that share one common thread...our Ferraris. But of course....that is just my opinion. Tom | ||
| Lawrence Michaels (Lxmichaels1)
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Hi Tom, Yes, interesting how this casual drive got this way. In a nutshell, Ben & I, in hoping for a little more participation and because Ben has a couple of friends with either a Lambo or Lotus, well we thought that production numbers of less than 5,000 units per year would work OK. We did not even consider that the P-Car 928s4's or the Renault Turbo, but that is what we put out there. Yes, I think we'll have to re-think this. Your thoughts on this? Strictly Ferrari, Only Italian? >> Larry | ||
| Tom Antal (Intenso)
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It's interesting how this casual event started as a FerrariChat ride and now is an Exotic car event including 928's and Renaults. Didn't even know they were exotics. | ||
| Danny R. West (Dan_West348ts)
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Hmmmmmm; November 10 huh? I don't believe I have a golf match then, so of course I can make it... If it does not rain. May I suggest Hwy 25 to Pinnacles? It has straights with some real nice curves and no CHiPs or traffic! Dan | ||
| Lawrence Michaels (Lxmichaels1)
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*** Saturday, November 10, 2001 *** Yes the B.A.E./F.C rally III. is now a great memory captured on film and cyberspace but it's time to start advance planning for B.A.E/F.C IV. Ben & I have penciled in Saturday, November 10th as the next outing. There are things, recommendations, suggestions to digest to plan an even better IV. As before please send ideas to Ben or myself so we may try to mix them in. When I plan the next course, I'd like to accomodate the different styles of driving with possible short alternative routes and a mid-day event/activity. Details later. We had a total of 21 cars... can we out do ourselfs? >> Larry |