Cross country in a Ginetta (not mine)

So my brother just bought a sister car to my Ginetta. We flew to Minneapolis on Thursday and drove it 1800 miles to Scottsdale (arriving Saturday afternoon). the car was great, only had one near breakdown (a loose Fuel pump relay), and one emergency stop (the hood latches rattled open and the hood flew up while going around 65). I wish a had a picture of my brother standing on the passenger seat holding the hood down leaning over the windshield in the middle of the desert. We went through some high mountain passes with lots of snow still on the ground (around 11,000 feet), and one travelling gnome wanted a view from the driver's seat...
A few pics from our trip:
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Thanks Duane!
Jedi, the car was noticeably slower than my car, but we think that was mainly due to the different gearing of the differentials. I have the 4.1 and the car my brother got has the 3.6. At altitude the car had trouble accelerating at all in 5th gear. We mostly left the car in 4th as that gear was good to about 120 in his car. You could feel the car was not as strong in the high altitudes, but it was fun to drive anyway. I would guess that the car lost about 15% of its power at 8-11,000 feet compared to the feeling of driving it when we picked it up in Minneapolis at the lower altitude. The white / red car was also much better insulated so the driver's right leg did not get cooked, and the armrests were pretty cushy. The shocks were much smoother and made the bumps a non-issue. There also seemd to be a difference either in the exhaust or the air/fuel mix as we did not smell like fuel even after 11 hours in the car. The scenery on Colorado 65 was great, and US 50 / 550 was awesome too! I took about 200 pictures, but only posted a small sampling.

BT

 

One thing that was kind of a bummer was the excessive wind and exhaust noise on the straight highway sections. It would have been nice to communicate with my bro for those 16 hours... We used a small notepad to get messages across.
Oscar, I have no fear of driving my cars! The Ferrari did not see as much all out driving as the Ginetta does, but that is kind of a respect the marque thing. I still managed about 8,000 miles in four years with the Ferrari, and about 2,000 miles per year in the Ginetta. I usually drive my daily driver about 8,000 miles per year. That makes the split about 1/3 fun cars, 2/3 daily driver.
As I described in another thread:
...But we had fun almost going off the cliffs of a rain soaked US 550 at night while the headlights did a fine job of lighting up the roadside signage. Lighting on the pavement was not so good. The headlights must have appeared like a person with a lazy eye to the oncoming cars. We had several close calls with deer on the same stretch of road sliding to a stop while the deer just stood there!!! I spent a few hours mentally figuring how to keep my limbs inboard in the case of an off road excursion to the valley far below... It was very similar to Mr. Toads Wild Ride from Disney. Looks like we are going over the cliff, then a turn just as the right side wheels leave the pavement onto the 16 inch shoulder going around a 15 mph rated switchback at 37 on all season sport tires. We still had 10-12 inches before the dropoff would have grabbed the car and sent us plummeting to our death.
Good times...

BT

 

Yeah, that green thing is a full faced motorcycle helmet. My brother came down to Florida before we went to get the car, and he brought the helmet with him. I had discouraged him from bringing it, but he thought he might need it in case of rain. When I picked him up from the airport I said "Where do you think you are going to put that helmet?" Strapping it to the roll bar actually helped block some of the wind on the driver's side.
"A few fries short of a Happy Meal"?!? Yeah, 1800 miles in 2.5 days is a bit of lunacy (we left Minneapolis at 3PM Thursday, and rolled into Scottsdale at 5PM Saturday). I always know that I will look back fondly on these crazy rides. My back was getting pretty sore by the middle of the second day, but press on! We did a big variety of restaurants on this ride. Previously when in the Appalachians we do all BBQ, but this time we had some of everything. The BBQ place was "Famous Dave's" which is a chain in the midwestern / northwestern states, and is a good choice. There are some awesome roads in the mountains, but we only went on the really tight ones for about 6 hours.
I was really glad that his suspension was set up much softer than my car's. There were several areas that were a little 'rough'.

BT
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