Le Mans!

So it's been a while since I've been back, but other things have been keeping me too busy to post here. That said, a brief review of an American at Les 24 Heures du Mans:

Le Mans, the city, is like most other provincial French cities, full of little squares and narrow streets:


That said, some things stand out:


Not the least of which being the British. Here they are camping out of the back of a Bentley. How quaint:


Then there is the track itself. It's a world apart from the narrow, Medieval streets of the town. In fact, it would be downright familiar to anyone who's been to a major speedway in the US.


Then, finally, there are the cars. Living in Paris, I've gotten accustomed to thinking that 45mph was fast. That quickly changed once the cars started going by.


Perhaps even more striking than seeing the cars fly by was hearing them. Specifically at Le Mans, you have four classes of cars running against one another at the same time on the same track. And even within those classes there are many variations. In short, the variety of exhaust notes was pretty incredible. The Peugeots that would ultimately win, for example were extremely quiet (for a race car) being turbo diesels.


The Aston Martin LMP1 cars, on the other hand, screamed like Tie Fighters. Literally.


The award for most incredible auto-aural performance, however, goes absolutely hands down to the Corvettes. My God, they shook the Earth when they went by, nothing sounded as amazing as those American V8s.


I may be a Detroit boy at heart, but there was still a certain appreciation for how the Europeans get around.

Rarely do three characters mean so much as they do in RS6.

In short, it was a great time with the friends, I highly recommend it. It is one of the motorsports experiences to be had, hands down.

Alright, that's enough car-obsession for the time being. Those true-fans who want to see more can check it out in the full gallery:

Le Mans 2009

You can take the kid out of Detroit...

...but you can't take the Detroit out of the kid. In addition to me wearing a Tigers baseball cap (something that I never did when in the US, this simple fact means that when the auto show rolls into Paris, I can't help but drag myself down to the massive convention center complex on the south edge of town. Some brief observations:

• It's huge. Like really huge, at least twice as big as the Detroit show. I finished the first hall thinking, "that was decent, but it seemed like there were some big brands missing." I then found a map that showed me three additional halls. I had to hurry to see it all the cars (not the accessories and suppliers, race cars, driving schools, etc...) in four hours.
• Fuel economy is a major selling point here. Since gas costs about $8.50/gallon these days, that shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Fuel data is not just printed on the little information sheet (or, increasingly, flat-screen display) next to the car, it's a big graphic on the door. Also, they  present grams of CO2 emitted per kilometer. This is becoming a standard way of presenting energy efficiency in Europe so that you can easily compare the environmental impact of a trip by car versus a trip by train, for example.
• Pure American cars really stand out here. They are big and ungainly when shipped directly here. Ford, however, simply builds entirely different cars for the market and comes out looking like one of the crowd.
  

Here's some photographic evidence of what things look like over here:

From Paris Auto Show 2008

From Paris Auto Show 2008

From Paris Auto Show 2008

From Paris Auto Show 2008

From Paris Auto Show 2008

From Paris Auto Show 2008

Full album:

Paris Auto Show 2008

Addendum: A post like this is never complete without a picture of "my ride". Here she is: nuclear-powered, seats 200, God knows how many horsepoewr (probably around 2,000), yearly payments of about $600 for the loan, assurance, fuel, etc...:

From Paris Auto Show 2008

Paris isn't all bad...