I’ve talked a lot in the past about the Avants, Drive Everything car club that I belong to. They started in Seattle but have now expanded to several additional metro cities around the country. A fantastic group of humans with an enormous variety of cars, trucks and special project vehicles and a high quality monthly magazine. If you love cars and car culture, you should join the club!

As a charter member of Avants, I get a yearly benefit of a professional photo shoot. With a new to me Audi R8 sitting in my garage, I thought it was the perfect time to clean it up and get some glamor shots done!

I drove to Magnuson Park to meet fellow photographer, Josh Sikora, for a few hours of cleaning, driving, staging, and photography. Magnuson Park is a cool spot with a mix of park settings, huge dog park, commercial buildings and older abandoned buildings in various stages of decay. The park is one of my favorite places to find interesting backdrops for car photos and I’ve used it in the past for my own photos. It was great to meet Josh, and he was very patient with me wanting to capture the whole event with my own camera. Sometimes photographers hate to be on the other side of the lens, but Josh was a great sport. Be sure to follow Josh on Instagram, he’s a talented photographer and building a fantastic portfolio.

Josh’s wonderful photos:

My photos while Josh did his thing:

One more action shot from Josh to close out the post!

I’m a diehard Porsche fan and I have been since I saw the wide hips of an early 911 Turbo and slapped the poster on my wall. That being said, when I cheat on Porsche, it tends to be with Audi. S5, S5 Cab, modded Q5, I’ve had fun with a number of them. Audi set the high-water mark for raising the cachet of a brand with a halo car when they launched the R8 in 2006 and then raised the bar again in 2008 when they added the 5.2 V10 engine to the lineup.

I’ve had the R8 V10 on my bucket list since I first saw one fly by me on I90 like I was standing still. The first generation R8 V10 (2008 to 2015) shares a lot of parts including the drivetrain with the Lamborghini Gallardo. It’s essentially a Lamborghini in a tuxedo which is one of the main reasons I love it. For Marvel fans, the R8 has been featured extensively as the supercar of choice by Tony Stark / Iron Man.

As I started thinking about my next fun car, the R8 was on the top of the list. Specifically the first generation R8 with the V10 engine and a gated manual transmission. Audi didn’t make a ton of these cars, and many have been driven hard and modified poorly. After a few months of searching, I came across a very low mileage example, with zero modifications, a clear history and from a dealer close by that has a good reputation. After some quick negotiation, they gave me a great trade value for the Spyder (more than I paid), a good price for the R8, and I made the drive down to Portland to GrandPrix Motors to finalize the swap. It will be a fun car to experience for a year or two, and I think it will hold it’s value so the miles should be close to free.

Some photos from my first few weeks with the R8:

A few photos from a fellow photographer, Darren Flemming (_flemingphotography on IG) at some recent Avants events:

I’ve absolutely loved my Spyder for the last three years, and two + of those years it spent wearing the stunning custom Martini Livery This will likely always be one of the best drivers cars that I ever own. Perfect mid-engine balance, great manual gearbox, open top motoring nirvana. I had grown tired of the loud martini livery and the minute I decided to take it off, Meg called it. She said the car would be gone within a few months. What can I say…she knows me well!

Now back to basic white. It was so clean looking like this. It felt like Christmas where the only thing better than putting up the decorations, is taking them down in January!

So why sell what could go down as the best drivers car I’ll ever own? I owned it for three years, which with my record basically makes it a forever car. I also have this desire to own a number of amazing cars, and I don’t have the space or the coin to be a collector. This means that I will always go through cars faster than most, and if I make smart choices, not lose much money in the process. I owned this Spyder for three years and put almost 10K miles on it. I sold this car for $10K more than I paid originally!

So what’s next…not sure, but I keep going back to auction sites whenever I see a Gen 1 Audi R8 V10 for sale…

Most Sunday mornings I set my alarm for 7:30, so I can spend an hour or two in Pioneer Square at a small cars and coffee event. Unofficial, a bit under the radar, and I felt like I was crashing a private party the first few times. Now I show up like I own the place and bring my kids as often as I can get them out of bed! Caffe Umbria has great coffee, some nice pastries, and there is usually a great collection of Porsches. Some other nice brands as well. I love how low key the whole thing is. On this visit, Shep was still having fun taking car photos, and here is his collection of shots. I love how he looks for the unusual shots…like the one below with a chair obscuring the foreground:

I previously talked about Luft 9, which had one day showcasing all air cooled Porsches, and a second day that included more modern water cooled cars. In 2024, the same team decided to break up the shows into multiple events, the first was was Air | Water, put on a second show in 2024. It was taking place in LA around my birthday, so I decided to use my birthday wish and force my whole family to come with me to the event! We made a long weekend out of it, flying to LA and staying at a beachside hotel in Huntington Beach. We got to enjoy some shopping, a day of biking at the beach, lots of pool time, and a full day walking around the fairgrounds admiring some of the most incredible Porsches in the world.

Originally I had planned to show my Spyder, but wasn’t able to make the logistics work. That’s okay, because it feed me up to just enjoy the day. Speaking of freeing myself up…I handed off the camera to Shep and he spent the day capturing some amazing photos:

Sometimes you have those moments where you just have to pinch yourself to be sure you aren’t dreaming. This was one of those days. While I’m brainwashing Shep with kart racing, Gabe has a license and is able to race on a real track! I’m a big believer that we don’t invest enough time in driver education in the US, and that taking classes at racing schools will help make anyone a safer driver. You learn car control, how to stay focused and that you solve more problems with the gas than the brake. It is also a hell of a lot of fun!

Gabe and I escaped for a full day with ProFormance Racing School. We are incredibly lucky to have the Kitch family in the Northwest and for the passion they put into their racing school. Don Kitch Jr. started the school and is a very successful race car driver. He is the author of a fantastic essay, The Art of Racing in the Rain. It was this very essay, and much of Don’s life story, that later inspired my favorite book by the same name and eventually a much loved movie as well.

Don’s essay was focused on the “mental and physical disciplines for drivers to become efficient driving a car in the rain”, a topic that any driver, race car or not, needs to be familiar with living in the Northwest. Garth Stein, the author of the book, met Don when he enrolled in the driving school, became an instructor and went on to have his own racing career. The book is told through the eyes of Enzo, the Kitch family dog, and is one of my favorite stories. To live where it took place and to know the people (and dogs) that inspired the story would be incredible enough. To be at the same racing school with Gabe, spending the day being taught by the racing legend himself, was almost too much to take.

Gabe did an incredible job. We spent half the day learning car control skills. High speed slalom, emergency braking, accident avoidance, and losing and regaining traction. The second half of the day was spent driving the track with an instructor riding shotgun to provide coaching. We had everything from a soaking wet track (even hail) to a nice dry track which was perfect for learning.

At the end of the day, Gabe and I ended up in the same run group and I was lined up right behind him. I was going to have some fun with him…show him his old man still had some tricks up his sleeve. I knew I would be faster, but I didn’t want to embarrass him with an early pass. Not only did an early pass not happen, I never managed to get close enough to attempt any pass…the boy was a fearless natural!!

I’ve made no secret of trying to brainwash my boys into loving cars. What better way than to get Shep on the path to be a real race car driver! I know, I know…you shouldn’t live out your own childhood dreams through your children. Where’s the fun in that!

For Shep’s 12 birthday we rented an indoor karting track and he had a blast racing with his friends. He was a natural and throughout the day got progressively faster without getting frustrated.

You need to be 14 in order to go karting at PGP Motorsports, but they have a training program for younger kids. If you can pass the program, you can get signed off to driver before 14. They only run the program in the spring so Shep had to wait all winter to take the course. The day finally came, on Easter Sunday, and Shep delayed the candy, we got up super early, and he suited up for a day of high-speed kart racing. You need to demonstrate car control, the ability to listen but most of all you need to show that you can be fast enough to not slow everyone down and make a mess of their real events. I’m proud to say that Shep made it with flying colors and his best lap of the day was 98 seconds. Not enough to win any races, but more than enough to qualify to be on the track.

Shep is hooked. He now has his own helmet with some unofficial sponsors (PNWR and Avants of course), racing gloves, and he pesters me every week to hit the track. He may not be the fastest on the track yet, but he is certainly the best dressed!

Practice makes perfect, and Shep is putting in a lot of practice time! He keeps chipping away at his best lap times, and is down to 85 seconds. Ideally he should be in the 79 to 82 range consistently before he starts to join more competitive classes, but I’m sure he will be there soon. When he isn’t on the track, he’s practicing at our new in-home racing sim. At least when he can pry the wheel away from me!

Here’s a video of Shep’s most recent adventure at the track. Mostly so he can see where he wants to improve, but it is pretty entertaining as well, at least to me.

After trying and failing to be a truck guy…again, I decided to part ways with the Ford F150 Tremor after only 1 year. It was a nice truck, but it is just too damn big for my life in Seattle. Trying to navigate through a downtown parking garage was comical at best, downright scary at worst. I wanted something that could haul the family, be reasonably fun on my daily commute and wouldn’t break the bank. Two out of three ain’t bad!

I wasn’t going to get a new vehicle, and I certainly wasn’t going to get a Porsche. Then my Spyder needed service, and the dealer hooked me up with a relatively new Porsche Cayenne and a nicely equipped model. I’ve resisted the Porsche SUV since it was introduced, and frankly I’ve never been in love with the looks (I tend to like boxy trucks/suvs), but after spending a few weeks with the loaner, I was hooked. Now I know why the dealers use the Macans and Cayennes as loaners! Big enough for the family without being too big, and man has Porsche worked its magic and made a big vehicle feel small and sporty. When I picked up the Spyder from service, I placed an order for the new 2024 Cayenne S with my dealer. Is it an EV…or even a Hybrid…nope. It is a fire breathing 468 horsepower twin turbo V8 with a sports exhaust that sounds like a muscle car!!