I am part of an Ottawa area driving club called 1morelap. Its primary goal is to provide affordable track time for intermediate and advanced drivers at Calabogie Motorsports Park, one of the top tracks in Ontario. Since that only accounts for 10-12 days a year, we generally connect online, or go karts in the winter.…

Are you me?? I’m 30, look much younger, drive a slow-ass 2.5L Golf and am this close to getting into an R. Hopefully I can buy from the same dealership I have about 8 years of service history with and they don’t give me any grief.

Wow I forgot that the 407 is actually that pricey: Tanton Road in the East to the QEW in the West is all of $55 without a transponder. 

My numbers came up, so to speak. It was shortly after I parked, and I suspect electrical or plumbing (VW never told me). All things considered it was handled well. I liked the car enough I bought a better trim and it’s been great.

I’ve not been in an accident - touch wood -but I have had my car burn.

In exchange for the favourite racetrack, I also like a smaller map of every track that specific car has driven.

The machine learning aspect of this is interesting. When building a learning model for a system, you provide as much training data as possible, but in the case of the cars, why wouldn’t a company have their own drivers drive around in different situations while the computer records everything? It seems backwards to…

I’m still of the thought that manuals won’t disappear completely, but are going to be relegated to specific segments of the market. 911? Sure! VW Golf/GTI/R? You bet! Luxury sport sedan? Mmmm, probably not.

I’m going with the Dodge Journey. I see new ones everywhere and yet nothing has been done to improve it. 

My dad drove a 2009 BMW 328i RWD 6spd for about 8 years and piled on about 350k km over that time (his commute for 3 years was 1000km / week). His was very similar to this one: mid cycle refresh, 16" wheels, black interior with the 3L 6. It was a fantastic car to drive.

I think you’re right, so it’s interesting to think that now insurance is ok with him hanging onto the outside of airplanes.

It’s not rocket appliances...

I didn’t use the website but the YouTube channel was putting out some top notch programming. Nothing from the big 3, but a lot of former evo guys were up there and the quality was excellent.

I backed over a curb in a plaza getting lunch and the following week my car caught fire. I’m sure those events are (mostly) unrelated.

On one hand, North America is the only market where the previous M5 came in a manual. On the other, we get stiffed on stuff like this. There is no justice.

Thanks for clarifying! I guess even the insurers like to watch ‘Ring videos and decided it was probably time for a change.

I think Euro insurance is a little more tolerant than in North American, since technically the ‘Ring is a public toll road. Most of the time if you’re in a rental, you’re hosed.

It’s not much better being in Ottawa. Fortunately a two hour drive gives me Calabogie and Tremblant but Shannonville is 2.5. Someday!

The Juke! How does it like the track? Did you do any mods for safety?

It’s actually surprisingly fast once you get comfortable, plus the whole slow-car-fast thing is pretty exciting. I’m hoping to give my dad some laps later to see what he thinks haha