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So I drive a 30 year old Alfa Spider, I’ve put all the go fast bits on it, but its got nothing on the 8c. Imagine my excitement when the phone rang, ” Hi Evan, Would you like to shoot the new Alfa?” This is like spending all day with your favorite naked supermodel. Yes it might be a little childish, but so what? We’re boys, and these are cars, thats the way it’s supposed to be. We shot at the El Toro air base, deserted hangers, long, long runways and lots of sunlight. The car presented in a beautiful red, with probably the most gorgeous seats I’ve seen in a long time, reminiscent of the early Ferrari’s, with leather weave wrapped over carbon fiber, in fact the whole car is carbon fiber, every body panel it’s got. This thing is fast, light and very rigid. Full paddle shift, there’s not even a gear stick or lever, and the purrr, more like a snarl, mash on the gas and the beast just leaps through the gears surging with acceleration, I looked down at the speedo and it was already hitting 100mph, of course all I could hear was the lion’s roar….

I started shooting the interior, then onto some testing, acceleration and braking, 0-60 about 4.3 seconds, 12.7 qtr mile I think…and then off to the figure 8 to watch the car slide around. next up was the hanger shot. I put the car inside the hanger, slid the doors closed so you could just see the car, and opened the rear hanger doors to give separation and then lit the car with 4 well placed strobes, did it for both the front 3/4 and rear 3/4. I gotta say we nailed it. I placed the exposure where I thought it should be and shot a test frame…it was spot on. All I did was adjust 1 strobe for a little more light on the nose, perfection. We got that shot off in about 35 minutes, not bad at all. Next was exterior details of the car, a rig mount or two, and then some great car to car on the runways, we tried it faster this time, I brought the car off our bumper by about 3 feet, got up to about 70mph, there was a lot of wind and even more dust, it was worth it though, very powerful stuff. Now we were in a little crunch, I was sharing the car with the video dept. They wanted a couple shots and i had a few more static beauty’s to get, we’re all friends though, and there’s never a problem. And in the final moments of the day we did a few donughts, look at all that smoke!! This car snaked around itself like a monster in heat, wow! Now thats fun. Look for the images in Motor Trend, and I’ll post some soon enough on my website to : www.evankleinfilms.com

It was red, and it was fast. I gotta tell yah, Aston Martin is doing a great job in their design department. From most every angle the Aston looks exciting. We took it down to the harbor and played all day. This thing was putting out 420 hp for about 140,000 thousand. It goes. Now, the only thing I have to say…. quality. We grew up in an era of Ferrari’s and Jaguar E types. When you climbed into the cockpit you knew it. All those gauges, it felt as though you and your car were one. They way it wrapped around you, the rumble you could feel through the seat of your pants, it inspired windy roads. This Aston, seems a little pre fab in the cockpit, the center console seems to be lifted from a Volvo… or is thats Ford input? As I reached down for the hood release, the hood release that reveals the 420 hp, well it felt cheap and flimsy, it showed me that Aston just keeps it on the surface, quality should follow through out, in an effort to save money they always hide the things they don’t think we see, but all these little things add up up. It is red though, and it is fast…so just tell me this, how much is this thing going to cost me when it breaks?

So we’ve gathered up some of the most powerful cars on the road and took them to Chrysler’s test track in Arizona. This is a huge 5 mile oval that allows for top speed testing. So what’d we think? Well the ZR1 is a monster, its low and fast, real fast, and that supercharger!, The ZR1 roars, you know when you go to an air show and those jets fly by and the ground shakes and your ears rumble, this is the ZR1. Its a racing workhorse, its thunderous as you’re passed at speed. You look at the cost of the other cars and then compare to what GM did, the bureaucracy of getting things made or is that approved at a company like GM is near impossible, but they did it. I’ve met these guys, I’ve traveled with these guys, and the engineer’s and designers are true enthusiast, they have had to color inside the lines and on a budget, my hats off to them. Now the 599, yeah another high priced Ferrari, is it nice? yeah it’s nice, full attention to detail, fit and finish, but the nose…it just still looks a little to bug eye sprite to me, Ferrari’s don’t need smiley faces, what happened to the shark nose presence of the 60-70’s. Did the car perform? It did. Was it stable? One of the most stable, and fast? yes, over 200mph, did it shred a tire at speed? it did, it did. Now I must say the Ferrari’s aerodynamics are quite impressive for such a bland shape, the diffuser on the bottom side of the car is so efficient a rear spoiler is not needed, our test driver said that he was doing laps with only one hand on the wheel, the car drove itself. Now that can’t be said for the Porsche, its short wheel base made it twitchy, but it sure looked good. I really liked the seating position, it felt as though I was seated for business, that can’t be said for the other cars, the other cars felt quite large and hard to see out of, and hard to see the corners of the car, I wouldn’t want to go flinging the Ferrari down a country lane…but the Porsche I wouldn’t mind giving it a try. The GTR… people seem to like this car, I have no idea why, its looks like an old Supra, and then you sit in it, yawn, the specs show it’s fast and handles but sooo what, it’s boring, but thats just one guys opinion. Give me the GT2 for everyday driving, the ZR1 for that cross country trip, and if I want to impress the girls at the nite club I’ll take the Ferrari, they probably won’t know what it is…but at least its not a GTR!!