Shooting the GTS for Motor Trend

The weatherman called for rain. 90% chance, thunderstorms possible, starting tonight and getting heavier tomorrow. This is what I read over and over again before falling asleep. There’s nothing like shooting in the rain…I’m being sarcastic. Everything gets wet and heavy, the strobes can fail, and the camera itself is in danger. Even though the rain looks awfully darn cool…..So I planned ahead with lots of plastic and umbrellas. As fate would have it there was no rain, not at night nor during the shoot, it blew right over, we did get some pretty amazing clouds. I shot at a Sulphur factory, giant stinky mounds of yellow sulphur. I must say it looked really cool. It was a small location and I spent extra time doing beauty shots, did 2 rig mounts as well, car to car, interiors, details and so on. The car to car looked tremendous, there were giant shipping containers parked next to the entry road and I took full advantage of them. I wanted this feeling of a giant shipping boss heading down to the docks in his Maserati, like Enzo would of done, the cars are made to be driven and commanded on the road, none of this wimpy car might get dirty stuff. The road was dusty and the sun was diving back and forth behind the clouds, big tanker trucks shared the road as we shot. It was cool!! One thing that struck me as we shot was the motor. Everytime we started the car, and we started it with a key, no buttons or wierd key fob’s, just a good old fashioned key, as you twist the key the motor erupts with a race car like growl or should I say “snarl” that sends goose bumps of fun. I think if I had one of these my neighbors would eventually get pretty upset with me starting it 3 or 4 times just to hear it. A long time ago I had an MGB with weber carbs, velocity stacks and straight exhaust. I lived in Westwood while working on movie projects, in the mornings the webers were grumpy until warm and that first key twist always made me smile….until the elderly couple with their windows close informed me that they would prefer if I could start my car somewhere else…I guess they weren’t car lovers at 6am. Thats ok, I’ve moved since then, but my Alfa is just as noisy!! Now, would I own a Maserati? Sure, the details are beautiful and that motor, just like the 8c…why not?

Hanging at the shop is a male ritual. Its a thing we just do. Of course this was the third time the head gasket blew. It wasn’t the head as suspected but the block, and while we had the motor apart we really should change the rings since three are broken and how bout some new pistons, and that lower timing chain is really loose, and that motor mount..and lets not forget the girl friend who keeps complaining how loud it is, so, okay, it only has the resonator, and it growls really loud, and while the cars in the air we should put a rear muffler on…. And for some reason I like all this. Now I didn’t just watch, I worked. I’ve got stains on my jeans, dirt under my nails. I smell like gasoline. Benny turned the key and it started. First try, it sat there and ran for 30 minutes, it got all warm and comfortable. Then it sat, cooled and I took it around the block, don’t go over 3000, don’t go over 3000, I wanted to, but we had just spent 2 days working on this thing and I’m not gonna break it. Now over the years I noticed how our relationships always include the shop. This is Benny’s shop. This is the best Alfa shop in LA. For 17 years I’ve been coming here. My Dad’s been here. He was visiting from Atlanta and “asked’ to go there. Where do our girlfriends pick us up from. 3 past girlfriends still ask “How’s Benny?” So I tell my current love she has to meet Benny, it’s just right, and she answers “What for? I don’t drive an Alfa”.

My friend Eloy and I took our Alfa’s down to Palm Springs for the Desert Concours car show. Eloy’s Alfa is a beautiful 1991 in a rich wine red color. He’s modified it a little, like the chassis stiffener, mini lites, and a free flow exhaust, and there’s my little silver model. We chased each other the whole way there. We cruised between 80-100. It felt great to let the cars stretch on the open road. Now what we discovered was that….my car is faster than Eloy’s. I’m not bragging or anything but he has the motronic system with high compression pistons putting out about 135 horsepower. He said he was struggling to keep up with me. I’ve recently been running mild race cams which start to come on at 4500 rpms, then at 5000 they just explode with power, at 100 mph the front end lifts and the cars just starts pulling, it’s such a great feeling with a little car that’s 30 years old.
The show was Sunday morning, we got there around 8:30am. What really made this fun was the ability to park on the golf course with all the other cars. Alfa was the featured marque and there must of been 50 Alfa’s. We all lined up with our shiny cars in all their glory. Sort of that proud parent feeling.
TZ’s, GTA’s, GTV’s, Berlina’s, you name it, it was there.
Aside from all the Alfa’s there was quite a collection showing. Dan Gurney’s race cars, a very early Lancia from 1926, A pair of Honda’s first sports cars from 1969. The usual 300sl’s, Aston Martins, and yes Ferrari’s too. Chad McQueen was there judging, and he had his Dad’s 911s.
I gotta tell yah, a great crowd, very low key and wonderful hospitality, will I be going next year? Absolutely!

I have sooo many video’s from photo shoots and TV commercials I wanted to put them in a group for everyone to enjoy. So if you like them let me know!!

ZR1 at GM’s Milford Proving grounds the Movie

We tested all the ways you can legally speed in a Corvette

Land-Rockets-the-Movie

CLICK HERE FOR SHORT FILM

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!!

The LA Auto show took place last week. That means a lot of cool car stuff all over the city! Thats when I got the call from Automobile and CAR magazines to shoot the Electric Mini Cooper. BMW brought 10 of them, they were hosting the event from the heart of Beverly Hills at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The Germans were very proud of their new little car. Men in suits walked around the car showing and telling us the benefits of this new vehicle. It looked great, even with all the “electric” stickers on it. Gavin Green was the writer, he came from England to cover the event. We climbed into the Mini and scooted off. We both noticed how quiet the Mini was, and quick too. Its really simple, get in, put the key in the slot, hit the start button and you’re off. With a full charge you get 100-150 miles, not bad with 0-60 times of 8.5 seconds. So off we went. Zipping up and down Rodeo Drive, shooting car to car with the camera just inches off the pavement, hanging the camera off a rig as we pass the Chanel store. I love this stuff!. We headed up to the canyons to get a few “green” images too, trees and such, a few pan blur shots and back into town for a static shot, so of course our last shot, the light is perfect, we set up a strobe to light a foreground element, click click click and its time to get the car back. We pile in, hit the “start” button…nothing, pull out the key, put it in park, foot on brake, key in, start button….nothing, well we are guys, and what do guys do after trying for 10 minutes, we pop the hood. Gee a giant sealed brass box, wheres the stuff for us to mess with? no plugs, no spark, no coil, no gas…we just scratched our heads. On the phone to BMW support brought us another Mini, as we left you could over hear them saying in your best German accent “you know we test these cars very hard, and this has never happened before” I wonder if they ever got it started?

Every now and then you get that call…Bruce is putting 6 of his personal cars up for auction. 69 Shelby GT500, 69 Charger, 67 Corvette, 54 Corvette, 57 Chevy Nomad Wagon, 69 Firebird. Not a bad little collection. I shot the cars in the morning at Santa Monica Airport and then we took the Shelby and 67 Vette up to his house. You always hear stories about actors, you’ve seen their movies and you wonder the night before a shoot what they’d really be like. Bruce was great. We parked the cars just outside his back door on the grass overlooking the valley. We introduced ourselves and talked about the shots I wanted to do. So we took a couple test frames, Bruce liked them,  he put on a black t shirt and we started shooting. As I looked through the lens I laughed to myself, I was waiting for something to happen, like helicopters and explosions. Needless to say that didn’t happen but I got some great shots. He gave me the mean look, the sly smile look, and the casual introspective look, the images look great. I lit them with one softbox just to give the light some direction, and used a small silk to soften the hard light that was slipping thru. I just wish we had more time it was fun creating some cool car images, with someone who really likes cars!

What a car! I was in Detroit well actually the Milford Proving Grounds shooting the new ZR1 for Motor Trend. It was sooo much fun, and yes it was hard work too. This car is fast. I was there during the press event. They do a complete show and tell with the engineers and designers. There was a complete chassis there where you could see how all the parts worked, very cool stuff. I started by shooting the cover shot. It needed to be a four wheel drift shot in vertical format, so the car had to be really sideways, I started with a long lens and it just felt detached from the action so I put a shorter lens on and got a lot closer. I had the car drift past probably 20-30 times, the problem was the tires were soo sticky they would catch in the middle of the drift and pitch the car right off the track, and usually right towards me with the camera! I did a bit of jumping out of the way but thats all part of the challenge of getting a good shot. After we nailed that I shot in the high banked turn. Again a very cool image, very much like James Garner in Grand Prix. At that point it was pretty dark and everyone was going home, sunset in Michigan is not until 9:48pm, you can shoot forever. The next day it was more of the same. I hear people say they think the Proving Grounds are boring but I don’t see how, we have an entire racetrack to ourselves to do whatever we can to create fantastic images. I would go back there anytime to shoot. And the staff at GM was so nice, well we were shooting a supermodel. The guys really did a super job for a fraction of the Ferrari cost, lets see Ferrari make a car like the ZR1 for the same price point. 0-100mph and back to 0 in 11 seconds, thats fast, 0-60 in 3.4, 0-100 in 7, I believe. If I could only get my Alfa to go that fast!