Confessions

At the end of January, I was asked if I’d speak at the new L.A. Classic Auto Show, that was being held at the Los Angeles Convention Center. At first they wanted to interview me on stage, which after a moment of consideration I replied, “I thought you wanted to put this event on, again next year?” Then after deliberating about what little esoteric slice of racing history I could bore the crowd with, I came back to the organizers with a completely different idea. What if I talked about some of the best, worst and most frightening cars I’ve test driven over the past 20 years? Sort of a, “Confessions of an Historic Test Driver.”

So I sat down and started to think about which five or six cars I would include. Much to my amazement, once I started to list out of all the cars I’d driven over the past 20 years, I realized I was going to have to pick just six out of more than 100! While it was tough to choose just a handful, I ended up selecting six significant cars that had all won championships or major international races and had some personal significance (good or bad) in terms of the test drive. Here’s what made the list.