Road Tripping in the USA!

1) Agreed the roads are terrible in California :p The other states I've driven in (FL, WA, NV) the roads are way better although still made of that rough concrete rather than tarmac, presumably because of the heat.

2) Yup, plus I think it's the mentality that they are so used to driving long distances and driving on freeways that there is just no point in blasting around everywhere when you can get on freeway then stick it on cruise control for however many miles until you reach your off-ramp.

3/4) Maybe because they are normally bottom-spec engines combined with bottom-spec slushboxes in the hire cars but most of the hire cars I've driven have utter crap gearboxes with, as you say, a very noticeable delay in shifting.

Weather is epic in SoCal right now, shaping up to be a scorcher of a weekend :cool:
 
[TW]Fox;19490192 said:
Mitsubishi are not called Eclipse - the Eclipse is a model of Mitsubishi car. The Spyder is the Cabrio version.
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Ah, I see. Odd in that in the literature for every other car they give the car manufacturer then the model name but for this one it was just Eclipse Spyder so I assumed that it was another name based on a different market e.g. Vauxhall/Opel.

Rich_L said:
Weather is epic in SoCal right now, shaping up to be a scorcher of a weekend :cool:
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It's certainly been sunny here apart from the first day I hired the car where it took until about lunchtime to get properly warm. Got taken along to the Gay Pride March thing as well last weekend - that was interesting.
 
Great thread. We're planning to do a bit if a tour for 3 weeks next April for our honeymoon. Vegas > San Diego > LA > San Fran > new York, wi a mix of internal flights and driving - can't wait.
 
semi-pro waster said:
Ah, I see. Odd in that in the literature for every other car they give the car manufacturer then the model name but for this one it was just Eclipse Spyder so I assumed that it was another name based on a different market e.g. Vauxhall/Opel.
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2 Fast 2 Furious y0! :D :p

fastandfurious252cfasta.jpg
 
Rich_L said:
1) Agreed the roads are terrible in California :p The other states I've driven in (FL, WA, NV) the roads are way better although still made of that rough concrete rather than tarmac, presumably because of the heat.

2) Yup, plus I think it's the mentality that they are so used to driving long distances and driving on freeways that there is just no point in blasting around everywhere when you can get on freeway then stick it on cruise control for however many miles until you reach your off-ramp.

3/4) Maybe because they are normally bottom-spec engines combined with bottom-spec slushboxes in the hire cars but most of the hire cars I've driven have utter crap gearboxes with, as you say, a very noticeable delay in shifting.

Weather is epic in SoCal right now, shaping up to be a scorcher of a weekend :cool:
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It is, just walked to Phillipe's for a french dipped sandwich, i must have shed about two pounds in water.

Im hiring a car on Monday, dunno if you are about or not, parking is so expensive in the city I cant hire for more than one day and the mustang has gone back, I had to collect my daughter thursday night so it mucked up my plans.
 
Boo, packed up, coming home in the morning. Really loved the road trip part and the freedom to stay wherever I chose, down sides have been my daughter not really getting into that part, really loved driving through Nevada and meeting odd people, especially around area 51 . Will do it again on my own I think, I have always wanted to do la to new York and I might do that next year.

Absolutely loved the mustang, it felt like an automatic focus st so was very homely to me and i had a tear in my eye when I said goodbye to her on Friday, next trip will be another muscle car.
 
Metalface Mark said:
Absolutely loved the mustang, it felt like an automatic focus st so was very homely to me and i had a tear in my eye when I said goodbye to her on Friday
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I had that same feeling, mine got me so many places in more ways than one, and in the 3 weeks I had it I grew a personal attachment to it, and it was a lowly Mustang poverty model! Kind of pathetic really, getting a bit meh looking for old photos of the trip, didn't really take enough while I was there, these are the only 2 of the car I think.

RdBwW.jpg

L08zd.jpg
 
Here was mine, nicer colour than Fox's one, but a bit beat up, had 25k miles on the clock before I got it, and I put another 2k on it.







Came across a convoy of Vettes from Dallas, there was about 20 of them at that one service station!
 
I noticed from your hoover dam pic that we stopped at the same stop :P

Didnt bother with death valley, it was already 120-130F nearby so couldnt bear it any hotter, even with the aircon on and the roof up it was too hot, the first day my daughter kept begging to have the roof down, we had it down fifteen minutes and had to put it up as we were dripping with sweat!
 
All i would have changed was having to spend the last 4 days at the same hotel in LA, when we met up with my other daughter it was a bit pokey with three of us in one room, fortunately the aircon wasnt working in our room so got upgraded to a junior suite for the 4 nights, Reno was a bit dull as well but the drive there was great and it made quite a nice diamond shape on the map by the end of it.

The whole trip cost me about £4500 which wasnt too bad I thought considering there was three of us.
 
Looks great!

What's the best time of the year to go? Thinking of doing something similar in Sept/early October but worried it's a bad time of the year to go.
 
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