Sommaire pour Winter 2022 de Vicarious

www.vicariousmag.com/road-test-2022-cadillac-ct5-v-blackwing/  ROAD TEST If the image of an elegant Cadillac sedan glistening on the pavement in Jet Black metallic paint seems perfectly in sync with the brand, let me throw a little twist into your mental picture. The 2022 Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing comes standard with a 6-speed manual transmission. Yes, you heard correctly. Driving this luxurious sedan will require you to use both your left and right feet and, dare I say, do so with deft manipulation so as to get the most out what is available underfoot. Leave no horsepower unused is my philosophy here and it is a fun ride you don’t want to miss! “V-Series Blackwing stands for the very highest level of execution from Cadillac and offers a distinctly American vision of performance: incredible power and…

Three-wheeled vehicles have literally been around since the dawn of the automobile. When Karl Benz cranked out his Benz Patent Motorwagen in 1885 it started, well, everything. And while most of the world of motorists quickly moved to a fourth corner of stability, there have been nearly one-hundred different three-wheelers developed, marketed and sold to daring drivers, the world around. Creations run the gamut from icons like the BMW Isetta through to oddities like the Vandenbrink Carver or Reliant Robin. And while I’ve only sampled a couple of different types of three-wheeled creations – most recently a Harley-Davidson Tri-Glide and CanAm Ryker – but I am the proud owner of a Ural sidecar rig, so I count myself among the crazies who feel that three is indeed company. So, when…

Few letters have a more weighted connotation in the world of performance cars than “GTS”. They’ve graced the body panels of Nissans, Dodges, the covers of video games – everyone knows when you see “GTS” in the car world, you’re in for something special. At Porsche, they take all of this very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they have a GTS model of every single one of their model lines and we’ll save you the trouble of looking it up: that’s never been done before, by anyone. In the Porsche world, “GTS” stands for “Gran Turismo Sport”, and the goal of each GTS model is to be the perfect blend, the sweet spot, if you will, of road and track. Think the spot where the two lines cross between…

It’s approaching midnight in a Los Angeles hotel. As I walk down the corridor of the eighth floor, I spy that there’s still a door open ahead. A man beckons me into the dimly lit room and points to the hundreds of Hot Wheels and other model cars laid out for sale on the bed around him. I start to look through them but then notice that his wife is asleep in the other bed. Time to make my excuses and leave. Welcome to the world of diecast model car collecting: joyful, uplifting and endlessly fascinating, but at times also ruthless, frustrating and downright bizarre. The scene described is from the annual Hot Wheels Collectors Convention in LA a few years ago. Toy car conventions bring together like-minded collectors to…

Driving fast on a racetrack looks easy on a screen. The cars follow the same lines along the asphalt, braking for curves, accelerating onto the straights. When nobody overtakes, it becomes predictable. Boring, even. There’s more excitement when the camera switches to inside the cabin, where you watch the car in front and see its wheels and get a sense of the speed of the race. After all, everything’s happening at two or three times the pace of everyday driving, maybe much more, and there’s danger involved. You’re rooting for the driver, urging the car faster. And then there’s actually being in the car, on the track, with the controls at your hands and feet and the feel of the speed rushing through your body. The hard acceleration. The much…

Standing in the shade of heat-stressed trees, you can feel the grit in the air between your teeth. Nearby, a BRZ backfires on throttle over-run as it’s pitched around a cone, slewing first to the right, then snapping back to the left. The driver adds a dollop of throttle and a roostertail of gravel and dust shoots skyward, the drifting cloud settling over trees, grass, cars people. You feel that dirt in your teeth. You feel it because you can’t stop grinning. Welcome to Dirtfish, the most magical place on earth. It is nowhere near as clean as Disney’s Magic Kingdom, but the rides are approximately twelve times as fun. Sprawling out over 315 acres in Washington state, about a half-hour east of Seattle, Dirtfish provides an entirely unique driver…

https://www.vicariousmag.com/featured-motorcycle-2022-honda-monkey/  FIRST RIDE Tales of the fountain of youth have dotted literature since the fifth-century, B.C. A magical spring or body of water, it’s romanticized that drinking from or even simply bathing in it will restore an individual’s youth. Its pull led Spanish explorer Ponce de León on a quest that would eventually land him in St. Augustine, Florida which, if we’re honest, isn’t exactly a city or state known for its youthful exuberance. All fanciful stuff, to be sure, but I’m here to tell you that it actually exists. No, not the fountain per se, but there is a thing on this Earth that, even by gazing upon it, will turn back the hands of time for even the most aged among us: The Honda Monkey Introduced to the…

https://www.vicariousmag.com/first-drive-2023-ford-f-150-raptor-r/  ROAD TEST It was a dark and stormy morning as we headed out to drive the 2023 Ford F-150 Raptor R at the Silver Lake sand dunes. Dawn comes late at the end of October in Michigan’s thumb, and the driving conditions were miserable. But the guides leading the drive didn’t think twice about roaring through the dark, blinding downpour, morning traffic and crazy winds. The Raptor R may be Ford’s halo desert racer, but it is equally comfortable, and easy to drive on the highway. You can even pretend to be piloting a normal truck, as the otherwise ripping exhaust note can be turned down to quiet mode, a feature which let us pass in stealth through numerous bedroom communities on the way to the dunes. But neither…

The whoosh, pop and snarl from the turbocharged, 3.0-litre, V6 was only slightly muffled by the opulence of its cabin. The engine didn’t ring nearly as viscous as the old AMG V8’s but there was enough noise engineered to seep in to keep Wes taunted to push. And push he did. Tapping paddles, the 9-speed, twin-clutch transmission shuffled cogs faster than Carl Cox circa Pacha in 1998. Wes found the one he liked and punched it. The big Benz was sniffing out apexes as much as it was floating over the hills. After nearly a week behind the wheel, Wes had grown slightly numb to the AMG’s prowess. Acceleration and speed washed over him like the breathy lyrics of Lana Del Rey. There’s nothing overtly fierce about it --the torque…

Our flight touches down. We step out onto the tarmac and instantly feel the warmth of the sun. It’s 27 degrees in Athens at 9:00 A.M. Is there a better feeling to start a vacation? But it’s not just any vacation. Long-time friends are getting married and have chosen the idyllic locale of Santorini as the backdrop for their ceremony. She’s Italian, while he’s Maltese (though both live in the Greater Toronto Area) and decide that their ancestral neighbour to the East is the perfect choice for the big day. It’s our first destination wedding and the wedding is later in the week, so my wife and I decide to make the most of our time in Greece by taking short visits to Athens and Paros before joining the rest…

“I only want to build cars that make my mouth go dry I want them so much,” said Singer Vehicle Design founder, chief product officer and executive chairman Rob Dickinson in his signature British lilt. The current vehicle of reference is one of Singer’s most recently completed works of high art, the so-called “Wyoming Commission,” which Taylor guitars co-founder Kurt Listug commissioned in 2017. His project started with a Porsche 1991 C2 donor car. Whether you bring your own donor vehicle to Singer or get their help in sourcing an original air-cooled 911, as Listug did, the next steps are, basically, to lay back, obsess about details, and give Dickinson and team years to transform already iconic sheetmetal into automotive unobtainium. The wait is always worth it, according to every…

The first time your correspondent landed at Keflavik International Airport in Iceland, it seemed like touching down on the surface of the moon. Back then, a good 25 years ago, the small country wasn’t the Insta-sensation that it is today. National carrier IcelandAir was running a promotion to spend a night or two in Iceland before catching the next connecting flight to North America or to Europe. We didn’t take them up on the offer. The moonscape didn’t look all that tempting; in fact, it looked downright foreboding. We collapsed on couches in the airport and waited there for hours. We had more than enough time to, for example, catch a cab to Reykjavik to see the sights. It was a rookie traveller mistake, one that I remember even now,…

The remarkable breadth and diversity of the collector car realm was on display during the 8th Annual Cobble Beach Concours d’Elegance weekend. The 3-day event captivated automotive afficionados from all walks of life with a variety of exceptional machines spanning more than a century of automotive, motorcycle and boating history. Cobble Beach is currently Canada’s only true Concours d’Elegance; a classification reserved for collector car shows and judging at the highest level of competition and prestige, yet despite a growing appreciation for the event, it’s still in its infancy when compared to other Concours dating back to the 1920s. Following a pandemic-based 2-year hiatus, the sprawling golf community along the shore of Georgian Bay was alive again in 2022 with the sights, sounds and smells of collectible cars to the…

For more than a century people from all walks of life have made the trek to Southern California in pursuit of happiness and the fulfillment of dreams. Ask any aspiring actor who’s still waiting tables in some LA hot spot after years of auditions and they’ll tell you just how tough it can be, and how unrealistic some of those fantasies really are. But there’s so much more than fame and fortune to chase in SoCal, and any chance I get, I relish exploring more of this incredible place. Anywhere I can surf and ski in the same day sounds great, and with the weather back in Ontario turning miserable, who wouldn’t rather be in Cali? So, with work responsibilities just north of San Diego, I arranged for three extra…