World’s Greatest Car City: Los Angeles
The Ferrari Enzo is a car, but not really. What the Enzo is, more accurately, is a four-wheeled monument to the joys of unbridled capitalism: a shamelessly flamboyant body of wings and scoops and Up Yours Red paint bolted onto a barely civilized racing machine capable of humiliating any and all rivals as it shrieks toward a top speed of over 200 miles per hour. To buy one, during its limited production run five years ago, cost more than $1,500,000.
You will never see a Ferrari Enzo in, say, Des Moines. Wait, that is not entirely fair. You might see an Enzo in Des Moines, but the odds are greater that the city will be leveled by a volcanic eruption, or that the entire citizenry of Iowa will suddenly decide to boycott Corn Flakes and switch to Wheaties.
Where you will see an Enzo is in Los Angeles — especially if you spend any time at all trekking through Movie Star National Park, a.k.a. West L.A. I myself have spotted an Enzo — perhaps the same Enzo — at least three times in the past few months. The most recent occasion was on Sunset Boulevard, the Enzo standing out like Woody Allen at a tractor pull, its 651-hp engine rumbling angrily in the 20-mile-per-hour traffic crawling past the Beverly Hills Hotel.
For most Americans, the prospect of seeing a $1.5 million supercar humbly commuting on a busy city street is about as remote as finding a nuclear submarine patrolling the neighborhood swimming pool. But I’m talking about Los Angeles here. The greatest city for cars on the face of the earth.
Trust me, I know. Many years ago, I moved here from Detroit. “The Motor City,” in case you’ve never heard of the place. And, indeed, the Big Three domestic automakers do make their homes in the sprawling D.M.Z. close to downtown’s deserted hotels and discount wig shops. But for all of its deserved historical status, Detroit is no Mecca for great cars. The weather alone devours most of them: In winter, for instance, the icy roads are slathered with enough car-consuming salt to garnish the margaritas for an entire Jimmy Buffet tour. And of those cars that do endure the elements, the foreign models are in constant danger of being stolen as kindling for the annual Devil’s Night Urban Renewal Inferno and Weenie Roast.
In L.A., though, Mother Nature smiles upon cars like so many roving, hydrocarbon-emitting sunflowers. Mild temperatures, little rain, no snow or ice — Los Angeles is a veritable humidor for fine automobiles. This accounts not only for the steady parade of slinky Ferraris and Lamborghinis and Aston Martins, but also for a profusion of old cars so pristine they look like they’ve just rolled off the assembly line. In Detroit, if you’re admiring a 1965 Ford Mustang convertible it’s probably in a museum, the car hermetically sealed under bulletproof glass. In L.A., little Lenny Leadfoot drives his ‘65 to Hollywood High every day.
But it’s not the blissful climate alone that accounts for L.A.’s surfeit of stunning wheels. Nor is it the astounding number of residents who earn cubic dollars — which in this town makes $100,000 Mercedes-Benz SLs more common than “Armed Response” lawn decorations.
More likely, it has something to do with looking good. I think it was a fellow automotive journalist who once wrote, “All the world’s a stage.” And that may well be true. But as the world’s stages go, Los Angeles is a really, really nice one. And the klieg lights are always on. So, against this bewitching backdrop of surf spray and snow-capped peaks and palm trees and Baywatch extras, to look good is to fit in. And that means not just keeping fit with daily triathlons and a steady diet of arugula burgers, but also owning an appropriately sharp set of wheels.
Actually, in Los Angeles a nice car is something of a justifiable luxury, considering the appalling amounts of time we Angelenos spend behind the wheel. In Detroit, it was not unusual for me to make my 45-mile commute to work in 35 minutes or less (if you are an officer of the law, please move on without calculating that average speed). In L.A., on the other hand, no one in their right mind would make a 45-mile drive without first stocking up on provisions. Here, a car is not just transportation, it’s a waiting room. So you might as well make that waiting room a nice one, with a soothing stereo, a phone, an iPod, leather seats, and maybe a few good dental magazines arrayed on the console.
Ah, now we’re beginning to touch on the trouble in this automotive paradise. Sure we have great cars. And sure we have some of the most scenic and entertaining roads in any major American city. But we still can’t get anywhere. Not in time to leave work and catch the required 8:00 p.m. showing of “Dancing With The Stars,” anyway.
Then again, considering the quality of the driving in this town, maybe the glacial traffic flow is a good thing. Don’t misunderstand: L.A.’s best drivers are among the most enlightened and skillful in the world. But as a whole, the city’s motorists have all the driving proficiency of an Amish farmer on a bender.
The constant jam-ups are partly to blame. In fact, it is the steady grind of L.A. traffic that accounts for what I call “The Gap Reflex.” In this all-too-common occurrence, a driver, trundling along at his usual 20 mph or so, suddenly finds the road ahead momentarily clear. With a giddy flash of shock and euphoria, he flattens the accelerator pedal to the floor. Instantly, the full 300-hp fury of his immaculately clean Turbo Babe Magnet is unleashed for the first time in its low-revving life. And before he can react, our dumbfounded driver is careening out of control and straight into the nearest arugula tree.
Consider, too, what happens when it rains in Los Angeles. Now, a little moisture should not be a catalyst for automotive Armageddon. I mean, in Detroit I have personally witnessed a petite grandmother powersliding a minivan full of children through a snow-covered intersection with all the balance and finesse of Tony Stewart tracing the line through Turn One at Indy. Sprinkle just a little rain on L.A.’s 405 freeway, though, and in seconds you’ve got yourself a pachinko game with two-ton balls.
And when L.A. drivers crash, they do it as if they were auditioning for a Michael Bay movie. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but after 20 years as a test driver and auto writer, I have yet to learn how to flip a car on a straight and level highway. Yet in L.A. such stunts are so common, the radio copter jockeys describe them like sporting events: “Good morning, folks. At the moment we’re following a particularly unstable late-model pickup truck on the Santa Monica Freeway. Looks like he’s getting ready to perform a two-and-a-half gainer with a full twist into the bridge abutment, degree of difficulty two point seven.”
Fortunately, all of this madness is somehow contained by the California Highway Patrol — possibly the finest state-police force in the country. The men and women of the CHP seem to have an innate understanding of L.A.’s laws of vehicular motion. Which is to say, if traffic on the I-5 for some reason begins flowing at an unlawful 80 mph or so, you leave it the hell alone and be thankful it’s moving at all.
So, yes, it’s understandable why outsiders love to mock Los Angeles for its driving woes. But I say let ‘em laugh. And then I turn west on Sunset Boulevard and watch as the road uncoiling before me spills down toward the sparkling, blue Pacific.
Lambo1 on July 31st 2008 in Exotic Car Rental
