Dallas Company Offers Tours

Driving Exotic, Luxury Vehicles

By Lisa Ogle
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, May 19, 2007

My white New Balance sneaker rests inches from 505 horsepower and 376 pound-feet of torque. I’m itching to floor it.

We take turns exiting the parking lot and encounter what we’ve been waiting for: an open road.

Here’s my chance.

With the convertible top down, I hit the accelerator. It’s a cool, sunny Saturday morning, and I can’t stop smiling as I hear the smooth but fierce purr of the yellow Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder’s 5.0 liter V-10 engine.

It’s not a dream.

This is for real.

DFW Drive Your Dream puts regular folks behind the wheels of extraordinary vehicles. On a recent Saturday, nearly a dozen people slipped eagerly into a Chevrolet Corvette Z06, a BMW M6, an Aston Martin Vantage, a Ferrari F430 and the Lamborghini.

That’s a total of 2,370 horsepower and more than $725,000 in machinery from around the world, according to tour materials and tour director John Sears.

Tours start at $592.90, including the 10 percent state tax fee. But the one I took cost $1,087.90, according to the company’s Web site.

The company also rents the cars for personal use.

If the tour is full, participants drive each car for about 30 minutes. However, if some seats are open or you bring along a passenger — who rides for a 35 percent discount — you could drive each car more than once.

The group I was in met at a San Marcos hotel just before 8 a.m. The tour started with an hourlong orientation that included safety instructions and paperwork.

After tweaking the car pairings, the inaugural Hill Country tour was off to a late start. But impatience quickly turned to awe as the cars zipped onto Interstate 35 and then out toward Fredericksburg.

Construction made the trip in the red Ferrari F430 short and slow. Driver Fred Brinkley barely had a chance to get used to the metal gear shifter before it was time to change cars.

But come on — it’s a Ferrari. Just getting to ride in the leather passenger’s seat of the $200,000-plus vehicle could be enough to make the cost of the tour worthwhile.

The black convertible BMW M6 and the white Aston Martin Vantage packed plenty of punch and had comfortable seats and a smoother, quieter ride, making them better choices for an extended trip.

One potential problem: Some cars might require more experience than the driver has. That was the case when I rode as a passenger in the Corvette Z06.

I jerked forward and back as the driver shifted gears. And the tires lost their grip in two of the turns, one taken quickly on purpose, the driver said.

Fortunately, people who can’t drive standard transmissions can still enjoy this tour, thanks to technology known as Formula 1 paddle shifting on the BMW and the Lamborghini.

That made the Lamborghini my favorite car on the trip. It took a few tries, but I soon got the hang of this very foreign vehicle. Instead of a traditional shifter, gears are changed by using levers on the steering wheel.

Driving this car made my cheeks hurt because I couldn’t stop grinning. I started thinking of ways to keep this Italian stud to myself.

Alas, the cars in front of me slowed, and I noticed that my new crush has a few flaws. My left foot fell asleep as I struggled to find a comfortable position in the awkwardly designed floor space. A metal foot rest isn’t set back far enough.

And the position of the seats made it hard to see much when checking my blind spots. Thank goodness for well-aimed side mirrors and a reverse back-up camera, although I didn’t have time to operate that device.

Despite a few blemishes, I fell hard for this hunk of metal. All too soon, the first half of the tour zoomed by and our affair came to an end.

Will we meet again? At $1,000 a tour, probably only in my dreams.

logle@statesman.com; 246-1150

Think fast

DFW Drive Your Dream tour prices run from less than $600 to more than $1,500 per person, including a 10 percent state tax fee. Cars include the Porsche Boxster, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Ferrari 360 F1 and Bentley Continental GT. The next Austin tour is scheduled for July 21. Call (512) 279-7368 or visit dfwdriveyour dream.com.