All Entries Tagged With: "Alexandra Harbushka"

ADL TV | A Day At The Races

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WHAT a day.

It was July. The forecast called for possible showers or thunderstorms. Humidity felt something like ninety-nine percent.

Then the sun came out. And the humidity stayed as glued to hillsides of northwestern Connecticut as our sweat-soaked shirts stayed glued to our backs.

Race weather, in other words.

I can’t remember watching one of my uncle’s NHRA races on a day when the air wasn’t so hotly thick with the smell of gas and burning rubber. Being at Lime Rock – a very different kind of course – with Joe Ficca as he took to the track brought back some of those childhood memories.

As did fond recollections of all those Porsche and Ferrari club meets I’d witnessed at Lime Rock over the years.

This day, we brought a range of BMWs and one Cadillac to the track to experience Lime Rock’s famous twists and turns for ourselves. Following a renovation, the track was freshly paved with an extra turn carved into the hillside following the back straight.

But our time was as limited as the Park’s was valuable (memberships cost $100K) so we set out to answer a number of questions.

Which of the BMW convertibles we tested would prove fastest?

Could an E65 550i beat an E39 M5?

Would an XLR-V out perform a gang of M-powered BMWs?

TRT: 09:27

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Credits

June 12, 2009

ADL TV | BMWs on Block Island

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DECISIONS, decisions.

Sometimes life presents the nice kind of hard choices.

Harvard or Yale? Paris or Rome? Oil or gold?

If you had to boil the benefits of both down to experiencing just one long term – and both presented impeccable qualifications to justify your expenditure of time and money… how could you choose?

Would you opt for Yale only to miss Beantown’s nightlife? Would you vie for Paris and do without Villa Borghesi? Or what if you put all your chips down on gold only to watch oil futures rocket beyond the horizon?

The debate between which BMW convertible the 1-Series or 3-Series, presents a similarly luxurious dilemma. To buy both would be a foolhardy expenditure of $100K. And at $100K, there are many more enticing cars that you should be considering- used Aston Martins and Ferraris come to mind.

So sense and sensibility dictate that you should opt for just one BMW drop top for your garage. Trouble is…or was… I just couldn’t. Whether it was color choices or amenities or character – both the 1er and 3er present strong, if endearing cases.

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That’s why in this segment, we took the 128i and 328i to Block Island (a scenic spit of hills off Rhode Island’s coast) and asked SoCal native and one-time Infiniti owner Alexandra Harbushka to judge which convertible might entice her to switch to a roundel badged car.

To say the least, we were surprised by her choice. TRT: 09:30.

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Credits

June 10, 2009

Busy, Busy, Busy: ADL Production Update

By Gunnar Heinrich

DEAREST reader, surely you’ve not thought that I’ve forgotten you?

It’s been a very busy last week and a half for Team ADL. Luckily, our contributors Christopher and Steane have both done their part by pitching in to keep the words rolling forth on these blog pages. Major domos to them.

Triangulating between Gotham, Lime Rock, and Block Island, production has had the crew running in sixth gear @ 6000 RPM. It’s been dense.

Here are a few tasty details…

SoCal transplant Alexandra Harbushka voyaged with the crew out to Block Island (a six mile wide block of hills and beaches 12 miles off Rhode Island’s shoreline) to lend her consumer’s viewpoint in determining which convertible – the 128i or 328i was the better buy. Mercifully, no moped riders were hurt in the course of taping.

We wanted to capture a performance comparison test between Richard’s E39 M5 (see M5/M6/550i video) and Hardy’s current gen. 550i. The two sedans’ specs are so close – we figured we’d answer the question that nobody seems to have yet asked but some have surely wondered – would a standard 5-Series now have the capability to beat a previous gen. M car? So, we scheduled time at Lime Rock Park to make that happen. Third lap into the warm up and the M5 lost its brakes. Coming to find out, in a recent service RD’s trusted mechanic forgot to change the fluid. By lap three the liquid in the reservoir simply boiled.

We then pitted the talented Mr. Drackett and his enflamed 550i against Cadillac’s supercharged, 4.4 Liter, 443 horsepower V8 XLR-V. My uncle, former NHRA record holder Joe Ficca, took the reins of the big Caddy. Several hot laps, plenty of tyre squeal, and some sideways action later – both drivers’ lap times returned just a consistent two second difference. You’ll have to watch the video, to see which car won…

Quick shout outs to the folks at A&M Specialists, BMW NA, GM, Fred Mackerodt, Lime Rock, and the Block Island Chamber of Commerce – without you parking on the island would not have been possible.

July 23, 2008