Steer It Up: Circuit Racing, Jamaica Style
The Experience: It Is a Truism that the Worst Ideas Often Make the Best Stories
Why own a vehicle unless it transports you to scenery, wildlife, and a carjacking or two? The experiences we've had over seven decades appear, quite often, to have been risky, at odds with common sense, and deleterious to the car or the driver.
Take our tour of Baja California. It was a comparison test, but the adventure—part Mexican telenovela, part police procedural—is what's remembered, not the finishing order. We nervously occupied an up-armored Humvee on patrols with gunners in Kosovo. One winter, we bounced five minivans up the Haul Road to Deadhorse, Alaska, ruining tires and windshields on nearly all. More recently, contributor Jonathon Ramsey drove a Dacia Jogger to Poland's border with Ukraine to deliver donations for the war-torn country.
Then there was contributor P.J. O'Rourke, who took 11 days to motor from Florida to California in a 1956 Buick, during which protracted spell his alcohol consumption burgeoned. A few years later, he wrote about driving a red Ferrari 308GTS from New Jersey to L.A. for it to feature in something called "Don't Eat the Snow in Hawaii," the pilot of Magnum P.I.
Roy Ritchie
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Car and Driver
Roy Ritchie
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Car and Driver
Roy Ritchie
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Car and Driver
Roy Ritchie
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Car and Driver
Roy Ritchie
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Car and Driver
To get to Dover Raceway from Montego Bay, head out of town and take a right at Discovery Bay, then drive up into the hills about 15 minutes until you see a guy selling Red Stripes by the side of the road.
Roy Ritchie
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Car and Driver
Oliver Townsend fields a Civic that battles the Evos and Ian Galbraith's yellow Subaru, the Flairy Canary.
Roy Ritchie
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Car and Driver
Rugie Misir's car has a Don't Panic! button, perhaps because it's powered by a turbocharged Hayabusa engine with a homemade anti-lag system.
Roy Ritchie
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Car and Driver
Gary "Rambo" Barrett dresses up his VTEC solenoid with a pair of rum caps.
Roy Ritchie
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Car and Driver
Roy Ritchie
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Car and Driver
Dover's topography makes for easy spectating: Just grab a rock on the bluff. Though we saw one innovative onlooker arrive with a full set of kitchen chairs on the roof of his car.
Roy Ritchie
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Car and Driver
Ingenuity abounds in the Dover pits. Need an exterior battery kill switch? Connect the radio antenna to the dash control.
Roy Ritchie
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Car and Driver
Roy Ritchie
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Car and Driver
Ezra Dyer
Senior Editor
Ezra Dyer is a Car and Driver senior editor and columnist. He's now based in North Carolina but still remembers how to turn right. He owns a 2009 GEM e4 and once drove 206 mph. Those facts are mutually exclusive.
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