A fast car with a sticky set of tires doesn’t make someone a better driver. Spend a few minutes searching YouTube and you’ll find proof in the form of BMWs that drive off a twisty California mountain road, or Ford Focus STs that drift into a hill. There are much better ways to sharpen your skills behind the wheel, but there’s none more attainable than a ¾ mile road course set up by a local volunteer-run organization such as the Champaign County Sports Car Club.
About This Week’s Guest
Dean Plumadore knows a thing-or-two about such matters. As president of the CCSCC, he’s letting his passion for motorsports serve as a recruiting tool for new drivers. Dean admits he’s relatively new to the sport, but that hasn’t stopped him from receiving a fair amount of accolades and hardware for his skills on the skidpad.
Dean’s self-described ‘piloted land missile’ of choice used to be an Infiniti G37, which he enjoyed for many years. Today, he’s graduated to a 2008 Chevrolet Corvette with some tasteful modifications.
This silver coupe with a killer set of stripes, rim and tire package, Magnaflow exhaust and a T-56 manual trans is well known around central Illinois. Just take a peek at how he navigates this course and you’ll see why.
This week, we talk with Dean about race cars, track safety, and why everyone should spend some time behind the wheel on a road course to become a better driver.
Get In Touch
For more information about Dean or the Champaign County Sports Car Club, visit them on their many channels.
Email |Website | Instagram| Facebook | YouTube
Episode Highlights
Projects
Eric and his son went to C2E2 and picked up a Pickle Rick and Dharma sticker for the boy’s truck. Anyone who wheels knows that half the crowd loves stickers and patches. (What’s a Pickle Rick sticker, you ask? It’s a Rick and Morty thing.)
Eric also needs to sort a massive squeak on Tree Hugger and give the Celica a plasti-dip bath before the first autocross of the season.
Daryl replaced the starter in the Tahoe after it gave up the ghost. It seemed to short out after an undercarriage wash at a Hucks’ gas station car wash, but it may have just been time. It shouldn’t shoot out shards of metal that look like steel wool, should it?
Dean offers some handy tips for troubleshooting auto electrical gremlins based on a classic lesson in “horses vs zebras” last fall when his ‘Vette wouldn’t start.
Headlines
International
Reports suggest that Renault wants a merger with Nissan and will seek to buy Fiat Chrysler according to CNBC.
Renault is reportedly looking to restart merger talks with Nissan within the next 12 months before making an attempt to buy Fiat Chrysler. A combination of Renault, Nissan and Fiat Chrysler would be viewed as a viable rival to the current global auto leaders, Volkswagen Group and Toyota.
Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi are not officially merged but all three carmakers operate a partnership under a complex arrangement of cross-party share ownership, according to the report.
1 Day later….
Nissan Motor Co. CEO Hiroto Saikawa said on Thursday he was not aware of discussions about the possibility that its French partner Renault SA was considering a bid for...