I just had the opportunity to try  a really intriguing car – the Tesla. I was passing through California staying in a hotel in Menlo Park. The Tesla showroom was right next door so it would have been rude not to have a closer look.

From driving past – the cars looked quite sexy  – somewhere between the Lotus Elise and the VX220 and a little wider.Plenty of carbon fibre and great bottom hugging seats. They have some pretty impressive stats too – 0-60 in 3.9 seconds. Woof woof.

So here’s the weird thing – they are electric cars – under what looks like the petrol cap is where you plug the extension cable and the back end is pretty much all battery.  They are great to drive – the road hold and handling are excellent (turns out that whilst the Tesla folk are keen to emphasise that the Tesla chassis is not a Lotus chassis – the cars are build in Hethel at the Lotus factory  – so go figure). They aren’t automatic as such but they only have one gear – you put your foot down and it keeps on going and going. That’s really peculiar – it seems wrong that there isn’t a gearbox and it is so strange not hearing a throaty exhaust. It really does sound like a milk float which is slightly disconcerting given the whiplash acceleration.

There was quite a lot of traffic when I drove it – but actually I really liked it. THe range is not bad unless you drive it like a total nutter so it could be workable. But here’s the rub – it costs $100K. That puts it in with the real supercars – you can buy a nice Masa, a 911 Turbo and even quite a lot of Ferrari for that. So why would you buy this? It doesn’t feel like a supercar (in fact the inside is pretty sparsely finished using cheap plastics) and you’d have to be really bought into the whole green thing to even consider. They are still shipping to people who preordered as long as 18 months ago but I think 100k is just too much. For $50Kyou’d place it as an alternative to an Elise, an S2000 or similar. For twice that there isn’t a chance it can compete with the big boys.

 So here’s the bike. It is a Harley Davidson Deuce. Shiny huh? Actually it rides really nicely – very comfortable and it sounds awesome 😉

Oh the excitement – I finally made it to a Grand Prix. In Montreal – which turns out is only a couple of hundred miles from Pennsylvania (so quicker and easier to get to than Silverstone ever was).

The fun kicked off at a reception at the local Ferrari dealership – appalling wine but excellent Parmesan.Kimi and Massa showed up – you can see how chuffed they were to be wheeled out for PR purposes…..

Anyway the race itself is held next to where they held the Olympic rowing competitions – so you arrive in style by boat from the Casino. The seats were in one of the rather nice hospitality tents just before turn 1 where you can watch the races on screens to catch the bits not happening directly in front of you while you are wined and dined.Here’s the pre-race view of the world :

Food and drink are pretty much forgotten when the race starts. The atmosphere is electric and the sound is incredible. My loyalties were divided between supporting Lewis Hamilton and supporting Ferrari. Rooting for Hamilton won out and seemed to work for the first twenty laps or so where he was opening up a significant lead. Then it all went pear shaped when he crashed into Raikonnen in the pits (doh). Anyway planets then went way out of kilter as Kubica and Heidfeld managed a BMW one/two with Coulthard on the podium too.

Here’s a taster for you:

Fun and games today trying to get car insurance. As far as the insurers are concerned, I’ve held a driving licence for a whole 2 weeks. So it isn’t particularly cheap.

Even stranger is the Pennsylvania legal aspect. Apparently 63% of car accidents end up in court in PA. So there are options in the insurance (full tort or limited tort) . Limited tort means that you can only sue someone for serious injury but not for eg mental anguish, whereas full tort means that you can sue for whatever the hell occurs to you from what I can gather. Bonkers.

So anyone who knows me knows that my biggest stress point about moving here has been what car to drive. Essentially anything that’s fun to drive will be undrivable in the snow, anything that will cope with weather will be a dog to drive.

The other issue is that I just LOVED my Lotus – it was the ultimate car to drive – perfect in any way. So anything after that is going to be a disappointment.

I’ve done lots of research and have been driving many, many dreadful hire cars. I thought I’d cracked it. I was definitely going to buy a Mini. Only thing is it a) had to be a CooperS (rest too slow), had to not be a stupid colour and c) had to be a second hand one that cost less than the new ones! For some reason this made it really trickey to find.

Then I realised that Audis depreciate like mad from new and you can buy a good high spec Audi for way less than a Mini of equivalent age.

So here’s my new car:

Yes it IS another 2 seater, but I figured that it IS all wheel drive so that’s pretty sensible isn’t it? It is very grown up – the roof is automatic and it has bottom warmers. Nice. And yes it is the 225 (of course!)

Just achieved another major milestone here – I got a Pennsylvania driving licence! All very exciting. I’ve been the proud holder of a learner’s permit since I successfully took my theory test yesterday (quite astonishingly easy touchscreen multi choice).

Today I showed up at the test centre with my designated driver (I had to bring someone over 18 with a PA licence), drove some fat chap in a checked shirt around a car park for 5 mins and they gave me a licence. Marvellous. I feel so safe driving around the roads knowing how rigorous the testing process is. I even managed to parallel park the SUV I’d borrowed 5 mins before the test started (you can’t take the test in a hire car!).

I have to admit I’m starting to obsess about the car I’ll end up driving. This isn’t helped by the dodgy motors I’ve hired from Avis. Now the Avis Preferred scheme is great. They drop you off th ebus right next to your car and off you go. The downside is that you don’t get to negotiate what the car is. So I’ve had some pretty poor cars that drive like blancmange.

So when I ended up with a LINCOLN I called them up to check my preferences – just to make sure I hadn’t inadvertently ticked the “old man car” box along the way. Anyway, I spoke to some nice chap there who understood my concerns and said he’d put my preference down for smaller and sportier cars.

The next time I picked one up I was confronted with this. Give me strength.