Impulsivity meets blue sports cars: Why my garage now has lots of trouble, usually serious, in it

I've had F/R sports cars in the garage for about a decade now, starting with my '15 Mustang GT PP I bought new. You know how it is: I was out shopping for a truck and then came home with a Mustang. Whatevs. Over the years my stable has gravitated towards higher- and higher-horsepower cars and motorcycles. After the Mustang was a C7 Corvette Z51; after a few years I thought that, hey, if the base LT-1 is this great, the supercharged LT-4 in the Z06 must be more greaterer! Thus, I bought a C7 Z06.

The Z06 is stupid fun, it really is. However, it's an absolute monster on consumables. On a track day a year or two back I realized that each lap was costing me about $100.

Now I'm working on a couple track Miatas. I've autocrossed the Z06 since switching track cars to Miatae, but on the street it's just a lot. Super comfortable, sure, but a LOT. I got to thinking that maybe a 718 GTS 4.0 would be nice, or maybe a GT4. I thought, okay, maybe next year I'll make a move.

Well, about 3 weeks after that I became impatient. 

I drove a GT4. It was fun and looked the business but what really caught my eye was the Emira. Slower than the GT4, sure, but it looked so damn good and felt much more special to drive. Now there's a Seneca Blue Emira FE (V6, M6) in my garage, too. What does it do better than the Corvette? Really nothing: It's slower, is much less practical, is more expensive, has worse weight balance, and is much more finicky. But LOOKIT! 

The evolution of my garage since 2022: 

I'm blue, da-ba-dee, da-ba-di...

Blue can be habit-forming...

Love the look and the color

The Emira is so pretty. Good color choice. 

It's slower, is much less practical, is more expensive, has worse weight balance, and is much more finicky. But LOOKIT! 

Yet another out-of-context sentence that summarizes my taste in cars.

confuZion3 said:

The Emira is so pretty. Good color choice. 

Couldn't agree more. Such an incredibly good looking car!

Due to a genetic defect I gravitate toward oddball or non logical choices; so I can relate.

My "I'm close to retirement I'm gonna get a dual duty old car" turned out to be the Foxbody Mustang and not the 911 I always thought I would buy.

The Mustang is deeply flawed, has 80s plasticky build quality and yet I love the thing.

When has car choice ever been logical; although I must say you can't argue with the logic of that color blue. 

The Emira in Seneca Blue is currently my "dream" car....or one of them at least. Great pick up!

These always catch my eye in the wild.  I need to get back into blue cars.  At one point I had four blue cars, now down to one, I really wish my Mustang was rental spec blue.

Emira looks great in Seneca Blue! 

I took the Electric Smurf on a 200+-mile bimble to grab some empanadas in Strawberry, AZ, today. The Emira feels "alive" in a way the Z06 doesn't, even though it's quite a bit slower. 

It's definitely a head-turner, and the engine sounds much better than I thought it would. That said, I have a third cat-delete on the way and feel like manual exhaust valves would be the way to go. I also have a short-throw shifter on the way and am machining a new shift knob to fit my paws.

congrats!

I didn't like the stock shift knob so I changed it. There weren't many I could find that would fit the bill and besides, I enjoy some time in the machine shop.

I 3D-printed a couple designs just to see what shapes I liked for this application and settled on a dome top with an 8 degree taper. This weekend I turned a knob out of steel. I'm not sure if I'm going to love it but it's not a bad-looking piece. I may trim it down a bit, though; at nearly 24oz. it's a porker, and I usually aim for about 18oz. If I don't love this one I'll turn another one out of aluminum, core it, and press in a steel threaded insert to drop weight a bit.

WOW nice! What is that finish you put on it?

Gotta ask, what does the view of the rear quarter look like in the drivers side rear view?

Admittedly, it's not the best way for the mirrors to be set  

When I was driving the (also blue) i8, the view looked like I was driving some kind of prototype racer. 
 

In reply to dculberson :

Believe it or not, that's rattle-can paint! I really, really like Metalcast; it gives you an anodized look and, properly applied, works on metals and plastics (with a primer). I've used it on a bunch of shift knobs to great effect. It works best when the base material is polished to a mirror finish and then painted with 4 coats, and then hit with 2 coats of Rustoleum's "triple glaze" clear. You'd think that it wouldn't hold up well in a high-contact area like a shift knob, but the finish on the one in the Corvette still looks perfect and that's been on there for 7 years.

In reply to Karacticus :

Weirdly, the driver's mirror doesn't adjust far enough out to be entirely clear of the rear quarter! It's a bit bulbous, but I'm used to that from the Z06. With the Corvette, when the mirrors are adjusted properly you still see some of those giant fender flares in the mirrors. It looks like the car has an ass full of histamines. 

That's a nice looking knob!

I wonder if this should be moved to "builds" or something now.

I did some minor work on the shift knob (shortened the skirt, shortened the threaded depth). Right now it's bare steel; I'll repaint it soon.

Today's work, though, was something.

Me: "I want something different: Something more compact, something with the engine behind me."

Also me: "Goddamit, why does everything have to be so compact and difficult to access? The engine location makes it really hard to work on things!"

Anyway, installed a GRP short-throw shifter linkage. That was super frustrating. As it turns out, though, I can squeeze myself into the trunk when necessary; hopefully I'll never do that again. A buddy of mine came over and we decided to tackle the 3rd cat-delete. That, also, was a pain in the ass.

Thoughts: Short-throw shifter is worth it. It's still not the best shifter I've ever felt, but it's less squishy. The 3rd cat-delete is fantastic! In sport and track modes it sounds like a proper exotic. In tour mode it's still quiet and civil. This is the way it should have come from the factory.

I love the Emira, especially in that color.

I've never owned a Lotus, but the Esprit has been on my dream car list since I was a kid. These days, I'm always scanning the British classifieds for TVR Tuscans. If practicality was the main concern, we'd all be driving Camrys.