An Evora, a Tent, and 2000 Miles of California

What?

My friend Ray, who you may remember from all the way back in the '77 Maverick Route 66 Journey thread (pictures unfortunately broken) got married last weekend in California, and it was a spectacular wedding enjoyed by all who attended, but Sara and I spent the week prior doing something else entirely.  It only seemed appropriate that we explore the lovely state he and his wife have chosen to live in, and what better way than by cramming a backpacking tent into a Lotus Evora we found on Turo and aiming it towards every squiggly road we could find on the map.

It turns out an Evora will just barely fit hiking, camping, and wedding attire for two (back seat not pictured but also full):

Since this forum is populated by car nerds, you'll all want to know that this particular Evora is a 2020 GT with three pedals and a supercharger.

Day 1

LA/Salton Sea/Joshua Tree

With the car packed, we immediately aimed east, stopping for some small supplies but otherwise making a beeline to the Salton Sea.  It was mostly empty, and smelled funny, and didn't really have the sort of roads this car is good for, but it felt great to get out of civilization and the area immediately around the big smelly lake is a sort of fascinating little desert community:

Luckily the Evora has fantastic air conditioning, since I'm pretty sure the compressor is sized for a Camry, so the 105F+ outside temperatures were no problem.  It's not the greatest on choppy pavement, which there was lots of, but as long as you can keep the nose off the ground it's tolerable.

Then we wandered over to the giant art installation next to Slab City- which I knew of, but Sara didn't despite directing us there.  Slab City is basically a real life Mad Max town, a largely ungoverned group of people live there and somehow make life work in the completely inhospitable desert.  We took a look at the giant mountain of paint and made our way out of there, since a bright red sportscar is pretty much the antithesis of what the place is about:

After a quick but mercifully uneventful run-in with Border Patrol, we were off to our next destination, Joshua Tree National Park.  This was the first really excellent driving of the trip, and weaving our way through the rocky desert landscape on a twisty road with an aspirationally high speed limit Sara quoted Star Wars with a "now THIS is podracing" as we approached the park.  Joshua Tree actually had nobody manning the gate, so we'd have to buy our annual park pass later, but we wandered around, marveled at the landscape, and generally enjoyed our visit although skipped hiking in the heat since we lacked the recommended 1L of drinking water per hour.

After driving through the park, we grabbed dinner in the little town just to the north, then headed over to Big Bear Lake, where we struck out on finding a campsite and had to settle for a motel instead- not setting up the tent was just fine given that we'd been awake since 3am east coast time and were pretty cooked at that point anyway.

Such a cool trip!

Day 2

Crossing the Desert, Seqouia

We were up bright and early and, after descending an awesome mountain pass road (people get out of the way on twisty roads in California, this behavior should be adopted everywhere immediately) we were off northwest across the desert.  The Evora was just fine with this, and cruises well at the speeds you'd expect for crossing such an empty landscape- it was beautiful in its' own way, and we spent our time musing about how far you could go on the various offroad trails we could see to both sides of the road.  We grabbed lunch in a pretty little town as things got more mountainous, and shaved an alarming amount of time off of google's estimate crossing our first super twisty, switchback filled mountain pass.

Soon enough, we were at Sequoia National Park, purchased our park pass, and went and explored a bit.  Beautiful wooded landscapes and unimaginably large trees became the standard for the next few hours:

We took a small hike to the world's biggest tree:

And a photo of the car taken from inside of a hollowed out tree:

Then we explored a high lookout point via a one lane road which the Evora just barely had the ground clearance for, and made our way to our campsite for the night via even more twisty roads.  It was important to get in by dark, since the Evora's headlights are quite possibly the worst fitted to any modern car and this one's driver side highbeam didn't work.  Camping gear unpacked at Spring Cove, ultra aggressive mosquitos battled, and soon we were asleep:

Day 3

Yosemite

On the road early as usual and we were off to Yosemite with a stop at a nearby hotel for incredible breakfast burritos- despite being a weekday, things were getting a bit crowded but it wasn't too bad from the south entrance to Glacier Point:

Then we drove down to the valley floor, which was a disaster of too many cars for the parking- we did eventually manage to find a spot and hike to the waterfall:

Escaping the valley floor we visited El Capitan, there are climbers in this picture but probably not enough resolution to see them:

Through some tunnels where we let the Evora sing a bit, and over Tioga Pass where we got to see a Pika running between the rocks and endless fantastic views:

At the other end, we grabbed some astonishingly good tacos at the gas station (which is the only thing around at that end of the pass), fueled up, and went back up the pass.  This might be the first snow this car had ever seen:

After a stop for a dip in the very chilly lake filled with snowmelt, we made our way over to the least populated part of the park, Hetch Hetchy, which has a wild, monte-carlo-esque road leading to the reservoir and a dam with this view:

Walking across the dam, we went through a big tunnel:

To find that all the manmade stuff disappears on the other side, leaving you with this lovely quiet reservoir filled by waterfalls:

Oh no!  It closes at sunset!  Better drive quickly back out on the ridiculous road:

On trips like this, I find that decompressing takes a few days.  That stop above is where it really hit for me- this whole thing felt like it shouldn't even be allowed but there we were in complete silence in a remote part of Yosemite with this car as our transportation and tent hauler for days to come.  What a thing.

We drove back, spent a little time at another overlook just watching the moon come up, and then settled into the Hogdon campground for the night.

Looks awesome. Totally jelly, too. 

Day 4

Yosemite to Santa Cruz

We got up, packed everything into the car, and grabbed breakfast at a fancy lodge just outside the park- this proved to be a really solid technique for finding great food in places which otherwise didn't have much going on at 7am.  Then we headed west to find a sneaky way over to Santa Cruz to visit friends- if you ever want to do this route, navigate to the Lick Observatory and then navigate again once you get there; we drove through seemingly infinite fruit farms and orchards, and then came to this:

Those little squiggles aren't some mapping resolution error, that is an honest couple hours worth of uninterrupted hairpins and tight corners- just watch the cattle guards, especially if you're driving somebody else's Lotus.  I was sore after this in ways I usually associate with a weekend of stage rally.  The best part is we saw maybe 10 other vehicles total, mostly traveling the opposite direction and otherwise getting out of the way very quickly.  10/10 would drive again.

We grabbed tacos at Luna in San Jose, then hit some more interesting roads on our way over to Santa Cruz where we visited Sharktooth Beach, met up with our friends Emy and Brian (who drive a Cayenne and XJ12 respectively and somehow make those boats the fastest things around on the twisty roads around their house).  Ate gyros watching the sunset at the pier, got ice cream with toasted marshmallow on it for Sara's birthday (oh yeah this was Sara's birthday!) and stayed over at their place for the night.

As Sara said, waking up in Yosemite and winding up at the beach isn't a bad way to spend a birthday at all.

oh this looks like an incredible roadtrip! 

Day 5

Pacific Coast Highway Pt. 1

Having already done the portion of PCH north of Santa Cruz on our previous Cadillac roadtrip, we wanted to see the rest of it. And so did Brian and Emy, so they loaded up the Cayenne and followed us to the wedding- with a brief stop at a secret testing facility for the stuff Brian designs for work.  I have no idea how secret any of it really is so I guess I'm leaving it at that, but they build electric VTOLs and wow are the things impressive.

When we went to leave, the Lotus refused to start.  The immobilizer had already been finnicky, but this time it simply wouldn't recognize the keyfob at all- we swapped the fob battery with a spare from Sara's bag that she keeps for her rally watch, and were considering hotwiring it when Brian pointed to a shipping container festooned with antennas and said "you know that thing's just a high powered radio, we might need to get away from it."

So, naturally:

After pushing the car down the road for a bit, I hopped in and it started right up.  Note to all Evora owners, bypass your immobilizer or prepare to be at the mercy of the nearest radio tower.

And then we were off onto one of the most beautiful roads in the world:

Unfortunately, it was closed in the middle, but fortunately, this meant that it was sparsely populated near the construction and we drove every bit of it we could, stopping to marvel at the view occasionally:

Drove right down to the barricade:

We had to drive back up and around, and avoiding dirt put us even further out of the way since the Evora can barely clear a pebble, but we got back out to the coast by sundown and ate dinner with a view:

Then settled into our campsite at San Simeon State Park for the night.  We used the tent one last time, the Cayenne team had plenty of room to sleep in their vehicle.

Day 6

Pacific Coast Highway pt.2

We got up in the ocean mist and packed up a damp tent:

After I embarrassingly set the Evora's alarm off, we set off to complete the available section of the PCH back up to the other end of the closure.  It was foggy but beautiful, and almost completely empty:

The other end of where we were about 18hrs prior:

And then stopped at the elephant seal viewing point, which absolutely overdelivered on its' promise with literal tons of seals basking in the morning sun, scooting around, making odd noises at one another and generally national geographic-ing it up:

Heading south towards LA, things got more boring for a bit, and then turned into endless fruit farms again.  Somewhere around Malibu we hit a small loop of canyon roads recommended by Ray as some of his favorites, which I'll tell anyone about if they DM me but I don't want more traffic on those fantastic things so it's not going here.  They were really, REALLY good and we managed to get some brake fade even with the massive rotors on the Evora, and caught and played with a Cayman for a bit too.  Afterwards, we stopped and bought a box of strawberries to celebrate a trip well done, and continued into town for the wedding festivities:

Met up with Ray for a hike as the sun went down:

Then headed to Ray and Lindsey's place, ate amazing pizza from a trailer on the street, and helped with some last minute wedding prep.

Day 7

I had lots of best man duties to attend to, but that didn't stop Sara and friends from getting over to the Peterson museum for the Ken Block exhibit and other wild vehicles:

Day 8:

The actual wedding!  The Evora delivered lunch for the bridal party:

And delivered the groom to the venue, which I don't have a picture for yet.  The wedding itself was fantastic, and concluded with games and amazing food.  Also the only wedding I've ever been to where they played trivia during dinner- went over great, although good luck finding people who can pull it off as well as Ray and Lindsey's friends.

Day 9:

Met up in a park for the post-wedding field day, enjoyed a quiet hangout with friends we won't see again for too long, and said our goodbyes to people, dogs, and cars alike.  Returned Evora, flew home, still recovering.

What a cool trip!!  

I love everything about this trip.

A lot of good choices there. That's my stomping grounds and I've been graced with driving 90 percent of those roads. Sadly, there are many Californians who haven't seen nearly as much of our fair state. We were recently visited by an acquaintance in her 60s, who has spent her life in the high desert (Ridgecrest, Barstow) and had never seen San Francisco! 

Pretty neat way to go about the trip. What was the arrangement with Turo? A daily charge plus mileage?

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

Turo costs were about $700 for the car, $200 for insurance, and 1800 included miles with overage at 40 cents/mile.  Incredibly reasonable considering the way the thing drives, which I'll probably write more about tomorrow.

All navigation/road choice credit to Sara, I was just in charge of driving and tent setup.

So, About Evoras

Part of the purpose of this trip was to do an extended test drive of an Evora- ones with sketchy histories are getting into a reasonable price range and they've always seemed like the ultimate version of what I like; mid engine, Toyota powered, great chassis, dog sized back seat, etc.  So let's have a bit of a review.

Handling:
This is the Evora's main thing, and it's good at it.  The steering is fantastic, the chassis is great, the suspension works well... on smooth roads.  The moment things get the least bit bumpy, the front end in particular will skitter all over the place and generally feel very nervous.  I blame the 19/20" wheel combo with little rubber band tires, and imagine that downsizing to 18s would help immensely.  Otherwise, zero complaints and it may be one of the most capable road cars I've ever driven when the conditions suit it.  Nothing caught or passed us on a backroad the entire trip.

Drivetrain:
The engine is good- I love that it's a Toyota and not some weird exotic thing, it makes good power with the supercharger, and in sport mode it sounds great and has appropriate throttle response.  The supercharger whine from the vent just behind your ear makes driving with the windows open mandatory any time it's nice enough outside.  If I have any complaint, the powerband is so linear as to almost be unexciting, and the chassis could clearly take more power.

The transmission, while geared appropriately for both backroad fun and high speed cruising, hates shifting quickly and feels a little out of place as a result.  The torsen diff is perfect though, and makes 2nd gear corner exits fun as you can feel out the rotation with the throttle as you feed power back in.

Brakes:
They're freaking huge and, other than a little fade when we were on very tight downhill sections where they'd never get a chance to cool, seemed bottomless.  The ABS is tuned very well and the bias seems appropriate for the car.  The pedal feel is weird, which brings me to....

Ergonomics:
The interior is actually really nice, and I don't mind the simplistic dash/hvac scheme at all, but there are some weird choices in this car.  The brake pedal has resistance about .5" before anything actually starts happening, making it unnerving to use at first.  The clutch throw is really long.  The throttle is lighter than it should be for a car with this power/weight ratio, although the pedal spacing is fantastic for heel/toe blips and all that good stuff.

There's a lot of headroom, but weirdly you're forced to use it because the seats are high- I would've been a lot more comfortable with my butt another inch or two closer to the floor; this also meant I had to duck to see under the rearview mirror on right turns.  The steering wheel adjustments put it exactly where I wanted it, but that caused it to block the tops of the gauges.  Whoever designed the dash didn't think at ALL about reflections either, the carbon cowl over the gauges reflects off the windshield and so do the silly chrome rings around the vents.

Visibility:
You know what, this should get its' own section because there's more than just the mirror in your face or the reflections all over the windshield; those could be solved with some seat bracket tweaks and paint or vinyl, respectively.  The side mirrors don't really adjust far enough, and the rearward blindspots are massive- this thing is hard to park, and harder to navigate traffic in since you can fit a whole truck in the blindspots.  The fenders will reflect into your eyes when the sun gets low, and the spray from the ocean on the coast had to be wiped off at stops because the giant single wiper is lousy and the windshield sprayer is laughably useless.  Some rainx would go a long way, but I don't think the one I drove had ever seen rain.

Then the headlights- honestly I would trade these for a single stock dirtbike headlamp from the 80s, that's how crap they are.  Sharp cutoffs to the sides mean you can't see a damn thing, and the sharp cutoff at the top is barely helped when the highbeams are on- this one had a failed DS highbeam, but given how little the other one did I doubt it'd do much.  Nearly undriveable at night when you factor all the stuff that reflects off the windshield and that you can't dim the backlight on the row of buttons high on the dash.

Other Interior Stuff:
Cargo capacity is actually great for the sort of car this is- comparable to an SW20 MR2, although lacking a frunk since it's all full of radiator.  The seats were good, and heated although the heaters wouldn't be mistaken for something you'd find in a Saab or even a Subaru.  The head unit/navigation is pretty useless and I'd probably replace it with something single-din just to get the screen out of there.  It was, other than visibility, an easy car to spend a week in.  They also did a phenomenal job making it pleasant with the windows down, no wind buffeting or weird noises.

Body:
It looks more expensive than it is- some may like this, I don't, but whatever.  The bodywork flaps around a bit when on bumpy roads and I had concerns about its' longevity.  The nose is stupid-low, and you have to be really careful not to scrape it on driveways, speed bumps, or even minor dips in the road.  Same goes for the diffuser at the back, careful parking!

That Damn Immobilizer:
I'd bypass this immediately if I owned one- not only can it be interfered with by a radio tower, it locks the ignition on you constantly if you just use the car normally and forces you to button mash on the keyfob just to get the thing to start.

But Do I Still Want One?:
Of course I do.  The main problems are solvable with a little work, and despite the fact that it's terrible at just plain being a car, the thing is spectacular to drive- it really is just the most perfected V6 MR2 in the world, when you're behind the wheel and ignoring all the visibility issues.  I'm not certain I'll ever actually get one, since I do think the fiberglass would be cracking to bits with 30k miles of my usual use, but maybe a sufficiently cheap one will appear and I won't care.

Well, now I want to rent an Evora and go on a road trip.

I'm totally going to crib from your notes in the off chance I also have the opportunity to do a California road trip.

I am taking a serious look at these for the same reason you are.  The seating position in the S1 Evora is better/lower than the 400/GT in my opinion.  I am tall so the extra headroom makes up for no dead pedal.