A Week In The Life Of An Auto Writer - 2024 MAMA Spring Rally

A WEEK IN THE LIFE OF AN AUTO WRITER
MAMA Spring Rally 2024

By Steve Purdy
Shunpiker Productions
Michigan Bureau
TheAutoChannel.com

It’s tough work, but someone has to do it.

Someone has to travel to the Road America racing facility, near the lovely tourist village of Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, each spring to spend a few days schmoozing with colleagues and driving as many (or as select a genre) of the eighty new automobiles and light trucks that await us there as we can. Most automakers participate bringing their best stuff to impress journalists who then report to their diverse audiences. I’ve been one of those hard-working auto journos for a tad more than twenty years, and I confidently attest: this is the best auto media event of the year for most of us.

The Midwest Auto Media Association, based in Chicago, has hosted the Spring Rally for decades – most of those years at Road America.

We gather for the better part of three days beginning with a Tuesday evening reception dinner - a fish fry at the Lake Street Café - hosted by the Chicago Auto Dealers Association.

Early Wednesday morning we gather at the nearby, historic, Road America race track for breakfast and a speech or two - in this case Toyota introducing their newest iteration of the trusty Camry and reintroducing the new Crown, soon to replace the mid-size crossover Venza.

Outside in the racetrack paddock, those four-score cars and light trucks await our attention. We can drive some of them (the performance-oriented ones) on the famous four-mile-long race track where we must don our helmets; others (the off-roady ones) on the on-site, good ‘n’ muddy, off-road courses; and the rest on the beautiful country roads around the village.

Wednesday evening, having worked so hard all day, an elegant dinner, usually with a presentation by one of the other automakers, along with some raucous social time at nearby Siebkin’s Bar, wraps the day. Racers have hung out at Siebkin’s for more than 60 years, including this reporter 50 years ago.

Then Thursday, we’re back at it with Subaru hosting breakfast and touting the newest version of their popular Forester crossover. Race track access is replaced by an autocross where the hot-shoes among us compete for honors in the sportiest of small cars, often dominated by the Mazda Miata.

Then, a big lunch, some awards and we adjourn.

But first, we had to get there.

From the Shunpiker world headquarters in south central Michigan the logical route would be to take I-94 to and around Chicago. That takes about six hours assuming no massive traffic delays. But, if I take the nine-hour route north and across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan I can turn a tedious, stressful, urban drive into a relaxing, therapeutic, wilderness drive at the cost of only three extra hours. That’s a no-brainer for me.

Until last year I always drove it straight through both ways, sometimes in the company of a colleague, sometimes all by my solitary self. These past two years I’ve indulged myself to make a two-day drive of it one or both ways, leaving time for side trips, explorations or visits along the way. This year, I visited an artist friend east of St. Ignace along the shore then explored Drummond Island, one of those places I’ve missed in all my travels.

After a relaxed overnight stay at a cheap motel in Manistique, overlooking the Lake Michigan shoreline, I had a surprisingly entertaining mid-morning breakfast at Rosy’s Diner in downtown Escanaba. Yes, there is a downtown Escanaba. It is a noisy, friendly, aesthetically classic eatery right out of a movie set, with a single, inch-thick pancake so big it overhung its platter, and giggly eggs, just like I ordered them.

Arriving at the beautiful Osthoff Resort on the shore of Elkhart Lake is always a treat. It’s one of those places regularly visited that become as familiar as grandma’s house. The core of this little town’s tourist identity and headquarters for the rally, the Osthoff is adjacent to two lakes defined by wooded, glacial hills surrounded by hundreds of square miles of productive farmland.

Though every year we’re warned about local cops who know we’re here, I’ve yet to see one overseeing my exuberant, brisk, country road drives.

Behind-the-Wheel Highlights:

The first Wednesday drive for me was the BMW XM Red Label, a plug-in hybrid high-performance SUV with 735 horsepower and 735 lb-ft of torque when you add up contributions from the twin-turbo V-8 and the electric motor. If you are feeling frugal you could go about 30 miles on just electrons, though that desire would seem a bit incongruous. Out on a straight country road I loosely measured zero-to 60 at about 3 ½ seconds, confirmed later by our BMW guy. That was perhaps the most sophisticated application of so much power of any vehicle I’ve driven. We can think of it as adrenaline on demand. You can get one for less than two-hundred grand.

Great way to start the day!

On the other end of the size scale, and my second drive, was the little Hyundai Elantra N with a 6-speed manual shifter sticking out from its console. The “N” designates it as a performance version of the tiny sedan. Sadly, doing one’s own shifting is becoming anachronistic. With substantial difficulty, I wedged my oversize self into the cockpit of the Elantra and took a 10-mile, enthusiastic jaunt through the curviest roads around Elkhart Lake, smiling broadly from nostalgia at the pleasure of modulating the clutch and shifter.

Another small hot shot, the Dodge Hornet R/T, was fast and fun but considerably cruder with a truly bad user interface on the touch screen.

The new Lincoln Nautilus, gets my Way Cool Design award for the instrument panel stretching all the way across the dash - elegant materials, creative, outside-the-box structure and leading-edge graphics make it a special. The small crossover’s driving dynamics, however, are rather mundane - just the way Nautilus buyers might like it.

The sleek and stylish Buick Envista Avenir, sort of a cousin to Chevy’s Trax, has a cool speedo in its simple IP screen, and quite good driving dynamics considering it has just a three-cylinder turbo under the hood. We can think of it as a luxed-up version of Trax for just a couple grand more. It might be the bargain of the day.

The newly redesigned Hyundai Santa Fe shows a way more stylishly-trucklike look than the earlier version with a thoughtful slot in the C-pillar that has a hinged cover. “What could that be,” thought we. Well, we asked our media-gal Michele and discovered it’s a hand-hold to help the owner get to the roof rack when stepping on top of the rear tire. How thoughtful!

The Polestar 2 LRSM is from the full-electric, luxury division of Volvo, now Chinese owned but mostly designed and engineered by the Scandinavians. It’s roughly equivalent to the Tesla Model 3. Settling into the driver’s seat I could not find the start button, search as I might. A colleague finally told me it has the “sit-to-go” function, that is, the car just senses your butt in the seat and readies itself. The painfully simple interior felt a bit cheap but the big touch screen is a masterpiece of functionality.

I had not heard of the INEOS Grenadier when I saw it on the roster. “As an off-roader it’s the real deal,” say the reviewers at Motor Trend. The old-school design was created by a Brit to replicate the Land Rover Defender and is built in the French factory that assembled the German Smart car. It looks just like the Defender including old-fashioned door handles with a thumb button. Taking it through the muddy off-road course (we love the rain) it had the function-over-form feel of the most accomplished safari truck - slow steering and unimpressive turning radius is the result of the rugged chassis and powertrain that account for its off-road cred.

Kia EV9 GT is the brand’s new full-size, three-row crossover about the same size as the Telluride. Style and design are fresh and fun inside and out. The shifter is now on a stalk with twisty head. Like the other full-electrics it is fast – very fast – and great fun to drive. We’re looking at new criteria for what constitutes driving fun.

Genesis GV80 is the full-size crossover from Hyundai’s luxury division most often compared to Lexus. This one is elegant, innovative, stylish and functional. The twin-turbo V-6 feels like a V-8 and an enthusiastic drive around the country roads revealed it to be as sophisticated a road car as its more expensive competitors.

Cadillac Lyriq Sport stickers at about 63-grand and weighs in at about 3 tons. Striking style and design will catch the eye and contradict those who contend that cars all look alike these days. Like the competing luxury EVs, it’s blindingly fast, smooth and quiet – another contribution to the appreciation of EVs.

I drove GM’s Hummer EV on both the muddy, rocky, off-road course and on the country roads. It distinguished itself on both. In the dense forest its turning radius was better than the smaller off-roaders while handling mud and rocks with alacrity. On the country roads it presents itself as a big cat – quiet and graceful, if not particularly subtle.

So, there you have it, friends: with the UP drive both ways it was a week of dedicated hard work that I do for you, the loyal readers of TheAutoChannel. I drove about five times the number of cars I’ve reported on here, each with its own approach to the market.

And, it reaffirms, at least for this occasionally-humble reporter, that ours is as much a golden era of automobiles as any in the past. We have more choices and better products than we’ve ever had, and while the modern aesthetic hasn’t the elegance of the past it certainly reflects its time.

Sure, some styling trends become generic but looking around the paddock at Road America, we can surely say, we have nothing to complain about.