Leesburg Cars and Coffee: October 24th, 2021

Thanks to a lovely couple I’ve been working with who are equally, if not bigger, gearheads than I am, I got a lead on Leesburg Cars and Coffee; a Cars and Coffee event I’ve known about for quite a while, but had never made it out to until recently.

The plan was originally to meet up at this car show in the morning to hang out before their engagement photo session later in the afternoon, but unfortunately their Daihatsu Rocky ran into mechanical problems that morning that kept them from making it to the show. They did make it to the engagement session later in the afternoon, which you’ll see in a separate post later this month - car meet snapshots are a lot faster to edit than paid portraits.

2022 Porsche Taycan

Today I’m bringing you Fall pictures of a brand new 2022 Porsche Taycan in Carrara White Metallic with matching 21" Mission E Design Wheels.  This Taycan hadn’t even been in the country a week when I took these pictures, and was fresh back from tint and PPF application.

This was my last photoshoot before the leaves fell, and I’m glad I got to get that last Fall shoot with a car, since it’s an Autumn tradition amongst my friends to cruise our cars up to Skyline Drive for colorful photos - a tradition that fell through this year due to the quantity and timing of other scheduled photoshoots I’ve had this Fall.

This is a location I’d like to try again in the future, when the nearby construction is wrapped up and offers more angles and perspectives - we planned this shoot and didn’t realize half the area was closed off for construction until arriving, but made do with what was available.  As night fell, the Forza vibes really came out with the cool colors contrasting with the Taycan’s futuristic rear lightbar.

Anytime you stage a car, especially a performance car, you attract attention - this time was no different, with onlookers periodically stopping to spectate me staging the car and framing shots.  But this was the first time I’ve had wildlife get curious too - a 7 point buck watched closely over my photoshoot and his doe and two fawn foraging nearby.  It was pretty remarkable that a buck so large to elicit the sense of hunting season would be so calmly nearby at a location where DC is visible to the naked eye across the river.

Cars and Coffee Pop-Up at The Boro Tysons Corner: August 8th, 2021

Earlier this Summer, Adrenaline Lifestyles and RevNation hosted a pop-up meet at The Boro in Tyson’s Corner; a one-off cars and coffee in this newly built complex’s colorful parking lot. I’m admittedly not familiar with the two host groups, but the event drew a healthy mix of import tuners and exotics.

Newport Car Museum

Foreward in 2021

These photos in this post are from 2018; long before SARS-CoV-2 was a concern or worldwide problem.

As with the photos I recently posted from my 2017 trip to Rhode Island, the following is a collection of photos shot in 2018 which I’ve had in my personal backlog to edit and write about for several years.  I only recently finished editing and composing this post alongside others from the same trip due to the sheer volume of images.

Newport Car Museum

In 2018, I went on a roadtrip to visit with my friend Alyssa and explore more of her home state of Rhode Island.  I’ve been several times before, but as with any trip to a place you’ve been before, you discover something new every time.  This time, one of those discoveries was the Newport Car Museum, which was highly recommended to me by numerous gearhead friends and car groups I’m in.

On a day to myself that I’d devoted entirely to exploring Newport, starting the the car museum, I was a little confused upon arrival, because the museum shares an entrance with a Raytheon office complex, but I’d heard that the owner, Gunther Buerman, formerly worked for Raytheon, so this wasn’t entirely surprising to me; from what I’ve read there’s no indication whether this is actually true, but the building that houses the Newport Car Museum was formerly a missile manufacturing facility on the Raytheon campus.  When I saw the cars parked out front I knew I was in the right place - there wasn’t anything super rare, but the SL550, Fiata, and modded A4 grouped together aren’t your super common econobox traffic.  I parked in their cluster of more interesting cars by the NPT CAR MUS flag.

The most stunning thing about the museum besides the collection it contains is the architecture and interior design.  Opened in 2017, the museum was less than a year old when I was visiting, but it felt so well-established already with complete and modern designed exhibits and offerings from every era and genre of classic, exotic, and notable automotives available in the United States.  It’s a large museum filled with almost 100 cars and numerous pieces of art and furniture from names including Salvador Dali and Charles and Ray Eames, and it still has room for further buildout as the collection expands.

Upon walking in with my camera wearing a Porsche polo, the staff thought I was an automotive journalist on assignment and offered me a private tour; if I had played my hand differently I could have taken them up on it, but I was honest and said I was just vacationing, not wanting to waste anyone’s time.

The first stop when arriving is a room with Forza 6 driving simulators you can try once included with admissions if you’d like.  I was the only person there, and gave it a whirl, but the game crashed / froze less than a minute from it starting, and the attendant instead of resetting it said “you’re done” and wanted me to pay ~$25 to “go again.”  This was my first impression upon entering the museum mind you, and it left a bad taste in my mouth.  I politely told him that it’s a racket to expect me to pay for something of theirs that’s broken, and moved on.  Luckily being able to enjoy the rest of the museum uninterrupted helped me forget the bad first impression.

The Newport Car Museum has some of my all-time favorites, such as a Diablo VT Roadster, only the second Countach I’ve ever seen, each major iteration of the Viper, the only XJ220 I’ve ever seen, the first second-generation Ford GT I’ve seen, and my dream car, the Porsche 4S Targa, though I’d prefer Forest Green Metallic, Mamba Green Metallic, or Anthracite Brown Metallic over Viper Green as displayed, despite my shirt matching in color.

The museum is also home to cars with race and movie heritage in addition to the rare and limited models on display.  Needless to say, the Newport Car Museum has something for everyone from every vintage from the 40s forward.  The staff was extremely friendly, and helpful in even pointing me towards other Rhode Island car collections and invited me to a nearby cars and coffee that I was unfortunately unable to attend seeing as it was after I’d headed home to DC.  I’m very curious to visit again the next time I’m in Rhode Island to see what additions have been made since my first visit.

After visiting the Newport Car Museum it was time for lunch, and I head to nearby Easton Beach to grab a lobstah roll on the beach.  After inhaling some chowda with my roll, I walked on the beach and explored downtown Newport before heading to the highly recommended Newport Cliff Walk.  On the way to the Cliff Walk I spotted another car museum I’d heard of, however this one wasn’t open the day I was there.  There was also some interesting beach traffic I spotted.