Come With Us to Find the Best Roads in California Hearst Owned
Where else would we start? Our new video series, created with help from our sponsors at Shell, is called Road Trip America, and— predictable or not—the roads, car culture, and endless sunshine make California the perfect place to begin our adventures. I’d love to tell you we really thought outside of the box when marrying California’s amazing roads with a suitable car. Yet, that would be a lie. It had to be a Porsche. An open-topped, hardcore Porsche sports car for the full cliché.
I’m not apologizing, though. The 718 Boxster Spyder RS is just too good to regret. California’s roads are too good to ignore. And we’ll have some weirder, more unexpected combinations to come. There will be a very, very fast Mustang, a BMW Z3 M, and roads and trails from across this almost embarrassingly blessed nation when it comes to spectacular, sparsely populated locations and challenging roads.
Our first episode starts among friends at the life-affirming Good Vibes Breakfast Club, a casual but burgeoning gathering at Newcomb’s Ranch located on the—speaking of clichés—Angeles Crest Highway. However, this is just a brief jumping-off point and a chance to get recommendations from people who live and breathe California’s canyon roads. From there, we head north to Ojai and then waaaay north to San Luis Obispo, via an unforgettable night at Ventura Raceway and scenery (and heat) to melt your brain. What a place!
The scope of these videos is ambitious. Doing justice to several days and dozens of different stretches of tarmac, plus the people we meet along the way, is extremely difficult. But even if we just scratch the surface, the idea is to gently persuade our readers and viewers to explore beyond that one local road you love, maybe even to plan a trip around the pure excitement of driving in free air in new places. The series is inspired, at least in part, by Experiences by Road & Track, but also shows the accessibility of having these adventures any time. Admittedly, not everyone has a Boxster Spyder RS to play with… but in lieu of pay, I at least like to have fun at work. Which is a version of the American Dream, I guess?
And I did. I love the Spyder RS. It’s so much more supple than the super-hardcore GT4 RS and much happier on the road as a result. The gargling, intense intake noise is still present (and mildly deafening), but the tone is less painful than the closed Cayman, and the whole car feels more expressive and recreational. It’s honed and has a dynamic polish that’s typical Porsche, but there’s a lightness of touch about the Spyder RS. It flows where a GT4 RS might scratch and fight the tarmac, and the balance is sublime. Even the chopped hotrod-style design language feels tailor-made for California’s remarkable network of soaring roads that seem to go on forever. Like I said before, where else would we start? Perhaps a bigger question is, how are we going to top this?