Driving my new BRZ from Colorado to TX, a trip report

[runny_yolk]

Recently, I picked up my new BRZ from a dealer in CO and drove it back home to TX. I thought I'd share some experiences. This is my tale of woe, stupidity, and triumph (in warmer weather). Hopefully you won't want the last 15 minutes of your life back after reading.

for those who tl;dr, here's a couple of my take-aways.

• Even during break-in, where I drove the car at higher revs than necessary, I averaged 35mpg on the highway.
• This being my first light-weight, RWD with summer tires, and considering the massive winter storm that rolled through CO, there were definitely some white-knuckled, "poo has come out" sort of moments, esp in the backroads of CO.
• After seeing my friends Kenwood Nav Head Unit, I'm particularly saddened by how much less functional the Subaru Nav unit is.
• On dry asphalt, the stock setup is truly fantastic
• No picture of the car is as impressive as seeing it in real life, the design is truly much more like an exotic than a sub-$30k car
• TrakkTape kept my car from getting scratched, dinged, or otherwise damaged during the drive. I swear it doesn't look like it was driven 1,000 miles

The long version:

This trip was not off to an auspicious start. I had to fly to Denver via Southwest because they were direct and cheap. I hate Southwest Airlines, even though they are supposed to be "fun" and "casual". The result is that every time I fly them, it seems the entire flight is made up exclusively of slack-jawed yokels who have no idea how to travel. I wish I could have paid more to travel with hung-over business travelers instead of people who want to tell you about their asthmatic cat going on dialysis. When I board, I find myself looking at a plane-ful of passengers whose only wish is that I don't take the middle seat in their carefully-planned window/aisle arrangement. I swear some are faking illness just to avoid having someone sit next to them. To top it all off, apparently there's a winter storm brewing in Colorado, I think nothing of it for now (Freddy Foreshadowing, this would turn out to be a major problem in my drive home).

Arrive at the dealership many hours late due to late flight, late shuttle; in short, everything is late due to the winter storm. Fortunately, the shuttle driver seems pretty competent and and even though the ground is completely ice-covered with no blacktop in sight, we seem to not have skidded to our death. I confidently figure that the mighty BRZ with it's traction control is going to chew up these roads.

I get to the dealer where I spent about an hour apply TrakkTape . It being so snowy, nobody's at the dealer so they just watch me and shoot the bull. If you're going to TrakkTape, I can only stay this: take your time, go slow, and make it look "good". My install was full of bubbles and generally, made the car look like a clear bra job installed by someone with serious motor-control skills. Luckily I don't care, I just want to make sure the car doesn't arrive with a million rock chips, or bug guts at this point.

I leave the dealer, still full of confidence, plug in my waypoint (Amarillo, TX) into the nav and set off. Five minutes after leaving the dealer, I am stuck, I mean really stuck on a city street that turns onto a snow-filled street. I can't believe this, if the car is going to struggle on something so simple, how the hell am I going to get home and not die? The locals are all looking at me funny. Imagine a giant douche with a sports car driving through Antarctica, that was probably the image I was projecting. The stupid car just sits there uselessly spinning it's wheels. I sheepishly back out and try another road. Unfortunately, this makes the nav think I want a different routing entirely and instead of the mildly-manageable highway to go south to Denver, it puts me on a county backroad. Fuck you BRZ nav, you suck. This road is un-plowed, un-treated and just generally nasty. Of course, after just a mile of driving on it, I figure "Nah, I am committed to this route". The further I go, the worse the road gets. By this time, there's a long line of 4WD cars with winter tires that want to go faster than 25mph. They are pissed. Unfortunately for them, they can't pass me because my car keeps tail wagging every time it loses traction and they are all afraid of me.

Finally, I pull over and wave what must have been like ten cars by (keep in mind this is a completely deserted road so you can only imagine how long it took to build a line of 10 cars). Of course, as soon as I try to get back on the road, I find that I am stuck on the side of the road and it seems like I have no way out. Every time I give it even a little gas, the traction control kicks in. I try 1st gear, 2nd gear, 3rd gear (I seem to remember higher gears produce lower torque so less wheel-spin), all to no avail. Finally, in a fit of brilliance and desperation, I take the Top Gear Orangutan (aka Jeremy Clarkson) approach and try to power my way out. I reason that if traction control is cutting the power, the right answer is to cut the traction control. Apparently God really does reward fools sometimes because this actually WORKS! Car finally manages its way back onto the road where I spend the next hour white-knuckled and cursing up and down about how stupid Subaru is to sell a car with uselessly un-grippy summer tires in Colorado.

Instead of Amarillo, TX, I am so exhausted by the time I reach NE Denver that I opt for a hotel. I suck...

Day 2, it's 9 degrees outside. I wonder if the car has simply just frozen itself into the parking lot, in which case I will be spared the gut-wrenching pain of driving it through the ice today. My mind is racing with options. What if I try to get a transport now? Could I buy some winter tires and just put the summer tires in the car? Maybe get some chains. I opt against all this and just decide man up and press on.

Apparently during the previous day, there was a 50-car pile-up on I-25, a tanker truck burst into flames on the I-70, and just general mayhem everywhere. Maybe stopping for the night wasn't so stupid after all. My planned route this day takes me over Monument Pass, which apparently can be pretty freakin' scary even in good weather. Thanks to my experiences the day before, I am pretty much ready to crap my pants at this prospect.

Driving down I-25, I am hopeful, there's black stuff (aka actual road) instead of evil, evil white stuff on the ground. Car seems fine when all of the sudden, WHAT THE FUCK!!?? There's like an entire 3 out of 4 lanes of the road which are un-plowed and generally in bad shape. Everyone slows down, it's just that most of the locals slow down to 45 and I slow down to 15. Despite this, the car is still threatening to spin. Worst of all, the only lane with any sign of actual road is the left-most. People really really hate the douche driving the lightweight sports-car now.

Even worse, I am being passed, left and right by other RWD cars. I wonder if they just all have winter tires or if indeed I just suck that bad at life (err, driving). This does no favors for my already battered ego. No matter, I instruct myself to calm down and just drive slow. Luckily, I have a temporary plate and nobody can track me down to hurt me later in a fit of massive road rage. After a whole half hour of this, I make it out of Denver proper, where for entirely inexplicable reasons, the road IMPROVES. I figured you'd put more effort into plowing roads where there's more people, stupid me right?

Anyway, the drive down I-25 seems far less scary than across Denver. The entire time, I'm picturing an Everest-like summit at Monument Hill while mentally writing my obituary (something like "idiot careens to death off of cliffside"). Luckily Monument pass turns out to be a complete non-event. The road is so well-plowed that most people are flying up this thing at 75. What do people do the in the summer? 100? I am almost relieved to see the Monument Hill sign and find myself wondering "was that it?"

The further I press on, the better conditions improve. The side of the road is filled with the carnage of the previous day (not sure how, but a car actually managed to go hood first into a ditch), but luckily, no such thing happens to me.

Though it would take me another day to finally get home in Central TX, and though I would have wished to have a less exciting trip, this was easily one of the most "real" introductions to the BRZ i could possibly have had. I think having driven a high-grip, high-power AWD (Evo VIII) before, I definitely have a very different sense of what's needed to go-fast in a BRZ.

The drive through the pan-handle of Oklahoma was horrible, some of the bumpiest roads I've ever encountered. The drive through Texas was magnificent, no bad weather, just miles and miles of great road and vast open plain. I might even have to do this again when there's not the same danger of dying in a snow storm.

Anyway, hope you've enjoyed the story, if anyone wants to talk about where I got my car (I really liked my dealer guy), or the drive, or where to get great food in Brownwood, TX (the answer is Underwood's BBQ), or anything else, just drop a line.

Here's a picture of my new ride, resting after a long, long journey.

[5hairpins]

Originally Posted by runny_yolk

Recently, I picked up my new BRZ from a dealer in CO and drove it back home to TX. I thought I'd share some experiences. This is my tale of woe, stupidity, and triumph (in warmer weather). Hopefully you won't want the last 15 minutes of your life back after reading.

Anyway, hope you've enjoyed the story, if anyone wants to talk about where I got my car (I really liked my dealer guy), or the drive, or where to get great food in Brownwood, TX (the answer is Underwood's BBQ), or anything else, just drop a line.

My parents live in Brownwood and I have taken my FR-S down there several times. I will be there in April for sure, maybe we can gather and grab a drink and share stories. Welcome to the Family!

[HunterGreene]

Good read! Glad you got home safely.

So is there a reason you went to Colorado just to buy a BRZ? I know Texas is big, but I gotta imagine there is a Subaru dealer closer than the mile-high city.

[runny_yolk]

Originally Posted by HunterGreene

Good read! Glad you got home safely.

So is there a reason you went to Colorado just to buy a BRZ? I know Texas is big, but I gotta imagine there is a Subaru dealer closer than the mile-high city.

Yeah, unfortunately, it's largely to do with my impatience and my wife's insistence that we get a car in that specific color. After searching what seemed like every dealer in Texas and being told that what I wanted had to be ordered (or I had to just wait and see if one arrived in the spec I wanted), I started brainstorming about places where the BRZ wouldn't sell well.

That's roughly what drove me to do the Denver thing. I was originally thinking of having the car shipped but shippers were all failing to pick up loads in CO (maybe they knew this crazy storm was coming).

[runny_yolk]

Originally Posted by 5hairpins

My parents live in Brownwood and I have taken my FR-S down there several times. I will be there in April for sure, maybe we can gather and grab a drink and share stories. Welcome to the Family!

Thank you! Maybe the TX owners could arrange a meet-up in the hill country instead of always in Austin/SA.

[HunterGreene]

Originally Posted by runny_yolk

Yeah, unfortunately, it's largely to do with my impatience and my wife's insistence that we get a car in that specific color. After searching what seemed like every dealer in Texas and being told that what I wanted had to be ordered (or I had to just wait and see if one arrived in the spec I wanted), I started brainstorming about places where the BRZ wouldn't sell well.

That's roughly what drove me to do the Denver thing. I was originally thinking of having the car shipped but shippers were all failing to pick up loads in CO (maybe they knew this crazy storm was coming).

My own funny wife FR-S story: First off, she's a saint, as she was 3-4 months preggers when I got the car, knowing fully well its not a super-practical child carrier.

But when I was choosing color, I wanted black, she said I should get red. When the time came, the only color available was red, and Red was my second choice, so I got it. After seeing the black and red in person, I honestly prefer the red, and made the mistake of telling my wife she was right. I haven't heard the end of it since then.

[tripjammer]

Bro you drove in the snow storm from Denver to Austin? You the the pimp daddy! That was a brutal storm. You are lucky to be alive bro!

Congrats!

How much did it cost you to fly to pick it up?

[runny_yolk]

Originally Posted by tripjammer

Bro you drove in the snow storm from Denver to Austin? You the the pimp daddy! That was a brutal storm. You are lucky to be alive bro!

Congrats!

How much did it cost you to fly to pick it up?

Thanks!

The SW flight was $239 one way. AUS - DEN
I spent about $100 on gas
Plus about 150 for the unexpected hotel and meals.

So about $500 total.

Transport would have been slightly more (maybe $650).

Had I known what I was in for, I definitely would have shipped the car. I'm lucky that the only damage was my ego :-)

And as for the drive, I was tempted to crap my pants MANY times that trip...

[Lverasky]

Wow...that was a long drive...congrats that you make it home safe.

[HunterGreene]

Originally Posted by runny_yolk

And as for the drive, I was tempted to crap my pants MANY times that trip...

How many Jeremy Clarkson imitations did you do?

[zaptorque]

Glad you made it back home, to God's country

[runny_yolk]

Originally Posted by HunterGreene

How many Jeremy Clarkson imitations did you do?

Funny you should ask, because I was definitely trying to do just about anything to keep calm and invoking the top gear orangutan actually helped ;-)

[runny_yolk]

Originally Posted by zaptorque

Glad you made it back home, to God's country

Hehe, thanks, it feels good to be on solid ground instead of scary ice roads..