One of the largest west coast euro car meets is held in our backyard every year, the Big SoCal Euro Gathering 2009, and of course Trapster had to represent once again. The Big SoCal Euro Gathering is held at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium parking lot and this year was bigger than ever. The icing on the cake was the drifting “driving clinic” held right behind Trapster’s booth, talk about amazing!
Driving Clinic
Presented by San Diego BMW CCAUnlike an autocross, this is not a competition event. Participants choice to experience from four controlled driving exercises: an “emergency” lane change, a steering slalom (with a real-world twist), a maximum braking and braking-into-a-turn simulation, and a figure 8 skidpad to simulate a cloverleaf slide.This Driving Clinic is designed to provide a safe environment for drivers to learn proper control of their vehicles.
For those of you who don’t know car lingo (ahem ahem… Stefanie here at Trapster) we did some research and found the following explinations:
FIGURE 8 SKIDPAD
Does your car understeer or oversteer at the “limit?” It’s not really safe to find out on the street or a freeway cloverleaf, so this double-circle skidpad will let you explore the limits and learn how to recover from understeer or power oversteer. Rear-wheel drive cars could provide some extra fun.
STRAIGHT-LINE BRAKING
Do you know how quickly your car will stop? Have you felt the normal pulsing of ABS brakes when your car is stopping at the maximum? Test your reaction time to a simulated emergency stop to see if you can brake in time to avoid a car “ahead” (actually offset for safety).
EMERGENCY LANE CHANGE
This exercise simulates a sudden swerve into the next lane as if something fell off a truck in front of you. How fast can you react and how well does your suspension respond to an unexpected lane change?
STRAIGHT LINE SLALOM
As in skiing, a slalom back and forth between cones is a great test of your vision skills combined with feeling how well your car handles transient maneuvers. With hand timing and an extra distraction, you’ll see how your driving is affected when you can’t give it 100% attention.
The Trapster Girls
OK I lied, the highlight was really the Trapster Girls strutting around the event and mingling with the car enthusiasts. I will let the photos do the talking:
But What About the Cars?
With over 1600 Euro Rides, there was plenty to see, after seeing the Trapster girls, but the car that stole my heart was Audi’s R8:
For all the photos check them out in our facebook fan page album.
Recap
We had a great time at the SoCal Euro event this year. Our booth was right next to the Jamba Juice booth & in front of the drifting course, what a sweet location. Another highlight was people that already had Trapster loaded up on their phones. This made our job a lot easier, because when asked “Have you heard about Trapster?” they already could tell us success stories. That brought pure joy to my soul.
The day was capped off with a big raffle, where some lucky attendees won full sets of Eibach springs, complete Flowmaster Exhaust set ups, & even a brand new set of sticky Falken tires! But the biggest prize of all was the “Trapster Girls” handing the winner’s their winnings.
Next year’s Big SoCal Euro Gathering can not come soon enough.
Creative Commons photos from Flickr: BMW Drifting photo from ondrakroutil Z
Source: Driving Clinic definitions provided by M3 Forum post
