Dan Watkins (owner of McLaren F1 #068 and the first production Bertone Mantide, just to name a few of his toys) is driving with some friends from NYC to Monterey this week. I found his blog that is being updated daily with pics and stories from their trip as they go along. The caravan includes his McLaren F1 #068, his Bertone Mantide, his bianco fuji Ferrari Scuderia 16M, and his grigio silverstone Ferrari 612 Scaglietti.

Follow his travels HERE.

Sorry Chris, I'm not trying to overshadow your awesome trip to Monterey but this is just too cool not to share!

 

Ok, so FAWK I have a story to fit this blog.



So my mom calls me Thursday night and says channel 5 news had a 2 million dollar car on that was at the Ritz and I should check it out. So I went to the website (not excited, figured it was some old car ect that wouldn't interest me too much) So i see the pics on the news site and was like HOOOOOLLLLYYYYY FFFFUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKK the Mantide, I knew this was probably a once in a lifetime type spot ect. So I grabbed my cousin and we drove to the Ritz all jazzed up



WHEN WE GO THERE THEY HAD ALREADY LEFT!!!!!!! ahhhhhhhh


So that kinda sucked, I was stoked to see it, and now I find out the McLaren was was here too?! damn it. Very Very cool they are driving the cars not shipping them, how cool!

 

Now that's a proper road trip.

 

From what I read in the blog, you most likely would've missed the McLaren no matter what. I guess that got loaded up in the support truck as soon as it started to rain because it was nearly impossible to drive safely in the wet and wasn't worth the risk. That's still really cool that you have a bit of 2nd hand experience with this story!

+rep for ya.

 

That's the coolest thing I've heard since I heard about the guy who uses his CGT as a dd.

 

Yep; i apparently missed them as well when they were around Front Royal, VA and Skyline Drive.

Amazing machines!!

 

Keep in mind too, that because the McLaren was imported under the DOT's "Show or Display" exemption, it is limited to just 2,500 miles per year. Driving the car straight from Boston to Monterey would have exceeded that by a lot. I know that Dan had already put a few hundred miles on the car when it first arrived, so he probably has to ration its time on the road carefully.

>8^)
ER

 

^^ I didn't know "Show and Display" cars were limited to mileage.

 

Yeah - there are a few downsides to the program, that being one of them. The other major one being there is no exemption from EPA standards, so the car you import must conform to the standards that were set for its year of manufacture. Conversions to satisfy the EPA are time consuming and expensive.

Initially the plan was to limit the vehicles that were approved to just 500 miles per year, but that was able to be changed prior to implementation of the law.

I can't get the webpage to load at the moment, but the rules and regs for "Show or Display" are here on the NHTSA website. The cached version shows this as one of the required attachments to an application for the exemption:

This old AutoWeek article provides similar information:

Autoweek Show and Go

>8^)
ER

 

Thanks for the clarification, Erik. That explains things a little better now. I'm assuming the Mantide meets EPA emissions standards because the ZR1 does?