For years, the city of Markham, in the north end of Toronto has been known as a scary place to drive. With it’s very high percentage of Asian Canadian drivers, it is a community of expensive import cars that all sport road rash of some sort or another. Of course over the years, this phenomenon has been the root of many bad driver jokes. Personally, I’ve always found it rather amusing, rather than frightening. It’s incredible to see a little old lady who can barely see over the dash crash into something at 20 kmh, in a 50 zone.

This weekend we’ve had the opportunity to spend a couple of days on the other site of Toronto in the whopping big city of Brampton. Known by locals as Bramladesh, this place is frightening. The Holiday Inn is adjacent to the Bramalea City Center shopping mall. This mall is the size of a small city, so when I went to pick up some poolside beverages from the store on the other side of the mall I drove. Without a word of a lie, it took me almost 20 minutes to navigate the parking lot, while avoiding all the impending collisions. Unlike the Markham crowd, the driver’s here are gunning it across the parking lot and fighting to see who can be first across the many intersections. I could have walked faster, but then I wouldn’t have a steel cocoon protecting me. This is almost as bad as driving in Jamaica!

You could call this an Ultimate Road Trip. Karen Catchpole and Eric Mohl have put all their stuff into storage and plopped their butts into a 2006 Chevy Silverado Pick-up to set off on an adventure. The husband and wife team plan to spend the next three years travelling 70,000 miles through North, South and Central America, hitting 23 countries along the way. Just for fun (or to pay the bills!) they will give the world updates in their travel log. They are planning the visit the many natural parks, natural preserves and wildlife parks that are found along the way. I can’t wait to see how many mini golf courses they find. They are also planning to visit all the Dinky Dots. What’s up with that?

At the risk of beginning to look like a single marque blog, here I go showing off more Elise shots. Mark Vicuna from OZ pointed me towards his blog, where he’s got pics and videos of his Elise race car. Very cool. I just wish he was in Canada so I could hit him up for some seat time!

It’s Thursday, which means that we’re all anxiously awaiting tomorrow’s Carnival of Cars reviews by Mark Tapscott. Each week he slaves away to ensure that all the car blogs get their few moments of glory & we all appreciate the effort.

Chris over at My Lotus elise has been at it again. This time he’s taken his camera and the Elise and invaded a cemetary for some bright and cheerful shots.

After a rainfall, Chris also managed to catch some great reflections.

There seems to be some interesting action over in the Jeep camp lately and I can’t wait to see the end results. Perhaps the biggest news is that they’ve finally come to grips with some branding issues that have gone on for years.

Years ago, the Jeep marketing boys in the US decided that the CJ should become the Wrangler. Up here in Canada, they continued to sell the truck with the CJ name. Later versions were sold up here as the YJ & more recently the TJ. Along with the announcement of the 2007 Wrangler Unlimited, we heard that the new model would be called Wrangler north of the border as well.

I must admit that I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for the Jeep since I was a kid. Maybe it’s the memory of a neighbour cruising around town in an early Denim Edition with the top off, or maybe just the cool factor of a vehicle with removable doors and a folding windshield. Even when I worked in a Chrysler/Jeep dealership in the early Nineties, the cool factor of the YJ stood out more than the shoddy quality. I wanted one then & to be honest I still want one. That’s right, I would risk buying a piece of domestic crap because of the Jeep cool factor.

Enter the 2007 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. Forget all the other new Jeep models that claim to be be “trail rated”. This is the machine with the heritage. It has the tradional look, complete with the removable hard top and the off road capability. But wait…there is something new here. For the first time, a Wrangler comes with 4 doors. The first pictures I saw were just a teaser, showing me a rear seat with a 60/40 split, hinting at a 3 passenger rear seat. Not until I saw the full specs did I believe for certain. A real Jeep that seats 5! At last, a true off road icon with a bit of towing capacity to make up for the lack of space. A vehicle that a family can really take to camp sites off the beaten path.

I’m not going to bother writing about all the techie specs in The Garage for now. Look around some of our links and you’ll find all the info you might want. The Garage is more interested in the beginning of a new era for an icon.

Ok, so this isn’t automotive at all, but what could be cooler than a bike chain beer opener? It’s definately something cool to have in The Garage hanging from the beer fridge. Thanks to Arieanna for turning us on to this device that’s available from ELSEWARES for only 12 bucks! Check out foodies for another wicked bike reject for the home.

After a full three hours of running around yesterday afternoon, we arrived at the NASCAR Speedpark at Vaughan Mills. We actually reached the mall about 2 minutes after the display ended, which turned out to be a good thing, as we got to see a little bit more than most people did. Just like the Camaro concept that Alex wrote about, these things are runners!

Sally Carrera really is based on a Porsche chassis, with stock appearing brakes & rear end body work. The engine sounds like a stock flat six. Lightning Mcqueen is a “real” little cartoon race car, complete with that race car sound, or so the kids thought. In reality, it sounds like an untuned small block, breathing through mildly muffled side pipes, but at least it gets the idea across. If you look closely, you can even see a full roll cage inside. The racing slicks are cartoonishly large, so I’m not sure if it would be able to do much other than muddle around a parking lot.

We got to see both cars loaded into Mack the transport truck and the kids thought it was pretty cool that they travelled in a real race car hauler. The fact that my kids know what a real race car hauler looks like just shows how well I’ve corrupted them.

The lady who was representing the Toronto based promo company heard that we had driven a while to get there and graciously offered to mail us a set of free movie passes. When she asked how we heard about the display, I told her about The Garage and that I had seen it on the Pixar blog. She then said she would also be sending off some swag for the kids. The Garage is hardly a media outlet, but we’re not proud…bring on the payola!! Besides, it’s all for the kids right?

See more pics of Lightning, Sally and Mac in the gallery

The Cars Tour is coming to the Nascar Speedpark at Vaughn Mills Mall in the Toronto area today from 3 till 7. It looks like we’ll leave work a bit early & load the kids into the car to check out the cool little beasts. The stupid thing is that I’m probably more excited than the kids will be!

I’ll post more pics tonight.

Over the weekend, a bunch of blogs wrote about the upcoming Car’s Road Trip sponsored by State Farm. I was excited this morning when I read that the tour was coming to Toronto. It was a bit shocking to realize that they are supposed to be in town TODAY. Of course there is no listing of where in Toronto, just that they are in Toronto on April 24.

Now it seems I’ll be spending the day trying to locate Lightning Mcqueen & Sally Carrera.