A few more from the brief outing, these in an attempt to overcome the weird lighting conditions.

Leaving the Porsche exhibit behind, I found a number of other distractions.  Said to be the show’s most valuable individual vehicles, a Bugatti Veyron and a 1955 M-B 300SL made an appearance.  The former seemed to be the crowd favorite, but the latter was mine.

A number of local speed shops and performance houses weighed in, showing delicacies like tuner Aston-Martins, Jaguar F-types, AMGs, several GTRs in both street and race tune, Subaru rally cars, vintage racing machines representing the worlds of drag racing, SCCA competition, killer bikes of all descriptions and good old fashioned hot rods.  Not to mention a matte black Bentley and a slammed Rolls.  Time was precious and I hardly gave the great number of trucks (except for the Land Rover exhibit) and most Detroit stuff a second glance.  (Call me a biased snob, okay.)

My biggest disappointment was the no-show of any Alfa-Romeo 4C representation.

Another car made my favorites list as a potential “affordable” practical driver and 944 stablemate — the Golf GTI.  I must drive one soon as it looked good up close, felt good in static mode behind the wheel, and didn’t seem as cheaply put together as many others in that pricing spectrum.  And the Audis appealed, even the A3.  So, herewith …

And stay tuned for more …

Sneaking off for a couple of hours during a trip to visit our daughter — on my wife’s birthday, yet — I got some face time with Portland’s annual automotive marketing extravaganza.

Shall we start with Porsche?

Returning to this venue after an absence of a few years, Porsche showed up with a Boxster S, a Cayman GTS, a 911 Turbo S, a Cayenne and a Macan S.  I’m not a fan of the Cayenne, and I was surprised to find that the Macan was surprisingly appealing to me in my first encounter.  But it was the Cayman that would make my fantasy shopping list, from all of them.  However, the GTS’ optioned-out price tag of just under $100K had me thinking in terms of how many 944s, nicely rebuilt at that, such a sum would get me.

Most disappointing of all was the difficult lighting scenario.  I never could get the white balance right, with such strange mixed lighting with three distinct color temperatures in play at once.  Anyway, a little documentation, with more to follow:

A photograph from a time long past …