I attended both the audi ride-n-drive and the zoom zoom event on saturday. they were both equivalent in terms of time spent waiting to drive and the attendents working. the audi event was definitely more posh, but i wasn't there for that, i just wanted to drive the cars. the alameda site is hella cool, so big props for that. my wife and i switched drivers with the cx-7, the mx-5, and the rx-8. all three were fun to drive, and i would have to say i flogged the hell out of them. squealing tires, check. so much so i bruised the side of my knee in the mx-5. that car is hella small. I nearly spun it, but rangled it in. definitely more torque than i thought, and on my short list for a future fun car.
the attendents didn't have one complaint when my wife and i drove, and we drove like auto-x idiots. so that sucks others had a crap time with the hired help. maybe the heat got to them?
i really didn't want to go, but after an hour and a half of good old fashion stress relief, i'm glad i did.
as far as the speed6 goes, mazda shoulda made it a rear driver with a turbo v6. the awd turbo 4 woulda made sense in the speed3. oh well. good times.

 

i went to one of these mazda zoom zoom events couple years ago and they were pretty easy on us. my friend chirped the tires on a 1-2 shift, i hit 10krpm on a downshift, and we all had high rpm clutch dumps on the start with the rx8. after that all of us packed the MPV (6 of us). i was driving and almost rolled it, didn't even get a word from them. it sucks that times have changed. if i was running these events i would make sure everyone has a great time, if not why even host one. that's just plain stupid of them.

 

I went yesterday. I was there at 8:30 so the lines were not that long. They also lost 3 MS6 on Saturday due to people not knowing how to drive a manual. Blew up 3 trannies.

I only had one run on the MS6 and did a 43.5 sec. run, but didn't want to stand in line again so I went to drive the MX5 where there were barely any lines unlike Saturday where they had a 2 hour wait for a 20 sec run. The CX-7's were fun, but too short where you had to be within 12 inches of the target cones. I only hit 7 of 12 targets. I didn't even see where the others were.


Oh yeah, I'm never going again. NO FREE FOOD SUCKS!

 

Signed up for Saturday at 9 a.m., did the Match Time and crappy CX challenges before heading over to the MS6 challenge. At 9:30-ish there was a pretty short line and they even raised the target time for the course from 41.5 to 43 seconds flat. Went out and somehow managed to push that pig of a car through the course at 42.1 seconds. Got back in line and did a 42.3, but hit some cones. My previous time held up though and I got fast time for the 10-11 a.m. hour. 50 points yay

All in all, I had a good time and felt it was reasonable well run. No one gave us any heat for pushing the RX8 and Miata over in the non-timed area, but there were also some asshats running at the same time that were managing to spin out automatic Miatas. The best thing to do is get there early, do everything you want to do quickly and get out of there. I'll definitely go again next year, as it's always nice to beat up on cars that aren't yours.

 

some asshat spun a manual rx-8. go figure. what's worse, someone spinning out in front of you, or catching up to someone because they were taking a serious leisurely stroll around a "zoom zoom" cone course, as happened to my pissed-off wife. someone will come on here and say there were some asshats taking out cones in the ms6 challenge causing me to wait in line longer. driving the miata at the same limit as the ms6 will result in a spin, auto or not. if you drive the miata like you're used to driving your wrx wagon, bad things will happen, and maybe some people don't realize that, or possibly don't care. spinning out is hella fun to some people, so is driving leisurely.

 

Lexus' events are awesome. Plus they cater them!

Free Food and Fun Cars FTW!

 

wow... a 42.1... nice man i wanted to try it sooo badly. Congrats on the good time though. mmmm.... lexus.... too bad mazda can't compete with those luxury companies.

ChiShi

 

It helped that they had pretty much the same course set up last year, although they let you drive the new Miata back then. Maybe next year they'll let us drive the Mazdaspeed 3