More and more friends with exotic cars are doing group drives.

Why? Because driving in a group of cars provides a visual and aural effect that can’t be beat. Here’s an example of a group drive in which I participated on Saturday, March 29th.

A group of four cars left Valencia at 10:00 a.m. The four cars were: a silver 360 Spider, a yellow Aston Martin V8 Vantage, a white Mercedes SL 55 AMG and a red Ferrari 328 GTS. What a great variety of colors! You can already get a visual, can’t you?

Driving South on the 405, a very loud car came up along the side of our group. It was a modified BMW M6 that was screaming loud. It turns out it was a car owned by the owner of a tuning company in the San Fernando Valley. After screaming names and numbers at each other, and comparing exhaust notes at high revs (within posted speed levels of course), he peeled off the freeway to go to work and we kept going.

We got on the 101 and headed toward Agoura. We had fun trying to stay in convoy, checking out the other exotics that were on the freeway (of note, a very nice white Porsche GT3), and otherwise having fun.

We then got on Kanan Road. This is a beautifully-sweeping and wide-turning road over the hills to PCH, with two sets of tunnels. And as you come over the hills, the Pacific Ocean comes into view. Just magnificent. Oh, and gunning the engines while going through the tunnels (again, staying within posted speed limits) was amazing. We were laughing like giddy kids in a candy store.

Once on PCH, it was a short drive to a restaurant at Zuma Beach. We had a nice brunch, and took some pictures of the cars with waves as the background. After brunch we headed North on PCH and got onto the 23. This road is not at all like Kanan Road. It’s a true twisty, turning canyon road with lots of hair-pins, blind turns, decreasing radius turns, etc. “Slow go” was the way we approached this road, but we had fun at the same time.

The group started breaking up once we hit Westlake Village. We hit some Porsche dealers to look at cars, and eventually separated completely. I headed back to the Santa Clarita Valley at about 4:00 p.m. solo, but the fun was not over.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a dark blue, brand new Audi R8. Hello?!

I had fun driving alongside this car, comparing exhaust notes with the driver, and we got off the freeway in Stevenson Ranch and exchanged contact information. He said, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” I totally agree.