Welcome to the fruits of my labor (very fast fruits)!
I am a third-generation Los Angeleno so I have cars in my blood and on my brain. I grew up going to (and sometimes racing at) San Fernando Valley Raceway and Lyons Drag Strip (Long Beach) as well as Ascot Park (the dirt track in Torrance). I drove anything that I could get the keys to (and some which I figured out how to hot-wire – all with the owners’ permission, of course). When I was at Palisades High School (Pacific Palisades – West Los Angeles), I wrote the “Car of the Week” column (1964-1965), following in the footsteps (driving shoes?) of my older brother, who had written that column at University High School some four years before me. Some weeks I wrote about my friends’ cars but other times I was able to talk local dealers out of giving me a car for a few hours. Talk about a different time in the world! And what dealers cooperated? How about borrowing GTOs, Olds 442s, Buick GSs and more? I also got to drive (with the rep) a Mustang GT350 at the Shelby headquarters near LA Airport and was able to interview the owners of other unusual cars, like the Chrysler turbine car. I even met and wrote about Craig Breedlove, who had just broken the land-speed record at Bonneville in his “Spirit of America”. Fun times!
Flash forward a few (several?) decades and I now work as an attorney with a specialty in representing family offices worldwide and also handle legal matters involving luxury homes (I am the founder and chairman of both my law firm’s Family Office Group and our Luxury Home Group). I also am a member of my law firm’s Motor Vehicle Group. Many of my clients (and friends and other contacts) have amazing car collections and I occasionally get to drive some of their cars, especially when I help a client buy something special. For example, in the last few years, I have driven most of the superfast models made by Bugatti (a few times!), Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Audi, Aston Martin, McLaren, Pagani, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Hummer EV and more. I have participated in track days with Bugatti, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Bentley and Cadillac (yes, a Cadillac track day, with their Corvette- powered CTS-V).
As a member of the Checkered Flag 200 (the top support group of The Petersen Automotive Museum), I participate in events about a dozen times a year. We organize or attend car shows, rallys, garage tours and more. It’s great group of people and it’s wonderful to support one of the top motor vehicle museums in the world.
I also am in to motorcycles (I have owned a slew of Triumph Bonnevilles, most recently a T140E, which I owned for over 35 years), a 1969 (first-year) Honda 750 and a BMW R1100RS sports-touring bike. And I am a self-trained mechanic (cars and bikes) and worked as a boat mechanic before going to college. In these articles, my only nod to my motorcycling interests is the article on four superbikes — that was a really fun one to research!
In 2012, I became the Fine Autos Editor of Haute Living, Haute Time and Haute Residence magazines (and online) and it’s been a fantastic ride (all puns intended) and I am extremely grateful to the Publishers, Seth Semilof and Kamal Hotchandani, as well as the San Francisco edition’s Owner and Publisher, Olivia Hsu Decker, for their trust and confidence in me for so many years. And, in 2020, I became the Fine Autos Editor for the Beverly Hills Courier newspaper and magazine, and I am very grateful to publishers Lisa Bloch and John Bendheim for the privilege of working with them both.
In general, manufacturers drop their vehicles at my Southern California home and leave them for a week. I drive them wherever I am going during that period (the Bentley Bentayga is a fantastic grocery getter; the McLaren 675LT may not be the best choice for Home Depot runs). A few times a year, the manufacturers fly me somewhere to experience their vehicles in special environments — Bentleys in Scotland, Lamborghinis in and around Park City then to Jackson, Rolls- Royce Cullinan on the ski slopes of Jackson Hole, Bentleys in Monaco and the South of France and more. The highlight to date: spending about a week with Bugatti in France, driving their Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse on the roads around Provence and then on the track (Circuit Paul Ricard at over 200 MPH!) and then visiting the factory in Molsheim. First runner-up: driving the Bugatti Chiron on one leg of the Los Angeles-to-Pebble Beach run a few months ago — 2.5 hours of seat time in a 1,500HP car is an incredible experience! (The frosting on that cake? My co-pilot was Andy Wallace, a wonderful human being who holds the world record of over 300 MPH in a production car (a Bugatti, of course).) And I must mention the Pagani Huayra on the streets around Beverly Hills. I am a very lucky man indeed especially because, with rare exception, I only write about what I’ve actually spent time driving.
These articles represent selections from the portfolio of my work since 2012. I hope that my delight — of all things automotive and of writing — comes through to you.
Tim Lappen
June, 2022
THE 2024 FERRARI SF90 IS THE QUICKEST-ACCELERATING ROAD-GOING Ferrari ever produced. Let that sink in for a moment. It is Ferrari's first full-production hybrid plug-in ever. Ferraris are known for performance, of course, and some are known for really prodigious... pricing....
YOU LIKELY NOTICED THAT ASTON MARTIN HAS HAD A LONG RUN of cars starting with "DB." That designation came from David Brown, the owner of the company from 1947....
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"WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MERCEDES-BENZ?" The response to this question isn't a simple one, and will likely depend upon when someone's main experience with the brand occurred....
AT AN ELEGANT RECEPTION HIGH IN THE HILLS OVERLOOKING the Pacific Ocean and Pebble Beach Golf Links, La Rose Noire glided up the driveway to take its place in front of a wall of gorgeous dark red roses featuring a gold 'RR" emblem in the middle, while Torsten Müller-Otvös, Rolls-Royce's CEO, introduced the brand's latest creation....
MASERATI WAS FOUNDED IN 1914 — LONG BEFORE MANY OF ITS eventual competitors, such as Jaguar, Ferrari, Porsche, and certainly Lamborghini — and its roots are with great racing machines and sports cars released through the 1960s....
Twenty years ago, Peninsula Hotel Group Chairman as well as car collector Sir Michael Kadoorie started The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering, at his picturesque golf resort hotel The Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley....
STEALTH. THAT'S AN INTERESTING WORD TO USE FOR AN ULTRA-LUXURY ROLLS-ROYCE, BUT LET ME FINISH. I use the term advisedly as this is a car that, while gorgeous and even imposing to look at, is almost silent when underway, and, due to its very aerodynamic design, it even slices quietly through the air....
RUMOR HAS IT THAT SPORTS CARS WITH CONVERTIBLE TOPS ARE CALLED “spiders” (or “spyders”) because the eight wooden stays that held open the fabric top on historic convertibles seemed to resemble the eight legs on an arachnid. Amazingly, that moniker has stuck around for decades, even when an octopede insect is hardly the image that marketing suits want to have pop up when one thinks of a svelte grand touring car — they would prefer that the car generate romantic notions of carving the roads along the Stelvio Pass or cruising the Amalfi Coast on the way to an epic rendezvous....
