The wonderful E30 M3 looks absolutely pedestrian next to the Aston Martin DBS.

Growing up in Irvine. California, in the 1980s, I never thought of it as a “car town”.  True, a large number of automobile manufacturers had offices in the Irvine Spectrum business park, but the people of Irvine drove boring Caravans and Camrys.  With Draconian rules like the prohibition on leaving your garage door open for more than 30 minutes and a phalanx of inspectors measuring the height of your lawn grass, I hightailed it out of there as soon as I finished high school.

But then, somebody decided to start gathering cool cars at Mazda HQ’s parking lot every Saturday morning.  Of course, I had to go home and check it out.

The cars on display were definitely diverse.  American hot rods, exotic Italians, and quirky British cars were parked side-by-side.  However, I would venture to guesstimate that nearly a third of the cars were Porsches, Corvettes, and Mustangs.

This Abarth Porsche was perhaps the most unusual car at the show.  (Keep in mind there was a Spyker and a Mercedes Evo II there as well.)

The crowd was grilling the rep in a friendly and curious manner.  Will there be an STI version?  What can TRD bring to the table?  What about a turbo version?

 

See what I mean about diversity?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More pictures here.

 

Images source: Copyright 2012 Hooniverse/Jim Yu