Since Las Vegas is only a hop, skip and a full-throttle jump away from Santa Monica, I take the highway rather than the skyway this time around to present the prize-winning check to August's Carster of the Month, Racrette! The Carster Subie STI is still so brand-new that I have to take it a little bit easy on the straight-aways, but it handles surprisingly well at 100+ mph, especially when there's a Porsche Carrera in the lead and I'm coasting along in the tail wind.
I catch up with April (Racerette) on a blazing hot Vegas Saturday morning, which teaches me two lessons: Vegas in early September is unpleasantly hot, and the bright sunlight tends to ruin any attempt at decent photography, so here's my advice to all of you - don't ever do a photo-shoot at midday in 100+ degree weather. 'Nuff said.
We meet up at the local In-N-Out burger joint, a seeming fixture of American Car Culture. April brings along her husband and fellow Carster member, Shane, plus a few of their Vegas Carster friends who are good enough to show up in their rides and lend support to the event -- and everyone has backed their cars into adjacent parking spots, just like it's a regular old meet!
From there, we hightail it on over to an empty lot in the business district for the actual photo shoot, and this is where April shows her grit and spirit as a true Carster of the Month winner, enthusiastically showing off her winning car in the Vegas heat without once losing the smile on her face. You can tell that she absolutely loves her Honda Civic. She has a story about every modification, including her custom CARSTER stickers and her RACERETTE sticker (and yes, Carster will be getting stickers made ASAP). I was even taken in by her vinyl overlay for what I'd assumed was a trick custom two-tone color scheme. She insists her Civic is not a show car, but rather a racecar, pointing out where she's ripped out the entire back seat to lighten the overall load - but for a race car, this beast is sure clean.
She explains that she's been working hard at getting the car ready for the photo shoot - she's just replaced the turbo and is excited to get behind the wheel to put it through its paces, but her husband Shane beats her to it and gives us a show before she can stop him, ripping through the business park and offering us all a taste of what the Racerette Mobile can do. We then head back to In-N-Out for some lunch and quality social time and then I'm off to prepare for the evening at Hot Import Nights, where I will officially present April with her check in front of a crowd of 10,000 car nuts.
It's like a crazy dream come true.
Fast forward to 8:00PM, we're all backstage getting our groove on for the presentation. The crowd is whipped into an enthusiastic mood by a group of gorgeous UK dancers strutting their stuff, and suddenly we're on! We walk out and it's a blur of bright lights, applause and a roar of public adulation - ah, yes, I knew there was a reason why I like this job. We throw Carster t-shirts into the audience, April is presented with her big Carster check to the delight of everyone in attendance, and it all goes great!
Special thanks to everyone that joined me for the weekend and helped out - it was really good to meet April and the other Carster people in Vegas. Congratulations Racerette! Now go out and get yourself those Dior sandals you can't stop talking about.
-rc1320 Carster Co-Founder
