It began with a dream drive in the company of the "mad scientist" of Aston Martin and continued with the haunting voice of a 24-year-old James Dean talking me through a gap in California's Temblor Mountains called Polonio Pass.
It carried on through Spain, New York City, Tennessee, Nevada, Arizona, Paris, California, the south of France, Japan, Germany, Baja California and back to Toronto for several trips into the world of cash-back incentives, showroom strategies and great year-end deals.
That was the year in cars for this space. The most interesting stories and best memories?
Seeing France in an Aston
Racing through the south of France in a slick, quarter-million-dollar Aston Martin DB9 was simply brilliant.
Almost as entertaining, though, was Aston Martin CEO Ulrich Bez. He is the passionate engineer and prime architect behind Aston's drive to relevance and profitability this century. Meet him and you will understand why I described him something of a mad scientist.
Bez, fastidiously sipping a single-malt whisky after a long day driving the DB9, promised Aston will make great cars and it must be profitable. It now looks as though he will, indeed, make good on that promise.
Bez predicted Aston will become "the world's most prestigious and exclusive sports car company."
The 450-horsepower DB9, with its massive V-12 engine, flashes from 0-100 km/h in just less than five seconds and has a top speed of 300 km/h. I described the car as "brilliant" and "gorgeous," with perfect 50-50 weight distribution. At high speeds, the BD9 is so stable that conversations at 160 km/h are normal and relaxed. And for a large coupe, it wonderfully nails the corners.
So that DB9 was my favourite car to test drive this year.
Mustang madness in Tennesee
At the Ford Mustang's 40th birthday party at Nashville Superspeedway, I met Pam Turner, an adorable car nut who was "dragged kicking and screaming" into the world of Ford Mustangs.
"But once they drugged me in," she said in soft South Carolina accent, "it became a monster."
Turner was one of about 100,000 Mustang owners and enthusiasts I met who spent several days celebrating not just a car, but a lifestyle and an American muscle car icon.
Beyond Turner, the story behind the original Mustang was a treat to hear from the very men who invented the car. A slightly frail, white-haired Joe Oros, the original Mustang's chief designer, said the plan was to create a car to appeal to performance enthusiasts and young female secretaries.
"I said from the beginning, it was to be designed so it would go to the ladies first," he told me. "Keep the ladies in mind because they decide what the men buy."
And then there was original Mustang product manager Don Frey, who talked about how he was tapped by then-Ford CEO Henry Ford II to oversee the Mustang project. "He [Ford] said, 'Sell it or your ass is out of here,' " said the plain-spoken engineer.
I relished hearing Frey describe how Ford's products back in the late 1950s and early '60s in some way made the Mustang possible.
"One day my kids said to me, 'Dad, your cars [at Ford] suck.' I told Hal Sperlich [a senior Ford boss who later went to Chrysler to help invent the minivan]. I told him and others that our cars suck and that we should do something about it. But you have to remember that, at that time, Ford was still reeling from the failure of the Edsel, and really wasn't anxious for a new car."
In fact, Ford's finance department vetoed funding for a sporty car four times before Henry Ford II approved it in a fifth meeting. The rest is history.
James Dean's Porsche redux
Just a week before Hollywood icon James Dean died at age 24 in a horrific crash while behind the wheel on Sept. 30, 1955, he made a recording in which he described his love of fast cars and the surprising lack of unpredictable danger associated with racing them.
He was driving his own Porsche 550 Spyder with the words "Little Bastard" written across the rear deck when he collided with a much larger car at an intersection near Polonio Pass, about 130 kilometres from Carmel, Calif. This spring, I drove the same route in a 50th Anniversary Boxster S, a limited edition sports car intended to pay tribute to the original Spyder.
