Car Racing in Toluca

It was a perfect Saturday morning in Toluca. It started really early for me, around 5AM. To get to Toluca, we hopped on a chartered jet from GDL for the 50-minute flight.

Toluca, the capital of the state of Mexico, is an up-and-coming city about 1 hour’s drive from Mexico City. The area is surrounded by beautiful green mountains, and more famously, Toluca is home to the Nevado volcano, aptly named after the snow covering it. From the feel of it, Toluca has the perfect weather conditions. There was no time to explore though. The trip was a one day jaunt with fun things to do.

The occasion?

The SAAB dealership in GDL, where I usually take Sam, was part of an event hosted by General Motors to showcase the 2008 models of their line of sporty cars. This event took place at a car racetrack and they promised a day of fun.

I, however, felt slightly skeptical imagining that we’d be cornered on the plane by eager salespeople and that during the event they would try to get to yes before the end of the day. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. It truly was a fun day with no arm-twisting pitches to get you to buy a new car.

From the airport, the Pegaso racetrack was a 15-minute bus drive away. Upon arrival, we registered and went in a big tent where we had to listen to the only sales pitch of the day. It was actually interesting and quite exciting to hear the head of the GM luxury line in Mexico talk about all that is in store for the future. The speech was short and sweet and we were introduced to the SAAB Performance Team – three pilots flown in from Sweden who would be performing some cool stunts for us in what they swore were “normal” SAAB 9-3’s. Imagine that being your job…bring it on, I say!

The show was spectacular! I have no desire to pull any of those stunts in my car but I guess my testosterone kicked into high gear. I might’ve also been the loudest person in the entire racetrack as Mexicans are so, so reserved. Imagine me. Loud. Hooting and hollering at some Swedish pilots. Sigh.

One of the most impressive stunts was when they set up a short metal ramp in the middle of the track. The pilot drove up the ramp so that one set of wheels (on the side) was on the ground and the other set up the ramp. From there the car stayed on its side wheels for what seemed to me like *forever*. Yup, he went 300 meters like that and on his way back, his co-pilot crawled out the window (on the up side) to stand up holding a Mexican flag. By now, I wasn’t the only one cheering. It was really very cool.

After the show, we were treated to a free, fast-food style lunch of burgers and fries. After lunch, we stood in line for like 30 minutes to get to drive one of the cars around the track. This was also a lot of fun since people drove in packs of five cars, lead by a professional pilot in the front car who gave us instructions via a radio system wired into the car. The most exciting part was keeping up with the rest of the pack as not to fall behind. There were some tricky curves, by the way.

As many of my friends know, it doesn’t take much for me to have a good time. So what else was in store? Well, they also had demos of Segway Personal Transporters. That was also so much fun! They gave us a quick tutorial and off we went! I actually found the ride on the Segway quite relaxing, probably because the perfect weather and beautiful sorroundings. To kill time until the flight back home, I went for several rides on the Segway getting to test drive the different models they had…one of them seemed perfect for rough terrains. I later found out that GM and Segway have some sort of future joint development deal.

The return home was uneventful and they treated us to unlimited drinks on the flight. Everyone seemed charged up from the excitement of the day and all shyness went away as the flight attendants rolled by their fully stocked carts. I settled on vodka and grapefruit soda. It was lovely!

Apart from all the fun, the best part of the trip not being hassled to buy a USD $40K car just like that! They haven’t called to follow up either. OK, I’m happy about that BUT, how are they going to recoup the expense of this event? Maybe a little prodding would be OK, after all. I almost feel guilty for having gotten something as cool as this for FREE????