By the way I finally got my Xbox Live Gold account up and running, and drove around Oahu last night in Free Ride mode watching other live players crash into traffic and drive into lakes. It was hella fun.

One dude in a Corvette tried to catch my Ascari, and he was matching my speed pretty well as I shot through the middle of the urban area downtown. Then I decided to reel him in a bit, let him get closer and then firewalled the brakes as I pitched her into a turn. I made it through and the Vette guy flattened his car into a skyscraper. He turned around after that.

..So I bought a McLaren F1 (big surprise, eh?). I spent a few minutes debating whether to get the base McLaren F1 or the F1 GTR; in the end I decided I wanted some money left over (at $1.5 million, the GTR would have completely wiped me out) so I “opted” for the base F1.

You need to get that car. It’s a lot of fun. And fast, too. =P

I’ll probably end up trying the Millionaire’s Challenge again tomorrow; with my souped-up Enzo, I should hopefully be able to take it easily.

After taking the prize, of course I went and bought an Enzo right away.

I’ve actually run most of my races thus far sans tuning — for the most part that was because I hadn’t run across the tuner shops for my non-Japanese cars yet. So I guess I’m in decent shape if I’ve been able to get this far without abusing the tuner shops so much.

I’ve tuned up some of my cars (Sky, Trans Am, GTO, Mustang) but haven’t gotten around to doing them all yet…I typically wait until I have trouble with some race and then I go for it.

My Enzo now tops out at 230+ MPH (858 HP!). Of course, it cost nearly $300K to get the top-end performance package on it. I’ve also upgraded my Z06, GTO, Trans Am, and GT500.

It’s all about doing the piddly “no restrictions” races (or even the class races) and wiping the floor with everyone else because you’ve tuned your car up.

Yeah, I noticed that about the back roads being super crowded. It’s like everybody’s going to the beach at the same exact moment. I can’t tell you how many times I had to restart the Shelby GR1 car delivery mission because PEOPLE. KEPT. CHANGING. LANES. IN FRONT OF ME. And of course, I will accept nothing less than perfect when delivering a car…otherwise you’re just throwing money away!

I haven’t actually tried the “150 MPH in reverse” thing but I heard about it on the forums, it’s apparently one of the bugs that will be fixed in the official patch that Atari is working on.

I was wondering if you had bought a bike yet…based on my limited experience with them during the TDU demo a few weeks before the game’s release, they are extremely hard to control. Gonna take some getting used to, indeed.

I’ve been slowly adding to my car collection as well. I now own an AC Cobra, the Lotus Espirit V8, a Nismo 350Z…and a Kawasaki bike. Yep, I got a bike. Hoo boy…will that take getting some used to!

I was actually going to suggest that the game designers studied the driving habits of Florida fogies when they made the game, but didn’t. Heh. I can’t believe the sheer stupidity of some of the drivers — like the idiots who STOP THEIR CAR in order to change lanes. AGH. I keep hitting so many people during races it isn’t funny, which in turn gets the cops on your butt. It also makes for much teeth-gnashing when I’m trying to do perfect model/car/whatever deliveries. And it always seems that the two-lane back roads are always more crowded than, say, the freeways. Funny that.

Yep, the title is an old Elvis Costello song (which is currently in rotation in my custom Test Drive radio playlist). And what’s this about the Ferrari going 150 in reverse?!? That’s wild. Now I’m gonna go buy a Ferrari 288 just so I can go that fast in reverse.

Over the weekend I finally made it to 10-car collector status by adding a Lambo Murcielago, a Ferrari 575M and 288 GTO (Magnum P.I.! Woo!), an Ascari KZ1 and a Saleen S281E Extreme Mustang. Bought a third house way out in the mountains, the one with only one twisty road leading to it that you have to drive on for miles.

Hee, I see you beat me to the punch with the “realistic crappy driver A.I.!” feature of the game; I was gonna make a post about that aspect too. I think they must have come to Florida and done an extensive study of driving habits, then digitized the “fogey driving” model. The longest race I’ve done so far was the “Big Challege” (about 35 miles) and I could not believe how many times I ran into people. Fortunately I was still able to hit the finish line well within the target time, but it’s unreal the way people drive.

Actually, that’s the wrong word. It’s all too real. One time I came flying up on some SUV in the right lane of a two-lane highway, I think I was in the Z06 at the time. I made a move to pass him and suddenly he cuts into the left lane, just in time for me to see that he himself is passing some fogey who’s doing about 10 MPH. WHAM, I hit the fogey’s car. So hard, in fact, that for the next several seconds I saw spinning tires and bumper covers flying through the air and bouncing off the road — in front of me as I continued blasting down the highway.

So, the title of this post…Elvis Costello, right? At first I thought you were talking about the actual bug wherein the Ferrari 288 can reach 150 miles an hour in reverse…