A few months ago, a good friend asked me if I’d be interested in doing a summer road trip to explore some of Colorado’s best driving roads. His mission was defined by a few criteria: cover as many of Colorado’s backroads in a three-day footprint as possible, avoid interstates wherever feasible, and keep the group small and nimble. We mused over several subsequent conversations about the best route to strike a balance between amazing roads and avoiding summer tourist crowds. Our dates, the weekend after July 4th, wouldn’t help the latter. As a weekday recreator with an aversion to crowds, I was cynical, but getting to drive some fantastic roads with a good group of friends, old and new, would be worth it.
But I had a much bigger problem…
My aversion to crowds wouldn’t matter if I had no car to drive. Over the last year, as I’ve struggled to keep the business alive, the M Coupe has lived in a probably-needs-to-be-sold purgatory. It’ll be a hard Band-Aid to rip off, but before I’m ready to rip, I’ve been slowly putting it back into tastefully modified street trim from a TT/DE car. The shortlist included removing the previous protective film and covering every single panel in Xpel self-healing film, swapping out the Motion Control suspension with new TC Kline dual-adjustable coilovers, and putting street pads in the StopTech ST40 big brakes. Big shoutouts to Tyler White at Simply Clean Detail Studio for the protective film and Bob Tunnell and Bill Cray at Bimmerhaus for expediting a set of TC Klines in Z3M fitment. The icing on the cake (or roof) was adding the Packasport roof box from my old E46 wagon to add some grand touring flare.
Full Xpel PPF installation by Tyler White at Simply Clean Detail Studio.
To get the Clown Shoe ready, I installed new TC Kline dual adjustable coilovers, street brake pads and retrofitted the original seats.
BBS RGR wheels and a Packasport roof box were the finishing touches.
Inside, I removed the Sparco Evo seats and HMS harness bolt-in bar and retrofitted the stock seats. Other than occasional leather conditioning, the latter have been hermetically sealed in my hangar for the last decade. After that, the only thing left were wheels. I had the original Style 40 wheels refinished in the correct Chrome Shadow several years ago (before EPA restrictions made such endeavors very difficult). It seemed best to leave these sealed and on the shelf. The M3 Lightweight race car had become the new owner of multiple sets of Apex track wheels, but I wanted something a little more BBS-ish for the Clown Shoe. A Facebook marketplace score resulted in a cheap set of 17-inch staggered BBS RGRs that I had refinished with red center caps. In typical fashion, I finished at midnight hour the night before our departure—except for the rear tires that had not been delivered and an alignment.
We met the next morning for an early departure, but I was still waiting for rear tires and an alignment (the LTW donated its rear street tires and wheels in the meantime).
With 400 miles ahead of them, the boys didn’t have time to wait!
After a few hours of sleep, I mounted the stock Lightweight wheels on the rear of the M Coupe, found the largest coffee available in the morning twilight, and headed to my friend’s driveway for the departure rendezvous. As the cars (and their owners) trickled in, we soon had an eclectic mix of humans and autos. The list included an extremely rare NA2 Acura NSX coupe, an E36 M3 sedan, and a late-model Nissan GT-R. A Lexus convertible would also join the group for the first day. Everyone had a co-driver except for me, which was probably best as I only inconvenienced myself leaving the group to align my car and mount my rear tires. After introductions and plentiful compliments of each other’s cars, it was business time, as the group had a 400-mile day ahead of them (I would catch up in time for dinner).
The finished rendition looked the part for a Colorado road trip!
Gustavo supervised loading up my gear and miniature remote control bush plane.
After finishing the final items, the Clown Shoe’s shooting brake rear hatch area swallowed all of my kit: a jack, tool roll, cooler, dry food, and duffel bag—once I extracted Gustavo the cat, of course! Upstairs, the roof box hauled an air mattress, pillows, and the most essential piece of equipment, a small remote control bush plane. Time was of the essence; every minute I delayed could compound exponentially as, unlike the rest of the group, I would be slogging up Interstate 70 on a Friday afternoon. Indeed, once I was underway, the traffic was soul-crushing, not relinquishing its grasp until many hours later when I broke free in Glenwood Canyon. I tempered my frustration by finding gratitude to be back in the Clown Shoe under more civilized terms. The hard edges from spending the better part of a decade as a track car were now comfortable and tolerable in normal driving conditions. The I-70 corridor scenery wasn’t too bad either.
It took until McClure Pass before I finally found some solution, but the quiet was soul-cleansing.
At Glenwood Springs, I turned south off the interstate, then west, following the Crystal River upstream through the historic quarrying hamlets of Redstone and Marble and backtracking to McClure Pass. Along the way, I stopped for a dip at Penny Hot Springs, a trickling warm water drainage that spills into the frigid water of the Crystal River. As inviting as the hot springs were, that aversion to crowds got me when the thought of rubbing elbows (and God knows what other body parts) with a dozen of my new friends beckoning me to join in the tightly packed pools just didn’t seem that appealing. I wished them a pleasant soak and pressed on to the real treat of the day, the western side of McClure Pass. Here, traffic thinned considerably as the road meandered down the winding shoulders of the Muddy Creek drainage. Maybe it was delirium catching up with me, but I finally breathed a sigh of relief as the golden-hour sun painted the aspen groves in rich, shimmering light. I savored the moment and reacquainted with my old friend, the car that started the madness of my BMW obsession some two decades earlier.
What could wrap up a long day’s drive better than a private Michelin Star chef dinner at Rebecca Corona’s Grapevine Gallery in Paonia? Nothing…
My accommodations for the evening.
I rolled into the town of Paonia just in time to catch up with the group, which had assembled at the Grapevine Gallery for a private dinner of Michelin-starred cuisine. While the exquisite food was probably lost on my simple palate, the history of 124 years of Edouard and Andre Michelin’s original guidebook to promote auto-tourism and, in turn, sell more tires was not—especially considering the fresh Michelin tires I had mounted that morning! The Grapevine Gallery, owned by Rebecca Corona, features the work of local and distant artists with a Western flare that is ideally suited to Paonia’s eccentric vibe. After dinner, we settled into our accommodations, a hunting outfitter’s lodge up the valley. I set up the air mattress under a massive ten-pointer, but saved enough energy for a quick fly of the miniature bush plane before drifting off to sleep.
Our group posted up on the rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison.
In the morning, we bid farewell to Paonia with an exceptional coffee-shop breakfast and ventured southbound. Our route would take us along the eastern rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison (one of our nation’s youngest National Parks). The canyon walls are so steep that sections at the bottom only receive half an hour of sunlight per day. The road above the rim is not for the faint of heart, and thanks to being relatively remote, it was wonderfully devoid of traffic. The M Coupe was in its element, carving up apexes like a feisty heeler herding disgruntled sheep in from pasture.
The Million Dollar Highway cuts along the steep slopes above the town of Ouray.
As we climbed higher, the scenery only got better.
From the Black Canyon, we hopscotched to the mountain town of Ouray, known as the Switzerland of America. Nestled in a box canyon where the Uncompahgre River flows out of the San Juan Mountains, Ouray is always worth a stop—except for mid-day on a Saturday the weekend after the 4th of July. The crowds were too thick to even warrant a stop at Mouse’s Coffee Shop for one of their famous scrap cookies. Next time… We pressed on climbing up the Million Dollar Highway in moderate traffic, driving at a leisurely pace and enjoying spectacular views. The latter were easy to come by, with mere inches separating the edge of the asphalt from the edge of the cliff in places.
Godzilla quietly resists the temptation to “Godzilla” the quiet mountain town of Silverton.
The view in the rearview mirror never got old.
A much-needed stop for a swim in the Animas River.
And a spot of shade to take in the moment.
We stopped for lunch in the historic mining town of Silverton and then enjoyed more passing lanes and thinner traffic on the descent down to Durango. But only after icing our bones in a favorite swimming hole on the Animas River upstream of town. At first contact, the water was painfully cold but worth suffering for as the pain gave way to pure refreshment. I could have stayed all day, but we still had nearly 200 miles ahead of us as we looped through Durango, Pagosa Springs, and South Fork on the other side of Wolf Creek Pass. The M Coupe swallowed the miles while always keeping me entertained and engaged. The view of 1990s Japanese and German radness filling my mirrors never got old, with the occasional glimpse of a modern-day Godzilla looming ominously in the background.
It took 800 miles to find “it,” but the journey was worth it!
At South Fork, we turned northwest for the finale of the drive, where we followed the headwaters of the Rio Grande River upstream deep into the eastern San Juans. The road paralleled one of Southwest Colorado’s many abandoned narrow-gauge railroads that connected another historic mining town called Creede to larger-gauge mainlines in the San Luis Valley. Our route took us around the southern flank of the Bristol Head and turned north, leaving the upper Rio Grande drainage and climbing through vast aspen groves to Spring Creek Pass. Along the way, we finally found the hidden treasure that we had been searching for—a ribbon of desolate tarmac painted harmoniously onto the landscape that was blissfully absent of summer crowds. The deeper we climbed into the mountains, the more the road enticed us. Our cars came alive, growling, revving, and screeching their way up the pass. The radios were filled with superlatives until we suffered the only mechanical of the trip when Godzilla needed a brief reprieve to cool its turbos. Looking out over the Weminuche Wilderness to the southwest, as our cars ticked themselves cool, we took in the scene and breathed a collective sigh of mission accomplished.
Pulling into Lake City, Colorado.
Our cabin was rustic, and the barbecue was fantastic.
The sun followed our trajectory down to the horizon as we descended Slumgullion Pass into Lake City, where we had reserved a rustic cabin along Henson Creek to stay in for the night. Satiated from an exceptional day in the saddle—no doubt, aided with the help of barbeque from Sportsman’s BBQ Station—we finished the trip with a hike to Crooke Falls.
My future with the M Coupe remains uncertain, but for this trip, that would be a future problem. Living in the moment, it was good to get reacquainted with the car that started my BMW obsession. I was reminded that these cars are nothing more than tools for an experience—and that even a crowd-leery curmudgeon like myself can find an empty road on a Colorado weekend if you are willing to work hard enough. If this were to be my final chapter with the Clown Shoe, I couldn’t think of a better send-off, which was only made better by the company of good friends, new and old.—Alex McCulloch
We wrapped the day with a twilight hike on the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River.
