Local attorney and car enthusiast Tim Lappen recently scored the gig of a lifetime: test driving and reviewing a $2.5 million Bugatti roadster.
This was no brief spin in some hotel parking lot: Lappen was the only American reviewer who got to take the car on back-country roads in Provence in France and then on a nearby test track, where he hit a top speed of 202 miles an hour.
“It was an awesome experience,” he said. “I got to drive the ultimate car on the ultimate race track in the ultimate part of the world.”
For the 66-year-old Lappen, the test drive in early May was a crowning experience in a lifetime love affair with luxury cars. He scored this triumph by being in the right place at the right time – and being willing to drop everything when the opportunity came up.
Years ago, Lappen, who chairs the family office law group at Century City law firm Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell, took up a side job as an auto reviewer for the L.A. edition of Haute Living, a luxury lifestyle magazine. Late last month, the public relations folks at European luxury car maker Bugatti invited him to test drive their top-of-the-line model: the 1,200-horsepower Grand Sport Vitesse roadster, with a top speed that has been clocked at 268 miles an hour.
Five international reviewers were invited; Lappen was the only American among them. He hastily rescheduled several meetings he had at Jeffer Mangels and flew off to France.
Lappen, who regularly tools around Los Angeles in an all-electric BMW, has other impressive cars lined up for future reviews, including a Rolls-Royce Wraith.
But for him, nothing will ever top his Bugatti experience.
“It’s so incomparable to anything else I’ve driven,” he said. “I was in the presence of true greatness.”
Talk Turkey
Born and raised in the Midwest, Sam Foster has gone hunting more times than he can count. But when the 69-year-old executive vice president of the El Segundo office of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. traveled to Duncan, Okla., last month for the state’s annual Lieutenant Governor Turkey Hunt, he said it was one of the most magical experiences he’s ever had.
The day started at 4:30 a.m. He traveled with his hosts, a father and son, to a nearby farm where they settled among the trees at the bottom of a hill. Foster, dressed in camouflage, sat with his back against a tree for hours, watching the stars and waiting for the sun to rise. With the first rays of light, he saw two big male turkeys drop out of a grove at the top of the hill about 200 yards in front of him. For the next 20 minutes, one of his hosts made turkey calls, beckoning the birds. The turkeys tottered slowly down the hill, until they were about 30 yards away. Foster took aim, making special care to kill the turkey with one clean shot to the head.
“One strutted toward me and the other extended its head tall, like it was saying, ‘Choose me.’ So I did,” he said.
He said the experience watching the birds come toward him was like poetry.
“I’m an ex-marine. I enjoy hunting, but it doesn’t normally make my heart beat too fast,” he said. “By the time the birds (made their way down the hill), my heart was beating like I had just fallen in love.”
Staff reporters Howard Fine and Bethany Firnhaber contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].
