I got nicked in France.

I DIDN'T get nicked...

... driving past a cop car at 135 mph in my red '07 AM Vantage.

Southern California has a lot of wide-open roads. I'd had the car 3 months and needed to go about 400 miles one hot day so I opened it up on a long straight stretch of the Soutbound 57, in a big straight "dip" that stretched maybe 2 miles from the tip of one hill to another. I was going so fast I didn't even SEE the black and white till I passed it.

I crap my pants and lift off the gas... and he pulls over to help a motorist with his hood up and engine steaming.

65 mph the rest of the way.

If you want to spot a lot of nice parked exotics, go about 10 miles South of Las Vegas and sit by the highway. Lambos, Astons, Ferraris... they've either just won or just lost a lot of money and they can't help opening it up on that salt-flat-like stretch of the I-15. I once saw 2 Ferraris pulled over within a half mile of each other.

But me: 36 years driving and never a ticket. Knock leather.

I spent three weeks in L.A. and San Diego last year and didn't see a damn thing of interest other than an Alfa Romeo 166 3 litre "Super", which are quite rare even here in the UK, although I have one. Las Vegas had plenty of exotica, though, and I rented a Murcielago via the concierge of my hotel, the Wynn. I did see a black DB9 coupe in Tijuana, though, which surprised me. I should have looked at it registration plate to see where it came from, but I didn't. A bunch of US lawyers I got talking to on the train back to San Diego ( one of whom owned a DB5 Volante ), told me that it was unlikely to have been Mexican registered unless it was owned by a crime warlord !

The year before that I was stopped for speeding in Maine. I was driving a hired Mustang convertible. I had left all of my identity papers etc. back in the house we had rented and the policeman was a bit unhappy about that (plus the fact that I had been speeding ! ). We got talking, though, and he was a first Gulf War vet, and I since I did a tour in 'Nam attached to an Australian armoured unit way back in the day, he let me off with just a gentle chewing out, so it could have been worse !