11 Cool Car-Related Activities You Can Do At Home

Did you know there are numerous auto museums you can “tour” online? Thanks to Google Maps you can take a virtual reality trip to museums around the world, from the Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart to Mazda’s museum in Japan, and the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky USA. We already have a list of 15 such museums you can visit right now in a post from March 18.

Find Your Favorite Museum Right Here:

15 Amazing Car Museums You Can Visit Virtually Via Google Maps

The 10 Greatest Car Museums In The USA

If working on your car sounds a bit too exhausting, you can at least give it a good clean. We aren’t talking about a wash and some silicone spray – get the clay bar and orbital polisher out of the cabinet and go to town. And since we’re dealing with a pandemic, don’t forget about cleaning up the interior, too. Just go easy on the soap, and for crying out loud, stay away from the power washer. You want a clean car, not a rolling ad for laundry detergent.

Once upon a time, building plastic car models was a rite-of-passage for car-crazy kids. A few of us at Motor1.com still embrace the hobby, and there’s never been a better time to build a detailed mini-version of your dream machine. Bust open those old kits sitting in the closet and bash away, or you could order something new and have it delivered. It probably won’t be as pristine as the diecast gems from Amalgam Collection, but it will be uniquely yours.

Here are a few of our plastic model favorites:

• Tamiya 1/24 Ferrari LaFerrari
• Hasegawa 1/24 Lancia Stratos
• Revell 1/25 Mustang Shelby GT500

There’s never been a better time to be a gamer. In fact, modern racing games are so good, it’s a disservice to call most of them games. For under $1,000 you can have a nice PC or game console with a force-feedback steering wheel, a six-speed shifter with a clutch, and a litany of racing titles to choose from. Play it casual or get involved in legitimate (and competitive) online action – sim racing doesn’t fully replace the sounds, smells, and experience of actually being on a track, but you’ll still be grinning when you shave a tenth of a second off your lap time.

So, you don’t have a game console or high-performance PC and you aren’t interested in playing games. Here’s the thing – many modern games aren’t games at all. With stunning graphics, real-world tracks recreated in extraordinary detail, complex algorithms generating lifelike physics, and input devices giving drivers accurate control, the racing world of Esports is extraordinarily exciting to simply watch. Motorsport Games has partnered with Jean Eric Vergne and Veloce Esports to broadcast a series of sim races dubbed #NotTheGP, and the action is quite engaging. You can catch the streaming action on Motorsport.tv.

No doubt you’ve already considered this option to pass the time. But have you really considered just how many car movies are out there? You could get up-to-speed with recent flics like Ford V Ferrari,  Baby Driver, or spend days simply binge-watching the Fast and Furious saga.

But what about classics like Smokey and the Bandit, The Cannonball Run, Mad Max, or American Graffiti? If you’ve already been there and done that, don’t overlook lesser-known (and perhaps campy) gems like The Wraith or Need for Speed. We have lists for the best and worst car movies, so if you think you’ve seen them all, we bet a million bucks there’s something you’re missing.

Our Recommendations For Best And Worst Car Movies:

Top 10 Car Movies Of All Time

10 Worst Car Movies Of All Time

Sure, you could watch The Cannonball Run, or you could read about the five actual Cannonball Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash events in the 1970s that inspired the movie. Cannonball: World's Greatest Outlaw Road Race by legendary auto journalist Brock Yates is but one of many auto-based literary titles to choose from, outside of stellar Motor1.com content of course. Here are a few more suggestions:

• Car: A Drama of the American Workplace by Mary Walton
• The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History by Jason Vuic

• Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans by A. J. Baime

Automotive art takes many forms. Admittedly, your author absolutely adores his vintage early ‘80s Little Van Goes etching kit. Maybe try your hand at drawing cars, or painting auto scenes on canvas. Open up Photoshop and digitally enhance pictures you’ve taken at car shows. Or perhaps you pull all those used brake rotors out of the shed and weld them together to create some weird alien statue. Point being, art is abstract, so give your mind some creative liberty. You might be surprised by just how satisfying it is.

Just like plastic models, Lego is a creative exercise born in the adolescent mind that endures brightly through adulthood. So go ahead, click those bricks together. Don’t let that Technic kit sit in a dark closet, or better yet, get a bunch of kits, mix the bricks, and create something entirely new. Who knows, you might end up with a lifesize Chevy pickup when all is said and done.

Check out these Lego favorites from the Motor1.com team:

• Lego Creator Expert Ford Mustang
• Lego Technic Bugatti Chiron

• Lego Speed Champions 1985 Audi Sport Quattro S1 

Sad that you don’t have your dream car in the garage? Jump onto the internet, pull up your choice automaker, and see if there’s an online configurator you can tinker with. This is actually something of a pastime at Motor1.com when new models become available. Sometimes the options are few and far between, or you can end up with a snazzy Corvette costing way more than Chevy's advertised base price of less than $60,000. Hey, it's only not-real money, right?