Just bought a very fast car.  What is the best radar/laser detector out there?  Any thoughts?  Issues?   Thanks

Anything by Escort.

A fast car???  Please elaborate!  You aren't talking about a Honda Civic or an Eclipse are you?  LOL

I have a Bel that works great, but ValentineOne is the best you can buy.  You'll pay out the ass for it too!

Valentine ONE, by the way, tell us the damn car!!! Dont leave us hanging!!

BMW Z8.  Electronically limited to 155 mph.  Searching the web today I saw some references to the Valentine One.  Don't care about ergonomics, just tickets.  Have lurked this board for at least a year, I get better information from this site than anywhere else.  A truly talented and informed group of posters. Thanks.

[b]Valentine One[/b] is just about the closest thing to a permit to speed that I've ever seen.  I've picked up radars from [i]behind[/i] a Trooper at 1/2 mile due to signal bounce from surrounding traffic.  My max threat warning was nearly five miles to a median-sitting Trooper in the flat plains of central Illinois.

The Valentine One has directional arrows that serve like a good pointer field dog to anyone in the neighborhood with a radar.  In the two years I've owned one I've never recieved a ticket for speeding while using it (damn rental cars [/i]should[/i] come with one!).

I've tried a bunch of them. The V1 is the best, and absolutely necessary when you drive a red car [:)]

Anecdotal evidence:

A group of car enthusiasts I belong to rents a track somewhere in Middle America every year for 3 days of road racing and drag racing. Some of the most enjoyable parts of the event are the caravans of cars coming from all over the country. There's something very cool about 15-30 fast cars cruising together for 600-1000 miles in one day.

Anyway, I usually am one of the lead cars in the caravan. We trade off so that we don't have to be on red alert at all times, but I'm usually somewhere up front. During last year's caravan I was running #2 at one point, about a 1/4 mile behind the lead car (who had the current top=of-the-line Escort). My V1 went off, and I alerted him on the CB. His Escort didn't light up. About 1 mile down the road we finally came upon the cop shooting radar. He was behind a bridge embakment and hull down in the swale, with only the top of his car visible.

The guy who was riding in front called Valentine and had a V1 overnighted to him for the trip home [:)]

The direction arrows are also useful. I was cruising across Ohio at ~ 2AM on my way back from this same event when the V1 lit up with a radar alert from behind. I slowed down to about 2 MOH faster than the posted limit. 5 minutes later 2 Ohio state troopers rolled on by me.

Buy a V1. You won't regret it. An no, you can't find them at a discount anywhere. They're only available from the manufacturer.

They're also upgradeable for a small fee, so when they improve them you can send your unit back and have it updated to the latest specs.

I must admit I have gotten 1 ticket since I started using the V1. I was cruising at 160 MPH on I-70 across Kansas, beautiful summer day, not a car in sight, car just loafing alonng when the V1 went off. I slowed to ~ 90 and couldn't see anybody anywhere. No carss, trucks, airplanes, birds, nothing. After about five minutes with no one in sight I set the cruise control on 120 and relaxed.

40 minutes later I see flashing lights in the rearview, so I slow down and pull in between a few trucks I had come up on.  The trooper pulled me over and asked me if I was trying to evade him (I was about 10 miles from the CO border at that point). I pointed that out to him and told him if I didn't want him to catch me he wouldn't have.

He wrote me a ticket for 97 in a 70 ($97 and PA doesn't care about out of state tickets, so its just the fine). I told him I'd try to take it easy. he just said "It's hard to drive the linit out here. Have a nice day." got back in his car and drove off.

Valentine One - Just buy it.

-LevelHead-

If you're worried about tickets, get a lawyer.  If you're worried about not getting them, V1 is the way to go for radar.  It still won't necessarily keep you from getting nailed with instant on radar, and I can guarantee you that in a BMW Z8 you're going to be a target, but it's the best money can buy.

Good luck though.  Those are sweet cars.  I got to breathe hard on one at the local BMW dealership a while back and their nice.  I've only seen two on the road, one belonging to George Foreman (saw him in his Bentley too) and some generic white yuppie.

God Bless Texas

One thing to remember is watch out for the lazers.
I got nailed in Maryland last year just before x-mas with a cop using a lazer gun and there was absoultely nothing I could do.
My detector went hot for about 1 second and it was all over.