Patrick, the new padlock is not a combination lock. It takes a key only. And there is no longer a "gate key" in the drawer in the control room desk. This is still an unresolved issue. Cindy is of course welcome to bring her Z if she is willing to drive it the length of the state for a club car show. I'm very familiar with the 350Z (if it's the Nissan you're talking about); it's one of the "finalist" cars I was interested-in and test-drove before I finally settled on my RX-8. http://www.caranddriver.com/comparisons/12896/2007-ford-mustang-shelby-gt-v-... I found that the Z has oodles of power, but homely, on the noisy side, and not as sticky in the turns as one would hope- but a definite contender. As close to Porsche as the Japanese have come yet. But here, someone else- Cindy obviously, for one- feels differently and may value different parameters than I. I have to admit to being an old rotor-head. I am a former RX-7 owner so I was very familiar with the care and feeding of rotary engines. That said, I have never driven a car that was as responsive and as sure-footed in my entire life as the RX-8. It has more than enough torque to get me into trouble if I let it, and a fairly inexpensive turbo kit instantly remedies any perceived shortcomings (I don't think it needs it) if you're really worried about it. Contrary to the Car & Driver text, it's not horsepower that it really lacks, it's low-end torque, due to the lack of mass in the moving parts of the engine. The top speed of the Z and the 8 are about the same, but the Z will get to 60 a tiny bit sooner. The 8 starts to get up and move at 5000 rpm- redline is 9000 rpm, by the way, and the engine shut-off doesn't kick-in until you hit 10,000 rpm! Also the 8 has a back seat for the kid, and my binos and smaller scopes fit in it. As to mileage, it's not anywhere near the figures bandied about in the press. It's almost identical to our 4-cylinder Subaru and is really determined by how heavy one's right foot is. That's it from our Mazda correspondent; back to astronomy. On 9/8/07, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote: I have not been to SPOC in a couple of days but I'm told by a guy with the service agency that the lock has the same combination as the one that was on the previous gate. p.s. Chuck, you might want to know that should your car/telescope event ever happen, Cindy has a killer new Z car parked in her garage...