Off-Topic Interlude: Porsches In My Way - 5 minutes read
[TOP's APES (all-purpose editorial slave), i.e. moi,is notorious for wandering off topic and writing about whatever random topic strikes his fancy. So, amidst all the vintage photo posts, I thought I'd insert one to stand for all the many off-topic posts I've indulged in over the years. This is from 2010, and documents one of my brushes with automotive greatness—when I chanced into the opportunity of driving a few laps on an autocross course with the Head Instructor of the Porsche Driving School. I didn't brag as much as I should have in this post—actually my lap times were among the fastest of all the amateur participants that day (just customers of the dealership), and Mr. Whitehead let me take extra laps and then spent fifteen minutes sitting in the car talking to me. Very nice of him. I don't seek out offbeat life experiences like this one, but I appreciate them when they happen. It's always interesting to dip a toe in unfamiliar waters.
By the way, my friend John subsequently bought a Panamera and didn't like it, so you might want to take my brief test-drive experience with a grain of salt.]
I had a fun day on my day off yesterday. Our local Mercedes dealer, which also sells Infiniti, Maserati, and Porsche, had a Driving School day. You got to hop into a Boxster or Cayman with a driving instructor and flog it around a tight little course laid out in their stock lot with white lines and cones. After a couple of laps, you switched places with the instructor, who then demonstrated how it's really done.
I drove a Boxster a bit sloppily (never drove one before, never drove their cones before) but, if I do say so myself, quite quickly. At least quite a bit more quickly than most of the other participants were managing. Then Cass Whitehead took the wheel and showed me the difference between real race drivers and guys like me who normally drive like they have their free arm draped across the top of the passenger seat. As Cass said, "It's like go-karts, only with a car." He'd been doing it all day—in fact, in his role as Lead Instructor at the Porsche Sport Driving School at Barber Motorsport Park in Leeds, Alabama, he does it year-in, year-out—but he didn't seem bored. He knocked off a crisp, fast lap that pasted us up against the seat side-bolsters, and put li'l ol' me in my proper, ah, perspective.
Driving school is in a peculiar class of activities at my stage of life: it's in the category of "always wanted to...and still might." (Most "always wanted tos...." are now in the "...but never will" box.)
2010 Porsche Boxster. If I ever bought a Porsche it would be a used Boxster, and mine would have a flat six and would date from before the switch from hydraulic to electric steering.
I'm going to have to revise my opinion of Porsches. When I was first driving on the north shore of Milwaukee in the 1970s, 911s—especially Targas—were the "chick cars" of choice for the hip young housewife, who drove them about the same way their younger doppelgangers now drive the gussied-up trucks called SUVs. To the amusement of my friends, I worked out alternate lyrics for a song I called "Porsches in My Way," sung to the tune of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," which I was wont to croon tunelessly whenever I got trapped behind a Porsche doing an imitation of a tortoise.
The other demo the dealer was offering was an extended test drive in the new Panamera (it's pronounced "pan-uh-MARE-uh."). I had no expectations whatsoever for that exercise. The Panamera struck me from the start as a conceptual monstrosity, like a BMW SUV or a Leica rangefinder with a 28–300mm zoom. But...well, it's not. It's actually a pure delight to drive—it reminded me of that Mozart quote about how the pianoforte should be played in his piano concertos—it should "flow like oil." The Panamera is as close to the experience of a flying in a glider as you can get on the ground. In my experience at least. Lovely.
Fun couple of hours. No Porsches in my way, either, all day.
P.S. Why no pictures? Because your idiot host carefully charged the camera battery but then came away from the house with camera in hand but without a card. Sheesh. Keep it together, Mikey, keep it together.
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(Sorry! There are no comments this week—the moderator is also stuck supine staring at the ceiling.)
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