Porsche
The point is Porsches are not and never have been about horsepower or acceleration but rather the driving experience. There is no substitute. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM2eMhY53N4 |
I like Porsches. Had two of them, among many Italian exotics. One bonus of the Porsche was that it didn't attract the kind of attention that some of the Italian cars did. The GT2 I had was from the 996 platform, which in my estimation, fell short in a number of ways having nothing to do with performance, as such. I had the club sport (or whatever they call those options) installed after the car arrived; roll bar, sports seats, multipoint harnesses, different exhaust, etc. Thing was rigid as hell. I used to commute to NYC in it occasionally. The other was a late 993 c4 cabrio which was a nice GT car but not as light or tossable as the smaller, early 911. They make the best production cars on the road in my estimation. Now that I'm in Texas, I see far fewer exotics (the occasional baby Lambo or current Ferrari) but lots of good ol' 'Merican iron. Some of these are survivor cars- not worth the money to restore but cool as hell. I'm kind of out of the car thing, at least for now. We were coming back from ranch country up near the Oklahoma border yesterday and it was about 104F on Interstate 35. I just couldn't imagine an open top car in that kind of heat. Oh, I know purists like hardtops for rigidity and safety, but my joy was doing the B roads in an open car. The last "serious" car I had was a '20s era open top boat tailed speedster. It was rare and so were parts. I bought it as a cheaper alternative to a Bentley 3/4.5 "special" but by the time I was done sorting it, I coulda had the early Bentley. I love all automobiles from a sort of design/engineering standpoint- Ramblers, micro-cars, the French art-deco bodied stuff from the '30s. It's all good. Until you have to start restoring one. I think one of the most beautiful post war cars made was the BMW 3.0CS. Gorgeous. Another car that is probably not worth the expense of restoring, but back in the day, man, that would have been a great car to own (especially if you lived in Germany). At one point, I had a '69 MB 6.3 liter. It was like a baby 600. Very cool sedan with a big motor, oligarch interior fittings, adjustable suspension. Lots of things to go wrong. Or those '70s era Aston Martin Lagonda limo things. Talk about a money pit. But cool in a quirky way. Apologies for the ramble.... Carry on. |
MC- oh yeah, and the CGT more so, based on some of the stats. One of the things that GT2 did do well was put down its power smoothly, and there was plenty of grip, so you could move ahead quite quickly, especially once the turbos really kicked in. I never liked turbo cars for their binary quality (Jeckell/Hyde) but I gather the 930 was a handful. The guy who serviced them had a lot of rare stuff-- aside from the celebrity cars , real factory race Porsches that were made based on the general contours of the 911, early pristine 911S (73 and earlier), etc. All were customer cars (though I’m sure some trade was done). One of my biggest criticisms of the car (in its 996 guise) was the interior- a plastic, here’s a push button tray made out of plastic in a 200K dollar car (more when you add all the equipment they wouldn’t allow the car to come in with by buying on the dealer side here). There was also something special about the "click/clack" of the gated gearbox in the Ferraris. I gather that’s history now and they don’t even offer a manual shift car. The gated shifter was part of a ballet of driving the older cars, which depended on revs to get torque and speed. 12 cylinders sounds big, but the engines needed to be run hard to get speed. Porsche can make monster speed- almost no contest. There is something quite appealing about older cars, which is why I bought the pre-war car. If I had found the right XK140 drophead, I might have been happy for a while. I was no longer into speed, or even measured events, but more into the long distance rally. We did the Targa Florio back in the ’oughts’ and it was fun even in a Flintstone mobile. |
