I never really understood the attraction of owning a sports car. I mean, they seem fun and all, but they're expensive and it's not like you can drive it for what it was built to do (unless, of course, you race cars for a living). Driving a sports car to its limits on city streets and highways is like running around a tiger habitat in a meat suit. It's only a matter of time until you get caught and digested in the legal system-or so I thought.
I was recently given the opportunity to get behind the wheel of a Porsche Boxter S convertible. I don't think there has ever been a vehicle that screams midlife crisis louder than a Porsche convertible, and frankly, I still think I'm a little too young to be sitting in one. Actually, at this point, I don't think I'll ever grow up enough to reach that crisis breaking point where a Porsche is the solution. I'm perfectly happy with remote-controlled cars, miniature helicopters, and BB guns. Don't get me wrong, I've driven fast and expensive cars that handled well before, but something was different this time. I guess I can say I now understand the appreciation of a Porsche.
You might think that having a job in the automotive industry would get me behind the wheel of many unobtainable vehicles. You'd be wrong. I mean, I do get to drive some pretty cool one-off multimillion-dollar concept cars, but most of them are just for show. Remember the fullsize diesel Jeep Rescue concept? It was likely a $2 million vehicle, but the manual tranny wouldn't shift any higher than Second gear and the transfer case didn't shift at all. None of the gauges worked, and the suspension certainly wasn't built to pass any kind of safety or handling standards. It rode like it didn't even have shocks! And if I do actually get the opportunity to sit behind the wheel of a real runner, I'm stuck with the requisite engineer or designer passenger whose primary function is to keep me from doing something stupid, which unfortunately, I think is necessary because many of the mainstream press monkeys push vehicles beyond the limits they were designed for (as well as beyond their driving skill) because they don't know any better. And even though whaling on a new car is not my intention, I'm forced to take it down a notch or two so my corporate passenger is comfortable. I end up never really knowing what the vehicle is capable of until I can get in it alone. The sad truth is that very few automotive journalists can drive. In fact, many of the journalists I meet at press events have no clue what they're doing on-road and even less off-road.
Anyway, here I was at the neighbor's house, just hanging out. And in his Californicated New England accent, my neighbor Matt tells me, "Johnny, I wantcha to do me a fava!" I was dreading that he needed me to lift something heavy. Then he hands me a $20 bill and asks me to take his wife's brand-new Porsche Boxter S to the store for some Pacifico beer, which was undoubtedly for me because neither him nor his wife Robin drink beer. He even went so far as to tell me to take it out for a half hour or so. I mean, really, who does this? "Here's my $60,000 car and some beer money, go have fun!" I only wish my neighbors were interested in adopting a middle-aged man.
So I take the car out and really have no place to go. However, I did find out that in order to obey the legal speed limit and drive the car the way it was meant to be driven, you could never get out of Third gear. That seemed silly to me. So let's just say I got up to Sixth and drove the Porsche the way it wanted to drive. You know that feeling when the hair on the back of your neck sticks up and your body gets all tingly? That's accelerating through a corner in a Porsche. I probably had a grin that stretched to the back of my head like the Cheshire cat on ecstasy. I didn't know it at that moment, but my future probably changed. I suspect somewhere along the way I'll hit that midlife fork in the road and slip into that meat suit. But not yet. I'm on a Jeep and BB-gun budget. -John Cappa