As the week draws to its inexorable end, and the drudgery of the week gives way to the expectant joys of the weekend, my heart beats a little faster, as I turn in, each Friday night. Rising at the break of dawn, while my fellow city-dwellers slumber, I spring into the crisp morning air, keys to my chariot in-hand, as I break free the bonds of reality, headed to my time machine – preparing to make the run to 88 miles per hour.
Unlike it’s predecessor, a 1968 Porsche 912 with a mechanical starter, this evil car wakes up with a surprising alacrity and a deep rumble – resembling the growl of a rabid hellhound. Ensconced in a snug, but comfortable, sport seat, I inhale the unique smells of a 1980s air-cooled car. Warming up, the engine throbs like the strumming of Satan’s bass guitar and drums, while the reliable heating system (an antithesis to it’s laughable air conditioning) braces me from the morning chill. After 5 minutes, and an imperceptible rise in the engine temperature gauge (from freezing to above freezing, I guess), I step on a surprisingly light and familiar feeling clutch, as the 915 gearbox slots into reverse. From past experience and numerous stalls, I slowly release the clutch while feeding the throttle, and the car crawls backwards down my curved driveway.
Other than the otherwise preoccupied dog walkers, joggers and (now awakened) infants, strapped into their jogging strollers, nobody else witnesses the murder of an early Saturday morning calm, as the Beast trolls the slow roll down Wydown Boulevard. Interestingly, the speedometer (which seems to start at 30 mph) is not interested in informing us of the rapidity of our progress at this point, preferring to get involved only at speeds a car like this must be driven. Bouncing from rut to pot-hole to steel plate, I gingerly negotiate the minefield that has replaced Big Bend Boulevard in Clayton. My trepidations give way to excitement as I see the exit for the interstate approach.
With a nether-worldly yawn, she goes into Beast mode, as I downshift into second and make that curve onto the 64. Since the engine is not fully warm yet, I limit my enthusiasm to shift in the 4000 rpm range, as the car effortlessly catches up with traffic threatening to merge right. Matching the speeds of cars decades younger than her, the Beast trundles down the expressway as we wait for the engine to warm up, all the while shifting up quickly to fifth. Each exit on the westbound expressway holds promise of a new route to drive, each one a different neighborhood, a different story.
Today our jaunt to the Jaguar dealership in Creve Couer, accompanied by the dated “stereo” blasting period-correct 70s and 80s pop tunes, requires us to take the right hander onto the north-bound 270. We find ourselves trapped behind ineffably confounded drivers searching desperately for acceleration to merge, while evil expressway drivers try to merge onto the exit. A quick downshift to 3rd and a tap to the throttle, into a small window of expressway space – and our peril is past. Dropping my wife off at the dealer, as she deals with the travails of her afflicted SUV, I resume my sojourn in my now fully warmed up red demon.
This time, as I merge onto the expressway, I let the engine reach its full wail at close to 6000 rpm between shifts and rapidly reenter traffic. In comparison to many modern (and much faster cars) that I have owned, the sense of occasion and involvement with each gear shift is totally different. The same kind of buffoonery in my prior 2012 Jaguar XKR would have me in “arrest-me-now” speeds – albeit without the rush that the little Carrera does in very legal speeds. In many ways, it reminds me of my hyperactive 2008 s2000, idling at 2000 rpm and redlining at 8. Even as it settles into a cruise, the pounding whump-whump of its engine is intoxicating.
I pull off the expressway and come to a stop at a traffic light at the end of the exit and revel in the sonorous rhythm of the twin exhausts – waiting for the lights to change. The change to green and the clearing of traffic ahead of me, as the mall crowd turns elsewhere, invites another ride up the wailing wall of sound as I shift at the limit, through first and second. In all of this, I don’t miss my other modern cars’ ineffective and stupid traction control, electronic gear shifts (manual or otherwise), numb power steering or pretentious preening. With its yesteryears simplicity and brute force character, like the love of my life that she’s named after, this demon has stolen my heart too. No wonder, each Saturday begins by “calling Carrera (911)”.
Mani Family Blog! 