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I told you it had been a very weird week, well, now I can tell you about at least some of the weirdness. I blame the show Top Gear for this bit of my week. For those of you who don’t know the show, it’s on BBC America and it’s a show about cars. But saying that, is like saying Mythbusters is about science. It is, and you learn something every week, but it’s a lot more fun and irreverent.
I have spent my life thinking of cars as a mechanical device for getting from point A to point B. I’m all about the destination, not about the journey. I want to get there. I want to get there in a nice, safe, sane, manner. Dependendablitly is very important to me. I am so not a car person. In that hobby, isn’t it pretty way.
Then our friends Charles and Richard both, independently, began to talk about this show called Top Gear. It was a car show so I wasn’t too interested, until, I think Richard talked about the hosts going carvannning in Dorset (that would be RVing for America). I won’t spoil the surprise, but let us say that the trip goes about as badly as it possibly could, as in there’s fire involved, and not in a good way, but damn it was funny. Top Gear is now part of our Tivo line up, and we can watch it with our daughter without fear. Though, occasionally a bleeped curse word, and not so occasionally when Gordon Ramsey was the star in the reasonable priced car, but any child of mine is going to hear cursing. I try my best, but… So other than an occasional bleeped word it’s family friendly. The three hosts, Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson, and James May, sometimes seem to like each other and sometimes seem to hate each other. But it’s always entertaining.
One show they decided they would try and turn a car into a space shuttle. Not kidding. Jeremy was so convinced it was a stupid idea that he would have no part of it, and Richard and James were left on their own. They got rocket experts, they played in the wind tunnel. There was a shining moment when it looked like it might actually work, then they managed to get an explosion bigger than anything I think we’ve seen on Mythbusters. That’s saying something. There is now a crater in Northumbria and we, the viewers, got to see them make it.
They dismantled minivans, people carriers in Britain, to try and make them niftier by making them a convertible. Strangely the convertible minivan ended with an accidental fire, as well. Hmmm, is it a theme? No, the drag race with tractors didn’t end in fire. We did get to see Richard Hammand drag the production trailer behind his tractor though, and I think Jeremy chose a plane, James did a caravan of cars and items, and yes, it ended with crashing. Many things do.
But they also review cars, by driving them, and doing some of the lushest camera angles on television to show the lines of mechanical sex sitting on the track.
I never looked at cars before this show. Oh, I was starting to, because Jon and I traveled with Charles. He is proud to be a gearhead, someone who loves cars, motorcycles, and does aftermarket modifications to them. He also does drifting, as a hobby, which is racing a car round a set pattern, but purposefully drifting around the corners. I’m a little fuzzy on it, but that’s the basics. Charles notices cars the way I notice birds, and can tell, often, by the sound of an engine what engine he’s listening to. He’s better at that than I am at bird song identification. Traveling with Charles gave me a new appreciation of cars. I began to have this inkling that maybe, just maybe, they weren’t just for getting from point A to point B. Maybe there was more to a car than that?
Then Jon and I started watching Top Gear. And somewhere in those loving camera angles, somewhere in watching Jeremy drive a Lamborghini around the track while he cackled and chortled and just had a king-size blast, I began to wonder if cars might be . . . fun?
It’s an alien idea to me, but then James went to Germany and drove the Bugatti. Jame’s nickname on the show is Captain Slow, so ironically he got to drive the then, fastest line car in the world. Line car means it’s a production model not a race care. It means you can own it. The Bugatti is like science fiction on wheels. There are buttons and knobs to push to get the car in the mode for it’s highest speed which is 340 miles per hours. Yes, you read that right. Watching the car snug itself down on the track, literally, the car moves lower, the whole car, snuggles down to the track when you hit the right switch. The car lived up to his rep, and it was very quiet inside, amazingly quiet at such speeds. James made the comment that his tires would go in about fifteen minutes at this speed, but that was okay because the gas would be gone in twelve.
I began to notice cars, and Jon and I began to be able to tell what a car was, I’m still not great at that, but one afternoon a car drove by us that I just stared at. I stared at it the way you’ll stare at a beautiful man, that is so amazing you loose common sense and gape at him as he passes. What was the car? It was the Carrol Shelby GT mustang, in black with metallic gold markings. I didn’t know that when I saw it, only that it was a mustang.
We called Charles and asked if he knew the car just from our description and he did. Then, as if it were a plot, Top Gear reviewed the Shelby GT. Turns out Richard Hammand owns an original from the 1960’s. Their biggest complaint was the suspension, but . . . I was still intrigued.
Then Jeremy reviewed the new Porsche 911. That was the last straw, suddenly we had a list of impractical cars to look at. I have never in my life bought, or wished to buy, an impractical car. I’m all about reliability, dependability, caution, and practicality. I’m also a little afraid of cars and anything that goes fast. But, somehow, strangely, I had a list of cars that included not just the Porsche, but a lot of sports cars. Sports cars, not for Jon, but for me.
It was time to replace our Acura TL, which I’ve loved, but it’s over ten years old. It’s time for it to find a new home. We’ve never had a complaint about the Acura, in fact we’ve been an Acura family for the last decade. But, suddenly, I didn’t want safe and dependable. I wanted something more.
Charles, who knows more about cars than Jon and I probably ever will, went car shopping with us. When seeking a certain type of car you want someone with you that will be able to tell you how much bullshit you’re being fed. So, the three of us went off to look at impractical cars.
The list quickly came down to two cars; the Nissan 350Z with the Nismo package (which is their sport package in detail and design), and one of the new Mustangs. I went looking for a Shelby. God, it’s a pretty car. I asked Jon and Charles if it was childish to just think the silver cobras on the car detailing was just too cool. They assured me that it wasn’t childish and they thought it was cool, too.
We went to one Ford dealership that wouldn’t let us drive anything, not even the standard GT. I’m not buying any car that I can’t drive first. No way. I don’t care what is, or how pretty, it’s got to be about the ride. So that dealership lost our business. The salesman wanted me to promise I would buy that day before he’d let us drive. That would be like promising to marry a man before you’ve had the first date. I don’t think so.
But we found another dealership to go play at. And, as fate would have it, they had not just the Shelby GT, but the Foose, as well. Foose is for Chip Foose, who is a car designer. Shelby is all about go faster, racing. Foose is about that, but also about the ride, a more luxury feel to the car. The Shelby has two hundred more horsepower than the standard GT. The Foose has about twenty. I drove the regular GT, and trust me, an extra two hundred horse power would be lost on me.
But it’s not about the speed, for me, it’s about the Foose sitting in the middle of the show room all red and black and beautiful. It was like an adolescent boy’s wet dream, all it needed was a scantily clad woman lounging on it’s hood. Our salesman, Dan, took us out to their garage area so we could see more Shelby’s and that the Foose came in black with red styling, rather than the red with black stying they had in the show room. Dan did everything he could to be polite, nice, and sale us a car.
But, there was a problem with the Foose. It only comes in a manual transmission. It’s been twenty years since I drove a stick. If I bought it, I would have to let Jon drive it home. How could it be my car if I was going to have to relearn how to drive it? It was stupid. I didn’t need it. But every car I liked the best was only in manual. It became a theme.
Now, the Porsche 911 does come in flappy paddles where you shift with paddles on the steering wheel, but we never drove one. Two reasons; one we figured out that we could get a Foose and a 350Z, pay taxes, insurance, and gas for awhile, before we caught up to paying for one 911. Second reason we didn’t drive one, what if it was as sweet a ride as Jeremy said it was on Top Gear. Better not to know. Besides, once I drove the standard GT, and felt that bass rumble of engine up my spine, through my hands, it was pretty much a done deal.
My friend Mark has a Prius, very environmentally sound, but the car creeps me. I finally figured out why. The Prius has no vibration, no sound, no heartbeat. The car feels dead. The mustang is very, very alive.
I spent two days talking myself out of the car. The big sticking point was the lack of automatic transmission, and consumer reports didn’t give it as a good a notice as the Acura. I did all the grown up reasoning. But a funny thing happened, everyone thought I should get the car. Darla, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, our comptroller for our company, everyone. Why? Because they all thought I needed to do something just because it was fun.
I asked Jon if I was that big a nose to the grindstone person? He didn’t answer, and I guess silence was answer enough. Charles’s comment to the same question was, “My aren’t we having lovely weather for this time of year, especially in November.” Again, answer enough.
So, Jon and I went back yesterday. It took me thirty minutes to choose between the red with black accent, or the black with red. They were both just flat sexy. There was no bad choice, so . . . there is a black Foose mustang sitting in my garage. It has red the color of blood across it’s hood, dark and rich against the shining black. Jon did have to drive it home, but I pulled it into the garage. Today we’ll go out and spend some time teaching me how to drive my own car. I still can’t believe I did it. So impractical, so not me. But it was Charles who said it, “This car isn’t about getting from point A to point B, it’s about the journey, about the drive.” I am completely goal oriented. I do not enjoy the process of much of anything, just getting something done. The exception is writing, where I prefer to write the book, but don’t let myself get too excited about the book being out. But for everything else, it’s all about the goal. The problem with being that goal oriented is that you forget to enjoy the journey. You not only don’t stop to smell the roses, but you stop seeing them along the road, and you rush past, because you have somewhere to go, and a deadline chasing you.
The Foose isn’t about deadlines. It’s about wanting a car because it was beautiful, and the feel of the engine was damn near sexual. I brushed my fingers along the line of that car, from one end to the other, caressing it, tracing the curve of it’s body. It sits in my garage, and just sitting there, with the engine off, it looks fast. Charles has explained that once I get used to the horsepower of the Foose we can modify it in stages, and work up that horsepower. He’s made noises about getting it up to the Shelby’s horsepower eventually, as I get better at driving it. Maybe. The practical part of me says no, but that part of me that wanted this car just because it was pretty, and fast, and the sound of the engine alone made my heart go pit-a-pat, thinks that if it will deepen that bass growl of engine, and let the heartbeat of the car dance up my spine even more, that more might not be bad.