Tag: Cars

Keine Fahrvergnügen

Drive Time

In a world which is becoming more and more “convenient” (i.e. controlled by electronics and algorithms), I have to say that in the automotive world, it’s the Germans who (unsurprisingly) lead the charge.

Read this Road & Track article about the Porsche Cayenne SUV, and see if you can spot the parts which made my trigger-finger itch and led me to look up “home-made explosives” on the Internet.  No, don’t bother;  here they are:

When we ordered our Cayenne, we thought the $940 stand-alone option price was a bit excessive. Our opinion on the cost has not changed, and while we have only just gotten used to pulling the key out to unlock the car, then returning said key to our pocket before starting the car—you don’t need to insert the key to start the car—we do find it a bit annoying to have one but not the other, considering our Cayenne is $80K. Staff editor Eric Stafford captured it perfectly in the logbook: “This first-world problem is a first-world pain in the ass.”
Driving at night on back roads has brought to light (sorry) the inability to dim the instrument cluster sufficiently. On a dark road, the interior lights glare into our eyes. Not only that, dimming the lights requires you to go through a menu in the infotainment system, and there are three separate dimmer controls for the instrument cluster, clock on the dash, and center touchscreen. Remember dimmer knobs? Porsche says forget them; doing it through an infotainment menu that can’t be adjusted while moving is a much better solution. This is a prime example of technology taking a simple task and making it unnecessarily complicated.

I have already voiced my loathing for keyless access/ignition systems, so I won’t go into it here.  Not having an analog dimmer switch for the interior gauge lighting is so fucking stupid as to defy definition.  (My late father always used to say, when some or other non-essential doodad on his Mercedes 350 SE failed, “No wonder they lost the fucking war!”)

I am going out on a not-so-long limb here, and offer 10-1 odds that among the performance car manufacturers, Porsche will be the first to offer / mandate driverless (a.k.a. self-driving) cars, most likely in their SUVs first, and then the venerable 911 line soon thereafter.   (It was bad enough that they took the manual gearbox out of the 911 line altogether — because no driver can shift gears quicker than their phantastiches  PDK —  and more nonsense like that is bound to follow.)

I am not, and probably will never be in the market for a new Porsche of any description, so they can safely ignore my bitching.  (Honorable mention:  the Porsche Cayman, which has a stick shift and is routinely described as one of the best sports cars — in its original sense — on the market.)

And even that interior is a little too gadgety for Your Humble Narrator.

But it’s not just Porsche;  I am going to eschew any  model car whose manufacturer deigns to make driving decisions on my behalf.

When I talk tongue-in-cheek about wanting a basic car like the Mini-Moke or Toyota FJ40, I don’t really mean it because even I have  my limits.  Not all  innovation sucks, in other words;  but I would suggest that “Remember dimmer knobs? Porsche says forget them; doing it through an infotainment menu that can’t be adjusted while moving is a much better solution”  should require daily floggings for the engineers who suggested this and the managers who signed off on it.

And if for some insane reason I did  want a non-Boxster Porsche, it would be this one:

Yup, the 356c pushes all my sports-car buttons, Porscherly-speaking.  Now  we’re talking driving pleasure, my friends — and yes, I’ve been behind the wheel of a 356 before, and it was a fantastic experience.

We Have A Winner

Disaster, Drive Time

I love this country.  Here’s yet another reason:

Only a few months have passed since we reported that the New York-to-Los Angeles Cannonball record was broken. It’s allegedly been broken again. The 26 hour, 38 minute time—which beats the record set in November by more than 45 minutes—appears to be legitimate.
…
It did not escape many long-time Cannonballers that an immobilized workforce and hard times might create ideal road conditions for fast driving thanks to much lower traffic volumes. Musing in online chat groups ensued. But most decided that it was better to cast their lot with the rest of humanity and stay home. Most, but not all.
…
All we know about this new set of scofflaws is that there were three, maybe four of them, and that they were driving a white 2019 Audi A8 sedan with a pair of red plastic marine fuel tanks ratchet-strapped into its trunk. They started at the Red Ball Garage in New York City at 11:15 pm on April 4, and ended less than 27 hours later at the Portofino Hotel & Marina in Redondo Beach, California, the traditional start and end points of a Cannonball attempt.

Which leads me to my question to you, O My Readers:

If you were going to Cannonball, what car would you choose to do it in, and why?

Remember that the only criteria are speed, reliability, comfort and (maybe) fuel efficiency.

Your answers in Comments.  But I have to tell you:  the Audi A8 was not the worst choice in the world…

Auction Time: Choice #5

Drive Time

When I originally set this exercise up for myself, I decided to pick only one car per category, the first four categories being “utility”, “performance”, “beach house” and “New Wife”.  (There were other categories, but not enough cars in each to make the choices interesting.)

The final category was entitled “pure indulgence”, and the choices boiled down to the Dino Ferrari or one of the Jag E-types:

After long and often painful contemplation, I first picked the Jag.

…and not too many people would disagree with that choice.  It’s beyond-words beautiful, and the 4.2-liter engine… ’nuff said.

Must say, though, that I’m not too enamored to have a convertible with black upholstery, living as I do in the Texas Oven.  So I went back and looked at the Dino:

It remains, in my opinion, the most beautiful Ferrari ever made:  curves that resemble a gorgeous woman lying on her side, that sweet little 2.4-liter engine purring / snarling right  behind your head… and this one is not in Ferrari Showoff Red, but in a discreet brushed silver, with tan upholstery.

But, but, but… I already had  a sports car — the fantastic Iso Grifo.  So maybe what I needed was something sumptuous:  a luxury car that I could drive around on long road trips.  Something like the 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300:

The 300 (W186 body) was designed to be able to drive all day on the highway at top speed without breaking, and it was (and still is) one of the most reliable cars ever made.  (For more info, read about it here.)

Heavy, stately, luxurious and dependable.  Sounds a little like me, come to think of it.

And a worthy choice, to accompany the four others.

Auction Time: Choice #4

Drive Time

While I stated in the Comments to the original post that New Wife only liked a few of the British sports cars available, my husband’s sense of responsibility wouldn’t allow it, simply because I’d soon get sick of phone calls telling me that the MG/Healey/Triumph had broken down again, and what was I going to do about it?  Clearly, we would need a more reliable alternative, so the 1969 Mercedes-Benz 280 SL pretty much picks itself.

Like me, New Wife prefers a stick shift, so here we go:

While Mercedes has made many good-looking sports cars over the decades (the 1950s 300 Gullwing and 1960s 190 SL come to mind), I still think that the 230/250/280 SL pagoda-tops were the prettiest  of them all, to this day, and it would be a perfect car for her.

Auction Time: Choice #3

Drive Time

If I were a Rich Phartte and thus able to visit this auction, I would already have purchased a beach house (because New Wife loves the sea more than I do), probably somewhere in Maine.  Accordingly, said beach house would have to have a car in residence, to be disconnected and left there during the winter.  It wouldn’t have to be much, its duties pretty much relegated to trips to the supermarket, into town or for short sight-seeing trips along the coast and so on.  Which makes my third choice simple:  the 1966 Austin Mini Moke.

Longtime Friend Knal N. Domp (from the old website) had one of these, and many’s the night we were to be found driving it around Johannesburg at breakneck speed during the late 1960s and early 70s.

And as for simplicity, try this:

Just so you know how badly I want one of these, it was nearly my #1 choice.

There are a couple of competitors — the Renault Jolly comes to mind:

…but I’d only get that one if the beach house was in the south of France.

Auction Time: Choice #2

Drive Time

1968 Iso Grifo GL Series I:

For those not familiar with this monster, here’s the background (from Sotheby’s):

The Iso Grifo was created by a powerhouse of Italian engineering talent, including former Ferrari chief engineer and “father of the GTO” Giotto Bizzarrini; designer Giorgetto Giugiaro; and revered coachbuilders Bertone. A muscular gran turismo, its Bertone-built coachwork surrounded an advanced chassis with de Dion rear axle and inboard brakes, a configuration that reduced the unsprung weight compared to a live rear axle. Power was provided by a Chevrolet 327 V-8 of the same specification used in contemporary Corvettes, endowing the Grifo with ample performance and fine reliability. The model remained in production into the early 1970s and saw a total run of 413 examples in all configurations.

Excuse me, but “engineered by Bizarrini, designed by Giugiaro and built by Bertone”  just about checks all my boxes.  Also, “Chevrolet 327 V-8”  means I could get its oil changed at the local Chevy dealer for $50 instead of paying two grand to have the same thing done by Ferrari on one of their engines.

And it’s beautiful.  Good grief, I would get a tingle just from seeing it parked in my garage when I went out in the morning — even if I wasn’t going to drive it.

Finally, note that the interior is wonderfully devoid of all the modern electronic shit that confuses, clutters and just subtracts from the MTBF (mean time between failures).  And a stick shift… performance, simplicity and elegance all in one package