Penis envy and other fast cars
I'm not into material things (other than a good camera lense) and expensive sports cars possibly tops that list. However, covering the Monaco Grand Prix required a little pizzazz, or so I told myself. Hob-nobbing with the good and excessively wealthy required that I at least rock up in a decent set of wheels. This is what I should have stressed to the Porsche factory inBut I’m getting ahead of myself. I need you to picture the scene.
I drove through
I looked at the mid-engined Porsche in wonder and realised the luggage space area at the rear was perhaps big enough for my camera equipment and the luggage space in the front, under the hood, was big enough for my make-up bag. After repacking I lowered myself into the cramped car and assumed a lounging position (instant back-ache), my backside but a few inches off the ground. I prodded various buttons and eventually find the one that let the roof down. I slowly eased out of the main gates and tentatively touched the accelerator onto the motorway and an instant later I shot off at such a speed that my head become a howling sphere at the end of a whip-like stalk.
It takes a special kind of vigilance to make your way across a continent on which people voluntary ingest tongues, kidneys, horsemeat, frogs’ legs, intestines, sausages made of congealed blood, and the brains of little cows. Shared middle lane for overtaking is another such wonder that no-one told me about! I’d zip into a middle lane and was genuinely astounded that a 40-ton truck bearing down on me like something out of a Road Runner cartoon, felt he had right of way. I would veer out of the way at the last possible instant and then hang out of the window shouting abuse at the passing driver, before being shrieked back to the next crisis by my passenger.
That aside, my top cruising speed between my accommodations and the Monaco Grand Prix was around 220 km/h through tunnels and along the southern coast of
I was planning on having a little maintenance work done on myself later this year – a lift here, a tuck there, but now I’m seriously considering doing the midlife crisis thing. But there again, that new camera lens I have my eye on needs a bigger car, something like the 911 perhaps. I’ll need to have a word with my man at Porsche about another loaner.
And the Grand Prix? Apart from being the most expensive F1 motoring event in the world, you’ll just have to wait and read the article I’m writing for Automotive Traveler.
Labels: Automotive Traveler, Monaco Grand Prix, Porsche Boxster Triptronic
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