911

Dan’ll fix it

(written july 2009)

A few weeks ago I had a friend staying at my house. Her name is Eileen, she is from Northern Ireland and she is unwell. I don’t want to go into the intricacies of her medical condition other than saying that she is due into hospital next month for treatment that is going to be less than pleasant.

Therefore I wanted her to fulfil one of her ambitions during her short stay, something which would also fulfil an ambition of mine, an ambition I have sough to achieve since I was 8 years old, thus providing a shared experience for my paddy mate and myself.

As with all close friendships we have a number of similar interests, ranging from films, television and music, but importantly we are both massive petrol heads. Here an explanation is required of a Saturday morning back in 1986 when I first came into contact with what, to me, is the God of all cars. As a boy growing up in the eighties there were basically 2 posters that could take pride of place on the bedroom wall. The first was a Lamborghini Countach with the doors open and the second was a Porsche 911. I was in the latter group. The Porsche motor company rather thoughtfully chose to put a dealership a few miles from the family home and my dear father agreed after much stropping on my part to take me there. Despite being a forklift driver, as well as being the proud owner of a Fiat Strada he was able to convince the salesman that he was looking for a Carrera and had brought his young lad along because I was smitten with the beetle on steroids. I can still remember the car I sat in as if it was yesterday. Actually, I can remember it as if this very morning I was in my transformers tee shirt with a carton of Kiaora in my grubby mitt.

It was a 911 Targa in Guard’s red with black wheels and black leather interior. Leather at this point was totally new to me, aside from my father’s motorcycle jacket which didn’t smell the same and I had not even sat on a sofa made from a dead cow. From that fateful day I was convinced that the best car in the world was a 911, not the fastest, not the most practical, yet if a vehicle is required for going from place to place with the ability to sit in traffic or cover hundreds of miles at breakneck speeds then this would be the tool of choice.

Eileen is also a dedicated Porsche fan and she desperately wanted to drive the rear engined colossus for herself. However, this presented a problem as, typifying the Irish stereotypes, her driving experiences all lacked the tedious issue of passing a driving test. Unperturbed I wanted her to get behind the wheel, although she was prepared to settle for riding in the passenger seat which would be far easier. Over the years I have developed a fine tuned ability to lie to salesmen, possibly inherited from my father but also coupled with my absolute loathing for the brown nosing that salespeople carry out if they think they have an opportunity to earn their commission. I don’t blame them, yet this is what has lead to the global recession that everyone with a job is now paying for.

Telephone calls were made and I located a Carrera 2 convertible for sale a mere 20 miles from my abode, bullshit was exchanged and a test drive was booked for the Saturday afternoon. On the said afternoon I was tearing along the M6 with my best buddy ensconced in the passenger seat as we headed towards an appointment with the mighty Porsche. Upon arrival the seller had things planned perfectly. Generally I have unfathomable loathing towards anyone involved in sales, yet this guy was a real professional as everything was so blatantly set up to present the car as a piece of motoring artwork had been organised to make my friend and myself go ‘ooh’ and ‘aahhh’. For example, as the Cortina drew to a halt a large sliding wooden door began to slide back revealing the Carrera like a prize on a game show. Sunlight streamed in through the opening door and glinted off the silver paintwork, across the sculptured curves of the bonnet, back towards the windscreen and over the bulging rear wheel arches.

The chat began and pleasantries were exchanged for a full quarter of an hour before the salesman opened the doors and pressed the switch that makes the roof fold down. For me this was an impressive display of engineering that only the Germans can muster. For Eileen things were different. She was there grinning like a schoolgirl and bouncing up and down in that way that means that women do leading to every man within a square mile to stare fixedly at her chest regions. Coming from Belfast I realised that she must have seen many cars without roofs before, but rather than pressing a switch, on the Emerald Isle cars become roofless when a man in a balaclava leaves some plastic explosives under the driver’s seat.

Her smile grew broader still after the salesman had defied the laws of science and squeezed himself into the back seat, Eileen clambered into the passenger seat and I tried to contain my excitement getting behind the wheel, parking my posterior on the flawless black leather sports seat and trying to adjust the seat. Here came the first problem, as I had absolutely no idea how to make myself comfortable, thus I stabbed away at the buttons next to the seat with realising that I was pressing the memory position type thing. Now, I have no idea who the previous owner was, yet I suspect that he was employed making chocolate for Mr Wonka because I found myself pinned to the dashboard, unable to reach the buttons that had thrust me into the steering wheel and desperately trying to appear that I had intentionally made a hash of the seating arrangement. After a few moments I was able to reach another set of buttons and settled back, fingers poised on the ignition key waiting to fire up the flat six.

As a petrol head I am captivated by the sound of the internal combustion engine, and the Porsche is one of the best noises ever made. I have heard many 911’s drive past over the years, but I was nowhere near prepared for the explosion that spat from the exhausts. This car sounded angry, ready to kill Eileen, the salesman and myself if I made the slightest mistake. I should have felt afraid, but instead I pulled the car gently onto the road, looked for a clearing in the traffic and floored the throttle. Rather than spinning wildly in circles, the Porsche surged forward happily and propelled all inside towards the horizon.

So here I was living a childhood dream, revelling in the experience and trying to work out what the good and bad points are with the rear engined menace. Well, as far as I could tell the faults were that the steering was a bit light and, actually that’s it.

Everything else was as I expected. Close, precise engineering, perfect lines and genuine everyday usability.

I could harp on four hours about driving the 911, but the real highlight came when the sales chap asked politely if ‘we’ (Eileen and myself) shared the driving. Thus it came to pass that I pulled over on an industrial estate so that my Irish mate could have a drive. As previously mentioned she does not possess a licence, but on a quiet dead end road at the weekend then this should not have posed a problem.

With a smile so wide her head was in danger of splitting we swapped seats and she set about adjusting the seat, with no problems unlike myself, and got herself comfortable. As a woman she has the inbuilt need to get as close to the wheel as possible, to the point where her airbags are pressed against the car’s airbag and the sun visor could be used as a headrest. No matter, she was off, jerkily to start with and then opening the engine up, laughing and truly happy, whilst I explained that her slight lack of clutch control was due to her not having driven in a while. Several years in fact, but he didn’t need to know any further details.

Also, as a female Eileen also managed to take a wrong turn and piloted the Carrera through a village, still smiling whilst I murmured a prayer under my breath and enjoyed herself hugely. A few miles passed, I got back in the driving seat, again buggering up the seat position controls, and began to head back to the dealer’s. knowing that the shared joy of ragging a 911 about was close to an end I sought somewhere to overtake and gave the Stuttgart barnstormer the beans, foot down in second, then third, then fourth and short shifting into sixth when I got back onto the correct side of the road the speedo was well into triple figures. I was happy, Eileen was happy and the salesman was pretending to be happy, all was nice and rosy.

Parking the Porsche back at the dealership I felt glad to have driven the dream, glad that my Paddy buddy had also had a good thrash and also desperately trying to think of an excuse to get away before I was asked to purchase the car.

Eventually we got away, clambered back into the trusty old Ford and set off back towards my house, talking all the way about how the Porsche had met our expectations, laughing at how convincingly we had passed ourselves off as a couple and looking for any security vans we might hijack to get enough money to get a Carrera for real.

But this is not where the story ends. As it happens a week after Eileen had departed, the day after the test drive we no longer had to pretend to be a couple. After a long chat on the phone we realised that we both wanted to be more than just friends.

So there you go. I have the pretty young girlfriend, the bald spot and I am thinking of buying some leather trousers. All I need to complete the picture is a bloody Porsche!