Swan Dreams-1 (Porsche ''Ugly Duckling'' Syndrome)

I talk to my Porsche. The fact that it is named ‘Jezibel’ is in itself anecdotal (but inconsequential here,) in the colloquy between us that occurs virtually daily.

Yesterday, for example, I found I had left open on my garage’s workbench a copy of Sprenger & Heinrichs’ beautiful compendium of Porsche’s early sportscar history, which sits very near my ’74 914-4’s accustomed spot. When I walked back into the area to retrieve the book before it got inadvertently soiled, I was stopped dead in my tracks for a moment.

I could swear on a stack of 550A Spyder manuals that I heard some muted sniffling coming from that part of the garage my 914 lives in. A bit flummoxed, I kept unnaturally still for a few seconds to see what and where this noise was coming from…but let me explain a bit before you write all this off as the meandering fantasies of an increasingly senescent old fool.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard strange sounds coming from my garage (where my 914 shares space with Madam Chairman’s immaculate 1995 Toyota Camry). Odd and largely unidentifiable snaps, creaks, bumps and so forth, yes…engines and hot oil routinely rend the air with such low-key smidgens of lower-register noise, but this was the first time I had ever heard what I could swear sounded like barely stifled human whimpers of extreme sadness coming from there!

Next to my car, sat the open book, just filled to overflowing with page after page of gorgeous illustrations, photos and diagrams of my humble 914’s illustrious predecessors. After a quick glance at the book and back at my car’s corner of the garage, I had a whimsical thought: was that muted and oh-so-human-like sighing whimper coming from Jezibel?!

As Madam Chairman puts it with her clipped little Hong Kong accent, “Neva hoppen, barbarian!” And of course she was absolutely correct; my highly rational intellect affirmed the fact that such blatant anthropomorphisms were not just at odds with even the most bizarre quantum unlikelihoods (except, perhaps, ‘Schroedinger’s Porsche’?...), but also further likely confirmation that I am definitely weaving a path down a precarious road of premature senescent geezerdom (like a certain Chief of State we all know?). Still…!

And so, silently asking myself what J.R.R. Tolken (or George R.R. Martin, if you will) would do when confronted by a situation like this, I turned towards Jezibel and only half-seriously said, half audibly, “Is that you, Jez?”

Naturally, there was no response as Jez’s hot-engine sounds continued to snap, crackle and pop, cooling off from our just finished weekly, short ‘freshening-up’ drive.

So, I walked over to my bench, gathered up the book, closed it and walked back to the door leading into the house, pausing only for a second to look back at Jez, over there in its corner of the Gasoline Alley cavern.

The truth of the matter is that although our Porsches do not deign to communicate so directly with us as to utter actual human-like sounds, they do communicate in many other ways…which is why, by my reckoning, such needlessly distracting annoyances as radios (music) are a complete waste of time for seriously driving an automobile. Call me VERY old school if you must, accuse me of being a sentimental old fossil if you must, but by my inherited Austrian standards (maternal, hailing from the Oberkrain region, which is now part of Slovenia after being hacked off from the Habsburg realm, long ago), to my manner of thinking, engine ‘noise’ is a most interesting and useful foreign language to familiarize oneself with.

I would therefore much rather to spend my time zipping down twisty, forested rural roads (keeping a strict eye out for existentially unaware bicyclists, of course) listening to what my engine may be telling me in mechanical epithets than let myself be distracted by even the most sensual rendering of Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto by Yuja Wang (or perhaps Kraftwerk’s seminal ‘AUTOBAHN’).

In short, to my way of seeing it, a radio in a sporty car makes about as much sense as Bill Clinton’s coy evasions when he tried to ‘splain-away’ his egregious Oval Office dalliances with Monica (Prosecutor: “Were you distracted by your radio just before you wrapped your car around that tree?” Bill: “Define ‘distraction’, sir…”).

As a person with well-defined (if somewhat diluted) Teutonic proclivities, music…in any way, shape or phonic form…is an experience one ought properly to devote one’s entire and complete attention to…and should never be considered as mere background noise (albeit of a semi-melodic kind). I can no more read a book about Herr Doktor Porsche’s incredible genius and listen to a symphony simultaneously than I can beat the pants off a haughty Ferrari driver in my flat-4-engined Jezibel. And like masterful musical compositions that speak to your very soul, Porsche engine noises communicate at a most intimate level of subliminal awareness (well, perhaps I’m both biased and exaggerating, here) that demand respect and attentiveness as you strive to drive your car within (and not too far beyond) its carefully engineered limits. (After all, as a noted local club-racing friend of mine never fails to remind me, “The car’s engineers know best: They DESIGNED the car!”)

But returning to the mysteriously muted snuffling sounds I fancied I had briefly heard in my garage, just now, I’ve given this a lot of thought (and admit to have even mused verbally to Jez) as to what that was! I’d like to think that my poor little ‘Ugly Duckling’ Porsche (that I really respect so much) was wistfully reflecting, when I walked in on it, on the hard-to-ignore fact that despite remaining the ‘Poor-she’ most sniffy, modern Porschophiles love to badmouth (after a few drinks at social events), my poor little 914-4 has far more in common with both the origins (i.e. 550s and early racing designs, et al) of Porsches and certain recent, strikingly advanced Porsches (the Boxter/Cayman, for example) than all those Porsches that either have a Dihydrogen Monoxide cooled, rectally inserted powerplant OR a front-engine (also cooled by H20). And the mid-engine design configuration, regardless of and despite the intended market status incidentals a particular model may have acquired, has continually been demonstrated as superlative to any other possible Porsche weight-distribution schema. Finito, punkt, owari!

Naturally enough, regardless of my having reasoned away any possibilities of Jezibel actually speaking to me in my native language (like the good little pedantic rationalizer I am), I remain convinced my little Ugly Duckling is a marvelous emotional support vehicle that suits me perfectly. As such, it can hardly be surprising that we 914 people tend to communicate more deeply in some ways than those with the latest Porsche 911 GT3 RS rocket ship!

Here’s to you, Jez, regardless of all the supercilious, haughty and snarky sniffers! Dream on, little black duck and remember, I’m still taking basic 914 language lessons!