Human-Generated Automotive Gibberish
Close to Home, Far from Bored
As will be obvious, we’re still figuring out what to do with this whole video thing. This time we kept it much more simple though; a local meetup, some local roads, and a longer chat about my current Corolla GT-S.
Where should we go next time?
High Fidelity or Soulful Grit? Choose one.
One of the best and worst parts of music streaming is that you don’t always know what song you’re going to hear. Maybe you’ve had the same song from the same artist on the same playlist for years but, one day, Spotify or the powers that be change which version they’re hosting. You pull up the app, hit play, and hear most of the familiar cues from the song you know and love. And then suddenly the nuances of whatever remaster or radio edit you’re listing to come through, and you recoil in disgust and/or pick up your phone to check that you tapped on the right song. You did, but what you’re experiencing is…different. That is what it feels like the first time you tuck an M42-powered E30 into a corner for the first time.
The best sports cars can be driven flat out without going into orbit. The 996 GT3 is arguably one of them.
You’re almost there. You already know, from the last few miles, that cranking on the lock at this point in the corner is going to scrub the front tires for no reason. The next two seconds feel like two hours, at least compared to the same experience in cars that don’t put the cart before the horses. Sensing that the front is still a little too light, you relax your big toe, letting the accelerator pedal come up a smidge and feeling the nose come down just enough as you turn toward the apex.
Open road? Check.
Top of second gear? Check.
Weird ridge in the tarmac? Check.
Poorly matched shocks? Check, check, check.
We are cleared for take off.
Or at least that was the monologue as the Miata initiated a sideways twerk over the aforementioned irregularity in the road surface. In this car, on this part of the road, there are two choices. Hold off on throttle application until you’re well past to avoid the sickening pogo action of the R-Package Bilsteins on an undulating surface or….whoop over it and just deal. Miss Daisy isn’t riding passenger today, or ever, so whooping is the most often the choice.
