Human-Generated Automotive Gibberish
Miata is always the answer, if only for a moment.
There are two kinds of crazy, the kind where you go out of your way to do something irresponsible for the sake of feeling something, and the kind where you try to do something “smart” for the sake of being responsible. When you finally get fed up with your nightmare project car, the one that seemed both a bad idea and the answer to all your dreams, you end up doing the latter kind of crazy and purchase your sixth Miata.
You know better, but what’s the fun in that?
In your late-20s you will find a questionably modified econobox. You should buy it, assuming you’re a glutton for punishment and don’t realize it’s going to take over your personality. As the honeymoon dissipates, you will discover that the previous owners generally quarter-assed their way through the build before your bumbling bird brain came on the scene. Yes, you have been down this road before, but it’s been months since you made your last fun car purchase, and Craigslist is just staring you down with another one of those boxes you’ve always wanted to check. After all, this is what dreams are raged from.
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. You recoil and 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.
