BEAUTY & THE BEAST
Somewhat recently I acquired something I have
long merely dreamed about, repressed recidivist materialist that I am. Those of you who
have followed earlier installments of 'The Mayday Cafe'
know that I am something
of a Porsche 914 enthusiast. Before you summarily write me off the books as
having sold out my more refined (transcendent) aesthetics for a filthy
environment polluting, NOX-spewing icon of American capitalism, know that
I am, after all, a socialised, card-carrying member of the California car
culture I was born into. I won't try to defend this rather contrary predilection
to any great length in the face of my otherwise anti-materialistic, anti-car
sentiments, since that's simply a tedious exercise and boring as well.
Suffice it to say that this attachment to Porsches is very likely linked to the
fact that when I was an impressionable youth, the German air-cooled Porsche was
an exciting and perhaps even revolutionary alternative to the humdrum rituals
attendant to the hoi poloi's worship of traditional monstrously sized American
hunks of Detroit steel that predominated in the 60s and 70s I grew up in.
Consider that Dr. Ferdinand Porsche's little
air-suckers, from the first rear engine KdFwagens of the 30s through the more
refined and sporty roadsters of the 70s, were in fact a very singular expression
of that individual's unique interpretation of sporty automotive élan. A further
attraction for me was the fact that the air-cooled Porsche roadster was an
underdog in the then-dominant culture of American marque auto-racing.
Admittedly it did have the special and exclusive cachet of being an underdog
vehicle with verve, style, sang froid, and the fateful appeal of
counter-culture panache. However, my initial reasons for being attracted to the
Porsche 914 in particular were linked (as outlined in an earlier 'Mayday Cafe'
segment) to the fact that the lady-love of my post-adolescent life drove one.
Subsequent to this primary draw, I came to appreciate the car on its own merits
and free of testosterone-tinged sentiments of primal lust. This fascination with
the 914--a car that one either loves or hates (there is no middle ground
regarding feelings for its aesthetics and styling)--continued throughout my
life, probably only further enhanced by the fact that even the Porsche purists
themselves (those cultists who fawned over the 911 car) regarded it as a bastard
child of the illustrious Porsche design family (this despite the fact that
Porsche #1 was a mid-engine design, rather than a rear-engine exercise).
As mentioned before, the Porsche 914 was
originally conceived as a replacement for the Volkswagen Karman Ghia in the late
60s and an informal agreement between Volkswagen and Porsche AG resulted in its
birth in 1969. Production was started initially in two versions, a 4 cylinder
car made by Volkswagen (the 914-4, using the basic VW Type II/Type IV engine),
and a 6 cylinder version made by Porsche (made by Porsche and utilising a
Porsche 911 engine for its powerplant). Production continued from 1970 through
1976, resulting in many thousands of the 4 cylinder version being manufactured,
but only 3700 of the 6 cylinder version were ever made (from 1970 through 1972
only). Of those small numbers of the 'legitimate' Porsche 914-6 version, a mere
1750 were brought to the United States. Thus, the Porsche 914-6 roadster is a
somewhat rare and decidedly unique vehicle, even amongst its 4 cylinder
look-alike brothers. With its bigger 6 cylinder engine, the 914-6 was far and
away a more formidable performer than its milder 4 cylinder VW powered sibling,
obviously enough.
Up until recently, I have only owned various
examples of the 4 cylinder 914-4, but several months ago I finally found a 914-6
and plunked down the cash for it--an orange specimen whose pumpkin colored paint
strongly appealed to my sense of taste (I am particularly drawn to the color
orange--a taste acquired while in the Air Force and associated with the use of
orange as a high-visibility survival color for aircrews). This car, an early
1970 version, now shares the 
garage pad with my 1975 red 914-4. Having finally
had the chance to conduct side-by-side comparisons of their driving and handling
qualities, the only really apt analogy that comes readily to hand is 'Beauty and
the Beast' ('Beauty' is the mild-mannered, but still quite sporty 75 914-4, and
'The Beast' is the more brutish 70 914-6, of course).
My impressions drawn from driving both are
surprising: each is a a unique and enjoyable car in its own right. When one
wants to tear up the roadway, the 914-6 is the delivering instrument of that
urge, but when one wants to saunter elegantly across the countryside, the
milder, more 'genteel' 914-4 is the mount of choice. So much do I enjoy both of
these cars that I value them both almost equally--despite the fact that one is
worth about $6000 and the other roughly three times that. Of course, as a wiser,
older, more mature person who understands the need to drive responsibly on
today's cluttered, congested roadways, the opportunities for taking either of
them to its limits on public streets are today almost non-existent (this was not
as much the case 40 years ago, of course). Hence, I don't own them as much to
drive them fast and recklessly as to now simply appreciate and aesthetically
savor the brilliance of Dr. Ferdinand Porsche's unique vision of sporty
vehicular genius.
Unfortunately, far too many younger people in
the year 2004 do not understand the logical (and mandatory) road-rules that
California's increasingly congested roadways impose on all operators of
automobiles. Each and every day I find myself infuriated by the blithe liberties
assumed and taken by 'youthful' drivers on our streets and highways. Of course
these same youthful individuals probably haven't a clue as to what a 914 is
anyway, since most of them were born well after the Porsche 914 went out of
production in late 1975. In one sense, this is simply another damning indictment
of the general level of ignorance today's adolescents have of the real world
around them, since kids raised almost exclusively on video games and television
fantasies have been socialised solely by these insubstantial elements of
America's pop-culture world of the present. To appreciate the Porsche 914 and
its place in the history of automotive engineering and motorsports design
presupposes a greater awareness of history in general, but as we all know, one
of the greatest deficits common to today's youth is an alarming lack of interest
in anything that smacks of earlier times (i.e. history). Thus, given this
general ignorance, the importance of the 914's design heritage and engineering
precepts are likely completely lost among those who were born after 1980.
In fact, given my own observations today, the
Porsche 'era' seems to today be the exclusive turf of us 50-somethings who were
raised in an earlier decade when Porsche dominated the world's Euro-style
auto-racing sports. People younger than 30 seem to be completely unmindful of
the special and 'exclusive' cachet of the Porsche, entirely. Of course part of
this is due to the fact that today's Porsches are no longer even marginally
affordable, but cost many thousands of dollars more than the average younger
person can even seriously consider (unless you factor in that great sucker-deal
gimmick, the 'lease', which allows any fool with no sense at all and even fewer
dollars to temporarily 'use' any automobile he fancies--no matter how expensive
or beyond his immediate means it may be). The simple fact is, it would seem to
me, that the glorious era of the 'Classic Porsche' is now long gone--conceded to
the shadows of history and now valued merely as a formative part of people of my
age, who were growing up in the 60s and 70s.
That's fine with me, however, since the
roadsters and sporty machines industry now produces are well and truly described
more as road-way fighter jets, complete with sophisticated systems and
instrumentation that are as far removed from the 'simpler' technologies of the
70s as the Earth is from the Moon. This is one of the reasons I enjoy the older
Porsches, anyway, since any fool with money (or even those without, via
'leasing') can drive just about any state-of-the-art high performance machine he
wishes, some of them capable of speeds in excess of 200 mph on the road! Owning
and appreciating a fine older Porsche of the 60s/70s era takes a special
combination of qualities that includes maturity, disposable income, a sense of
history, an appreciation for simpler concepts, a more basic (and broader) level
of aesthetics, and other qualities that are usually found only in older
individuals.
Thinking about these perplexing nuances, I am
reminded of Neville Shute's landmark tale of fictionalised world-wide nuclear
doom, On the Beach, which first came out back in the 50s. In the book,
one of the characters waiting for the shroud of fallout laden death to snuff out
Australia's remaining survivors of the mutually destructive Soviet-American
nuclear war keeps a last rendezvous with a special, exotic race car which he has
kept stored in his garage. As the final waves of intense radiation sickness
sweep over him, he sits in the car's cramped cockpit one last time, fires up the
engine, and waits for the carbon monoxide to overcome him as the last precious
drops of petrol are consumed. That scene will ever remain etched in my memory as
a formidable symbolic representation of the meaning that was formerly
appreciated by European auto enthusiasts (definitely not associated with the
American, 'good-old-boy' muscle-car fans of NASCAR, naturally enough). It was an
iconic scene truly remarkable to that earlier, simpler age, and as hopelessly
out of sync with contemporary American fantasyland pop-culture as can be, today.
Today, that sense of 'old style' savoir faire is also as out of fashion as
manners, courtesy, broad cultural awareness, and individual insight.
All of this rumination on the Porsche mythos
and 'Golden Era' of the 70s brings other thoughts to mind as well. One favorite
'hot button' topic is roadway manners. Back in the 50 through 70s period,
teenagers were exposed to mandatory driver training courses in schools; today,
increasingly tight school budget constraints have all but eliminated such
drivers training programs for teenagers in the United States and kids are left
to emulate their friends' immature actions while driving (greatly reinforced by
completely irresponsible advertisements used by automobile companies to sell
their products on television). In those courses, the importance of things like
proper use of turn signals was a basic skill to be routinely and universally
understood and put into practice. Common knowledge held that a turn signal
was there to indicate your intentions to the oncoming of following traffic, so
that other drivers would anticipate your intentions and yield accordingly; many
clueless older souls on our highways today wonder with intense frustration why
younger drivers fail to use turn signals at all. The reasons are certainly clear
enough, I feel, to anyone who spends a few minutes reflecting on this seeming
paradox. This elimination of basic adolescent driving awareness in schools is
certainly furthered by an almost complete abnegation of parental authority to
instruct and supervise their offspring while driving.
Simply explained (Occam's Razor?), adolescents
and today's 'younger' (not necessarily young in terms of age, but rather in
terms of their awareness) drivers don't use turn signals because that would
"tip their hand" to other drivers around them. With the fast paced and
highly aggressive (read 'adolescent') driving styles that obtain on today's
streets and roadways, indicating your intentions to turn, merge, or otherwise
move from one vector of travel to another is actually severely self defeating,
since the minute that other driver perceives you wish to come into his lane,
turn in front of him, or otherwise maneuver near him, he will predictably try actively
to prevent you from being able to carry out your intentions (usually by speeding
up or blocking your efforts). Why is this? Part of the response is undoubtedly
natural--mechanisms unconsciously linked with deep-seated instincts of survival
and self-advancement; much more of it, however, is probably a manifestation of
today's intensely self-centered, self-gratifying spirit of immaturity that
prevails throughout American society. I call it "Me first-ism" and it
is a direct result of souless American marketing and advertising. The best caricature
of this 'adolescent mind-set' to me is symbolised by that infuriating (and
childish) bumper sticker quite often seen at the rear of ponderous and
slow-moving personal recreational vehicles that says "I may be slow, but
I'm AHEAD of you!" All thoughts of cooperative roadway interaction have
long since gone the way of the dinosaur, with the demise of etiquette, manners,
basic courtesy, and all other manifestations of more 
'genteel' (read: slower
paced, more relaxed) times, as corporate America has rushed to co-opt the spirit
of youthful rebelliousness to sell youth-aimed products with total disregard for
the consequences. Regrettably, far too many adults are so instinctively
unreflective as to be totally unable to understand the need for maintenance of
these cultural tools (manners and courtesy) that reduce interpersonal friction
and enable smoother social interactions. These same clueless adults are often
the ones who at the age of 50 and 60 affect commercially produced 'gansta style'
dress and mannerisms that have been lifted right out of the subcultures by
commercial interests intent on selling more stupid (and needless) 'stuff' to the
masses. When they take their 'fuck you cool' attitudes onto the roadways and
streets, life simply becomes more frustrating and aggravating for those of us
who do appreciate the nuances of what is happening within these cultural
and social contexts. Unfortunately, when everyone goes around saying "fuck
you", you have the basic recipe for social disintegration--signs of which
are all around us today in modern America.
At any rate, whereas driving used to be far
more fun and enjoyable in California (the 'ground zero' of America's car
culture), the present combination of intense social rudeness, aggressive refusal
to cooperate on streets and roadways with other drivers, abrasive display of
recurring, flagrant disrespect for other roadway users (particularly for
non-automobile traffic, such as bicyclists), and myopic perpetuation of
childishly immature attitudes by many while operating motor vehicles, adds up to
spell frustration for everyone. Despite the fact that it isn't always safe to
take my Porsche 914s out onto the highway to run them up and keep them fresh, I
retain these relics of my former days out of nostalgia and remembrance of
kinder, simpler times in my home state. A number of years ago, I thought I'd
reached what a UC Santa Cruz professor termed "sportscar menopause" in
his book of the same name; today, somewhat to my chagrin, I find that I haven't.
While the opportunities for fully enjoying these wonderful machines no longer
exist in their former abundance, they still constitute a link with memories of
happier times and youthful dreams of life lived fully. I'll probably keep them
till I die simply as adored icons of those years of my life when I still had a
few untainted dreams and a handful of optimistic aspirations.
"Beauty and the Beast" has many
other symbolic aspersive connotations, I suppose, since youth is full of beauty
and older age is the preserve of beastly resignation and broken dreams, but further
rumination on this subject would takes hours to wade through. I'll leave it here
and go out to listen to the wonderful music of my 914-6's characteristic Porsche
whine as it idles in the driveway. Wagner or Sibelius could not have penned
sweeter notes, I think!
Cheers, DocBoink. Sept 2004 (just
remember....two-thirds of BMW is BM, heh-heh).
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