Rating the road behind us…

I’ve been lucky enough to drive some truly awesome cars. Ferrari 355, a Formula Ford, very briefly (and fairly slowly) a McLaren F1-GTR, a very well prepared Subaru rally car, a Formula 3 racecar and a stupidly quick VW Golf rally car. All very cool, rather expensive and unfortunately mostly belonged to someone else.

Most petrol heads focus primarily on the importance that the car plays in this equation, ignoring the other variables. I think the car is a clear role, but other things can be as important.

For example driving highway 101 in California a few years ago was cool for three reasons; a) it was a Convertible, b) there was a great road and c) the presence of a hot blonde in the passenger seat. The fact it was a Chrysler Sebring rental car and therefore crap is actually rather unimportant when it comes to the coolness of the situation.  (But they do come with a full size spare for when you do something dumb and the rental company do not check the spare when you return it). Nothing short of a Lamborghini Gallardo could have made it any more special.

I’m sure Col De Turini during the Monte Carlo rally in an STi with pace notes and no oncoming traffic must be earth shatteringly amazing, however Col De Turini in a economy rental car is still trouser wetting good and stored in my petrol-head spank bank for future reference. Once again in my opinion the car is less important than the road and the history that goes with it.

This gives us an equation (and I am an engineer at heart):

Car coolness * Road awesomeness * Situation = Petrolhead Spankability

or

CRS=PS

And chasing a maximum PS is what it’s all about.

My personal PS highpoint may be the Pikes Peak Hill Climb in Colorado. Both the road (R) itself (this was before it was ruined by tarmac and crash barriers all the way to the top) and the views/location/history (S) score rather well. Throw in the almost inevitable low C of a rental car and it still scored well above average.

Now replace that C with a fully prepared rally car on slick tires with lot of extra lights. Then increase S even further by adding pace notes, a closed road and running in the dark (I love night stages) and the PS is now measured by multiple Shitloads (in other words it’s off the scale. A “shitload” of anything is a big number with a lot of zeros in it, I believe its metric).

By the way, when the side car riders comment upon how stupid/brave the rally people were to attempt this, we took it as a complement.

One of the great things about using the PS equation is comparing disparate experiences and coming up with a coolness quotient.

For example, lets compare two different moments in time:

First is a Porsche GT3 (very high C) in the I-90 floating bridge (low R) between Seattle and the Eastside late one night (low S). The road was immaterial beyond there was nowhere for police bikes to hide. So in summary the situation was mostly irrelevant, the road boring, but the car awe inspiring. Together this gives us a shockingly low PS for something involving a car from the chaps in Stuttgart.

Comparing that with doing 125MPH in my Miata (a solid medium C). Getting to that sort of speed in the Miata is not difficult (I imagine), you just need a lot of road or a race track (theoretically). Lets say the road is the very scenic Yellow Head Highway north of Kamloops BC (a solid medium R) on our way back from the Big Horn Rally in Edson (medium S).

Lets be clear, the GT3 at 160 (allegedly) was incredible, quiet, planted and eager for more (or so I’d imagine). We only slowed because we ran out of bridge and did not fancy learning how much an 180MPH speeding ticket was (once again, I imagine that’s what I’d do if I were ever in this theoretical situation ;-)).

The Miata was (or would be had I done this, I imagine) a whole different animal, the noise and feedback made it clear this was about as fast as we were going on this particular evening, but together the C*R*S give a higher PS score than the GT3 on a straight road.

As cool as these moments of automotive porn were, they were all missing an essential ingredient. A driver that knows what they are doing behind the wheel of the car.