How can a sports car driver ever be happy with their car?<\/p>\n
Sports cars, by and large, are about speed. Speed in the twisties, or speed down the strip on a Saturday night, even speed to a halt (braking). But here’s the thing many of us realize, especially after embarking on our car’s modification program: There will always<\/em> be someone faster than you. There will always be cars that cling to the corners more tenaciously, are more direct in their responses, and hook up better off the line. How does one reach automotive contentment, then? How can you be really happy with your car when you’re annihilated at a stoplight race or humiliated around the road course? Can you be?<\/p>\n The key I think is to own a car that is special to you for reasons unrelated to pure speed. A car that agrees with you. A car that feels like home when you sit in it and lets you breathe more deeply when you sink into the seat after a hard day at work. A car that makes you smile just tooling around town at 25 mph. A car that is your<\/em> car.<\/p>\n I used to ponder the owner loyalty of cars I was familiar with–the FB, the Z-car, FD, the mk4 Supra, etc… and why for example many, many first-gen RX-7 owners will hang onto their cars through thick and thin, whereas more than a few mk4 drivers go through a couple of cars in a year–and I think there’s more at work than simply the financial ability to buy and sell cars frequently. For a lot of owners there’s something the FB has that the mk4 doesn’t (and vice-versa of course), counterintuitive to many of us who are acquainted with the latter car’s prowess, and I think those subtler qualities are lost on a lot of the performance-fixated automotive community.<\/p>\n We’re all addicted to speed, sure, but that intangible special quality of a car we’re really attached to is beneficial in more than one way, I think. It’s that knowledge, that feeling, that promotes a sense of contentment when we’re approached a light and revved on and we decline to go, just knowing that we don’t have anything to prove. It’s that knowledge that makes us humble about our cars, and fosters an atmosphere in which we can genuinely appreciate others’ cars without getting defensive. We see our car’s flaws, to be sure, but somehow they’re okay; they’re inconveniences cheerfully borne.<\/p>\n And that’s what made me keep the Supra. With the addition of a few mods, I felt myself getting caught up in the Great Speed Race, uncomfortably so, and wanted an “out,” another car where it might be easier to sense its other endearing qualities upon an initial drive, and I immediately gravitated towards my first automotive love (the FB). But then I realized I could have that with the Supra too. All I had to do was to re-experience what made the car special to me. It just took a moment.<\/p>\n It was a cold night when I slipped into the perfectly contoured seat, surveyed the dash, with all the controls and switches ideally placed. I turned the key, the car started with an elastic smoothness and settled down to a rock-solid 700 rpm idle. I flipped the lights on; the headlights popped up and the gorgeous analog gauges were lit up with a pleasingly pale green. I gripped the thick steering wheel and rested my hand on the shifter. Everything felt substantial, solid. The car just fit me. I thought about the way the car looked and the image that projected–not the flashiest, most curvaceous body style, but understated, well-proportioned, and attractive–and I thought about my own self-image. My impression of the car and my concept of what I wanted to project lined up perfectly. It agreed with me; it was home–and I wasn’t even moving. After that moment even the metallic rip of the inline-six up to redline and the whistle of the turbo on the way home were just fluff–the car and I shared a bond deeper than raw speed, and any thoughts of parting with it were pushed from my mind.<\/p>\n