For those who are lucky enough to make a living writing about cars, the pinnacle highlight is being cut loose with someone else’s car and doing a touch more than just putting about from Point A to Point B with careful supervision. To date, I’d have to say that being invited to a vehicle-flogging session by General Motors, a day that involved tracking all sorts of Camaros and Cruzes around courses in the desert, has to be up on the list. Being cut loose with a Charger Hellcat, red key in hand, and being told by the general manager of the dealership to “have fun” is a close second. But for what it’s worth, it doesn’t matter how fast the car is supposed to be, or how pedestrian it really is…I’ll have fun and find something, anything I can, to write about the experience of being behind the wheel.
That being said, nobody has been brave enough to turn me loose in a racing vehicle.
What I mean by that: the Camaro that infamously blew it’s engine at the first King of the Heap event in Bowling Green wasn’t a race car per se…it was a cheap car that would’ve had a prayer if the LT-1 wasn’t making noises that sounded like the entire Industrial Revolution happening somewhere between the second and fourth cylinders. Say that NMCA Nostalgia Muscle Car champ Andy Warren was to encourage me to hop behind the wheel of his Caprice and take a run down Beech Bend. Or to have the Baruths ask me to hop behind the wheel of their Miata for a lap or two. Not many press get that chance, and for good reason: while there are good drivers in the midst, each sport is special in their own right and besides…none of us really can afford to fix anything if something bad were to happen.
Back in 1974, however, Shaw Taylor of the British television program “Drive In” got his chance to get behind the wheel of a prepared Opel Ascona A in a muddy field. Group B this ain’t, not with the Opel’s four howling to keep forward momentum while the rear tires sling sloshy mud wherever the tail swings. Keep giving that throttle hell and don’t get the little beast stuck…it would look quite undignified to have to stomp through that slop back to the camera for the final thoughts!
