One More Thing...
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Ready for Liftoff?
We all have our worthless areas of knowledge and, thanks to my childhood obsession with cars, here's mine: To this day I can still identify the year and make of nearly every American-made car produced between about 1955 and 1965. Of course I grew up in the 1960s – a time when cars were worth obsessing over. Stock car drivers actually raced "stock" cars and rock-and-rollers sang songs about cars.
My obsession with cars continued as I grew older. I was the proud holder of a driver's license before noon on my sixteenth birthday (I'm not kidding). Shortly after that, I bought my first car: a 1961 Volkswagen bug. It had a 4-speed manual transmission, a four-cylinder, 40 horsepower motor and two dented fenders. I paid $135 for it. (Actually, my father paid $135 for it, and I think I paid him back later – at least I was supposed to.) The car was green and I drove it to high school and to my first job. And I worked on it a lot.
In those days I read car magazines whenever I could. One of the important questions of my childhood was whether "Car and Driver" or "Road and Track" was the better magazine. As a 12-year-old, I actually waited excitedly to learn which car would be Motor Trend Magazine's "Car of the Year". (In 1968, it was the Pontiac GTO, with its revolutionary body-colored flexible bumpers.)
Even though I pay much less attention to cars nowadays (partly because they're much less interesting), I admit that I still like to pick up a car magazine and read it every now and then. It's fun to learn about the features of the latest Corvette or BMW or Lexus. It makes me feel kind of like a teenage girl reading a bridal magazine. Which is the point, I guess.
Not long ago, I read an article in a car magazine about the 2009 Porsche 911 Carrera S Cabriolet. This is a car that basically evolved from the original VW bug. But things have changed a bit.
First of all, the car tested by the magazine has a sticker price of $119,925. That's nearly 900 times as expensive as my Volkswagen. It has a convertible top (for you non-car people, that's what "cabriolet" means) and a seven-speed transmission. The dimensions and weight of the Porsche aren't a lot greater than my old bug, but this Porsche's motor has nearly ten times the horsepower – with just six cylinders. It has a top speed of 186 mph.
The new Porsche has another feature that my old VW bug lacked (and certainly didn't need). It's something called "launch control". (One of the sad realities of my life is that I'll probably never be able to afford a car that needs launch control. Trust me, if I could I would.)
I don't think it was invented by NASA, but launch control has a very useful purpose in a car like this. The Porsche has rear-wheel-drive and its motor is in the back. So when you step hard on the gas, with that powerful of an engine, the car's natural tendency will be to spin around and point in the opposite direction. This can be embarrassing at stop lights – not to mention dangerous.
Launch control is sort of the opposite of anti-lock brakes. With it, the rear wheels won't quite burn rubber, even when you floor the gas pedal. And so the tires maintain their grip and direction on the road. And, in spite of what a lot of young hot rodders think, a car can accelerate faster when it's not burning rubber. Launch control also keeps the motor from over-revving and blowing itself up. It must work, because, according to the article, this Porsche can reach 60 miles per hour from a standing start in less than 4.3 seconds. All the time facing forward.
I was thinking about that Porsche the other day while riding my bicycle to work. I wondered if I kept building up my leg strength I could get to where I need launch control on my bike. Probably not.