I like to get in a car and drive. That’s my meditation, my exercise; I’ve said it’s my drug, my religion – because nothing beats it when you are behind the wheel. It is from the gritty streets of Downtown LA that I have set out on some of my most memorable adventures – which I will tell you about in this book – but it is also from my warehouse there that I take out one of my Porsches for a drive.
Every journey begins by walking through a big rusty gate into the compound, then into the warehouse and through a second big black gate into my garage. Inside this former machine shop, you will find my Porsches parked up, some super-rare, some less so, but they all mean something special to me. Some people call that garage a little slice of heaven. It’s one of my favourite places in the world.
Each of those cars gives me a very different experience, just like in my life I have been lucky enough to enjoy so many great and varied adventures. Any journey I take begins by deciding on the destination and how I want to get there. If I want to step back fifty years and feel what it was like driving in the sixties for a laid-back Sunday outing, then maybe I’ll choose the Irish Green ’66. If it’s more of an adrenaline fix, a pedal-to-the-metal, spirited run, then maybe I’ll take my most famous car, 277, or perhaps the ’78 SC. I don’t always know what I’m going to choose until I get to the garage, just as I haven’t always known where my life would take me next over all these years. I’m not precious about them, either; these cars are there to be driven. They are not all examples of concours perfection. They’ve lived a life. They have rough edges. Like me. I’m not polished, let’s put it that way.
Today I’m going to take 277, so jump in.
Driving one of these early 911s covers all the senses. As I am walking over to the car, the sensory journey has already started. They might be forty and in some cases fifty years old, but they can still fire up the heart-rate instantly. Each car is visually stimulating and really exciting in its own way; even just walking up to them pulls you in. 277 has the red, white and blue of so many of my childhood influences and also of so much Americana, and as you get close you can see the paint chips and scuffs that signify a hard life of being raced and enjoyed.
You walk over to the driver’s side door, feel the door handle – the cars are never locked, so you know there’s no fumbling around with keys, they’re always in the cars ready to go, because I don’t want anything to delay the adventure. Sure, the cars are exciting to look at standing still, but the real adventure starts the minute you get in. Slide into the seat and pull the door shut with that reassuring Porsche clunk. You breathe; you’re relaxed. Hopefully the car starts, because sometimes it may not have been driven for a couple of weeks, but even that creates a sense of anticipation, excitement. You know within the first twist of the key and two or three pumps of the accelerator pedal if that day’s adventure will begin – clutch in, gear into neutral, pump the accelerator, prime the fuel pump, wait for the car to fire. Then you hear a buzzing and that smell of the oil that’s just spewed out from the exhaust because it’s drained down while the car’s been sitting there, waiting for you. Smoke flickers up in the rear-view mirror as the engine springs to life, so now you can smell the car, hear the car and feel its power.
Let the car idle for a minute, pull it outside and then close the garage gate, then open the front gate on to the street, engage first gear, let the clutch bite and roll out on to Willow, turn right at the corner, take a right turn on the bridge, drive a mile out to the freeway, getting on through the gears.
By now, the car is getting up to operating temperature, so I give it a little blast on the ramp, then through second, third gear, merge into traffic, get over as quickly as possible to the left lane – the fast lane.
The adventure is under way.
The destination is often either Angeles Crest Highway or the Santa Monica Mountains. Out there, it’s almost eight thousand feet above sea level, even though that’s less than sixty miles from where I’m sat writing these words in my warehouse in Downtown LA. One of the greatest features of southern California is the accessibility and diversity of spectacular world-class roads that begin within thirty minutes or so of my 1902 two-storey brick warehouse hidden away down one of Downtown’s many side streets. Just eight miles in and you begin to see the mountain range up ahead of you. It’s a sweeping freeway that gains altitude pretty quick, so the excitement level increases, you feel the senses fire up even more, your whole body is starting to merge with the car. This is where I believe man and machine become at one with the open road. You get into the pace and the rhythm, inseparable from the car. At this point, nothing else matters. There is no cell-phone reception, I don’t have radios in the car, it’s a little ideal slice of paradise. Ultimately, it’s all about freedom up there.
You need context too: 120mph in a forty-year-old 911 feels pretty fast; 150 in a modern 911 feels like you are probably doing 80. Newer cars can make the driver feel isolated from the experience. You don’t really smell them; you don’t really necessarily even hear them. 277 is loud, it’s moving all over the place, the sound insulation is not great. With a car like 277 you smell the gas, you smell the oil, you just smell everything, you can almost taste the engine, you hear the wind, you know the seals don’t work good, so it’s ssssshhhhhhh, there’s all this road noise because there’s not much insulation, it’s the mechanical-ness, the creaky-ness, the throttle response, the squeaky brakes, the smell of the rubber, the oil, the smell of the brake pads when they get hot, it’s all of that stuff … to me it’s an emotional high. Like I say, driving one of these machines uses all of your senses.
Now it’s just me and the car, working the throttle, matching the revs. Ultimately, you are engaged in trying to get the smoothest transfer of engagement of clutch, throttle and brake along with steering input, all together, seamless. I set little challenges: get on the gas earlier, get on the brakes later, execute the perfect heel-and-toe gear change, getting the balance more slick each time I go out. Fast and smooth, as I always say.
No two vintage Porsches ever drive the same; in fact, no two drives are ever really the same, even in the identical car. You have to be able to adapt to changing circumstances, knowing that there are no constants. I’m pretty familiar with these routes, but the terrain is always changing. You don’t know what you are going to encounter on the road – there is always someone you want to pass or maybe some motorbike that’s hounding you. You might turn a corner and suddenly see a cyclist or a slow-moving tourist, or maybe a coyote that you have to swerve around. Fuck, I’ve even come across a mountain bear on the road once. You are always thinking ahead, decisions become second nature, you anticipate and learn to expect a surprise around the corner. You adapt. It’s all part of the adventure.
You don’t necessarily have to be going fast to experience this sensory overload. However, whatever speed you are driving at, you have to be focused. There is a vast amount of movement in these cars. The 911’s motor is in the rear, there’s no weight over those front wheels, so straight away the nose of the car is constantly moving around. You have to work with this and find the groove in the road; you feel every imperfection in the road surface in your fingertips through a steering wheel that’s seen so many years and has been used by so many different hands. You need a light grip though – too tense and you will lose feel, lose control. That steering wheel is constantly moving, those two front wheels are constantly fighting for grip or tram-lining a crack in the road or hopping over a bump. The car is alive. It’s physical; you have to be completely focused – a spirited drive is always an acute adrenaline rush. What I love about these early cars is they are all manual, so essentially it’s your brain, your two hands and your two feet controlling the car down the road. Some people like to go to the gym and work out. I go for a drive. There’s no power steering; your arms, wrists, sides are all being worked out. You need stamina in your muscles, but you also need a fast response, quick reflexes. Sharp eyes, too.
Most of my drives are done solo; I don’t tend to go on these big group runs. I like to do things at my own pace and be on my own. I am a little bit of a lone wolf. Maybe that’s me attempting to control my own destiny to a certain degree, like I have tried to do all these years. Maybe that instinct goes back to my time as a young cross-country runner, trying to find a release from challenges at school and home, the loneliness of a long-distance athlete. Running to the hills in southern California is not so very different to when I was just a kid from Sheffield doing cross-country all those years ago; back then I was getting some release, feeling motivated, expressing myself. The only difference now, thirty-five years later, is that I’ve stopped running and instead got behind the wheel of a car.
The exhilaration of driving these vintage Porsches never ends for me. It’s the thrill of the chase and the smell and that ‘seat-of-your-pants’ feel and the excitement and the adrenaline and the pulse and the sweat and the energy. It’s a release, it’s exciting, it’s an adventure, it’s rewarding, it’s challenging, it’s unforgettable. You are not thinking about anything else. Nothing else matters when you are up there.
Life is a journey on the open road, not knowing what’s around the corner. Certainly in my life, for the past thirty years or so I’ve had to react to the unknown; I’ve been continually seeking what’s around the next corner in my journey, not overthinking, not overanalysing too much, just being in the moment, acting on instinct, following my gut. Whatever your aim in life, however you want to make that journey and regardless of the adventures you will experience along the way, always trust your instinct.
Now, let’s put the pedal to the metal and get out and drive.
Magnus Walker, Downtown LA, February 2017