Maybe I Already Have The Perfect Car

Humans spend a lot of time chasing perfection, but it’s much more healthy to sit back and realize that perfection is next to impossible to achieve. And once you achieve it, you can’t enjoy it for fear of its upkeep. It’s much healthier to lower your standards of what constitutes “perfect.” Over the July 4 holiday I picked up my freshly painted 2001 Porsche 911 Turbo from the shop and immediately took it on a 400-mile tour of Southern Ohio to chase the good roads, find some good food, and achieve driving perfection, or at least as close as anyone can get.

Andy Got a Brand-New Porsche 911 (Made of Legos)

I have owned this 996 Turbo for a couple of years now, and it’s possibly the best thing I’ve ever driven. This car has been out of my hands since last September getting stripped down and painted in a gorgeous new shade. I’d forgotten just how good it was. I know I said the NSX was the perfect car, but maybe it’s actually this? After adding a bunch of numbers to the odometer on Thursday, I’m more convinced than ever. As the miles added on I once again grew more comfortable and connected to the car, and the perfect shone through.

Photo: Bradley Brownell

My July 4th morning started with an unrelated project. First I had to replace the HVAC blower motor in our Cayenne, because the air was just too sticky to deal with windows-down driving. This thing has been on the fritz since we drove it to the Indy 500 in May, and finally decided it was done working. The folks on the internet said this was a super simple job, but after I’d torn out half of the dashboard to get to it, I determined that they were wrong. With that sorted, we headed down to the paint shop to pick up the finished car. New Ocean Jade Metallic paint and a custom carbon fiber roof awaited.

Photo: Bradley Brownell

From the paint shop in Canton, Ohio, we headed south to Zanesville, Ohio to find the start of highway 555, known as “the triple nickel” or “Ohio’s Tail of the Dragon.” I’d never driven the road before, but was told that it was exceptional. It’s hard to find any good driving roads in the midwest anyway, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to head south and see what the mountains had to offer. I’ve driven some of the best roads in the world, including a completely empty Tail of the Dragon at sundown, and while 555 isn’t as dramatically tight and twisty, it certainly has the views and the big sweeping corners to make it a fun touring road.

Photo: Bradley Brownell

We ran the section of 555 from Zanesville down to Chesterhill, and it was pretty damn good. The car and I were totally in sync, gripping through meandering corners, getting light over crests, and shoving down the long straights. This car has so much power it’s easy to exceed normal driving speeds in a blink, and enough grip to put it down. I tried my best to keep things sane, though I did get a warning from a State Patrolman for doing 70 miles per hour in a 55 zone. I’ll maybe try to avoid doing that in future.

In spite of the hot and muggy external temperatures, the AC and radiators kept occupants and engine cool respectively. We stopped off for lunch at the Triple Nickel Diner, which I highly recommend. They had possibly the best onion rings I’ve ever eaten, and exceptional service. Nothing to do with the car, but it certainly improved my day.

Photo: Bradley Brownell

On the drive home we got an impromptu test of the weatherproofness of the new roof’s connection to the car. Without a single drop making it through the seals, despite four hours of pounding wash, I’m confident that we can call this roof leakproof. The dudes at Two Brothers, who did the paint and body work, absolutely knocked it out of the park.

Does the car have a check engine light? Do the headlights look like shit? Does it have a horrible interior and no headliner? Is it too low and slightly too harsh? Yes to all. And it’s perfect in spite of that.

Photo: Bradley Brownell

It’s after drives like these that I like to look back on the state of this car when I first saw it. It’d been sitting in the back lot of a shop in the San Francisco bay area for a while, slightly neglected.