This semi-regular column is written (in his own blood) by an automotive sage and noted malcontent, known as The Mechanic. Mercilessly beaten as a child with rolled-up back issues of old car magazines, our free-spoken hero developed a unique "for your own good" take on cars and the auto industry, along with an unfortunate habit of setting himself ablaze. Later, after a distinguished career as an automotive journalist and magazine editor, he cast off the reins of his musty oppressors, carved out his superego with a plastic spork and became The Mechanic.
You should learn to drive.
Why? Because you probably can't. Chances are you think you can, and you tell your friends you can, but you can't. If this is true, you're a squid: a guy who owns a car he can't even come close to driving near its potential.
Let's be clear. Squids suck.
And we'll all be better off if the squids of the world would put their egos aside and fess up to their squidness. Then we can move on to my larger point, which is that said squids should take the time and make the effort and do what it takes to really learn how to drive.
Now I'm not talking about hogging the left lane or using your turn signal. I'm talking about real driving. Car control. Entry speed. Trail braking. Left-foot braking. Contact patch manipulation. Heel-and-toe downshifting. Proper line.
I'm always amazed how many "car enthusiasts" are constantly talking about doing suspension and engine mods to their
Insert Car Name Here when 99% of them can't drive it nearly as fast as it can go the way it left the factory. Trust me, their money and time is much better spent on driver training than it is on a cold-air intake and a fart can exhaust.
And please don't think I'm picking on the import Evo/WRX/Z crowd exclusively. This kind of ego-driven insanity is an across-the-car-world offense. From the Sultan of Money that just took delivery of his new Bugatti Veyron to the stockbrokers of New Porsh Beach to the endless list of Camaro and Mustang guys that have been poorly controlling their V8 beasts for 40 years. Hell, fact is, most performance car owners couldn't drive an Accord as fast as it can go, a point proven every week on
Top Gear when they put a star in their reasonably priced car.
I'll give you another example of what I'm talking about. Once, in a previous life, I won a few races and set a few track records driving a Dodge Neon ACR in SCCA Showroom Stock C. About a year later, I attended (just to watch a friend drive) a Porsche Owners Club Squid Day at Willow Springs Raceway northeast of Los Angeles. Out of suspicion I pulled out my stopwatch. The majority were running lap times within a second of the times I was running in the Neon. And these guys were driving new 911 Turbos and were wearing $500 driving shoes, which are known to cause speed.
And they surely told all their friends how they spent the day driving their car fast at the racetrack. These people are delusional.
Basically, we're in the midst of a national epidemic of bad driving, and it's only fed by stability control systems, ABS and ever larger and stickier tires. These things make people feel fast. Especially slow people. Slow people I inevitably end up talking to. Then, of course, I have to hear about how they were ripping through the canyon and flying down the road, when I'm sure they were parking it in the corners like an old lady. As my dad, The Mechanic Sr., once told me, "The Mechanic," he said, "everyone is fast on the straightaways."
The worst offenders might be the auto journalists themselves. They are all fast. Just ask them. But the fact is, most couldn't turn a quick lap time if their life depended on it. I know. I know them. All of them. And I often have to drive cars on racetracks and mountain roads with them. Trust me when I tell you, maybe 50% of them can drive a car competently, 25% can drive a car well and only maybe 10% of American auto writers I would call skilled or fast.
I'm in that last group, of course.
Where do your skills fall? Be honest. Then go learn how to drive.
-- The Mechanic, Inside Line
Contributor
He has some pretty good points.
http://blogs.insideline.com/straight...-mechanic.html