“I could fill every waking hour by working on the cars I own and writing about it.” No, wait: It’s more specific than that. Let’s just look at the three tii’s: “I could make a career out of simply fixing tii’s and writing about it.”
Wait a minute— essentially, I do make a career out of it.
But even that is too general. “I have spent six weeks writing about one tii, Old Blue.” Nope, still not nut-shelling it. “I’ve been working a car that hadn’t moved in ten years, trying to make it road-worthy, and writing about it—every week, for six weeks, with no end in sight. This could, and probably will, stretch on for months.”
Yeah, that’s it.
So last Sunday I pitched it all.
My friend Tom Samuelson texted me last Saturday night, asking me if I was going on the VSR1 Fall Drive. VSR1 Racing is Mario Langsten’s shop in Bow, New Hampshire. I have enjoyed a long relationship with Mario, swapping parts, splitting parts cars, and occasionally competing for cars the way Terry Sayther and I used to do in Austin many, many years ago.
Mario hosts an annual end-of-season fall drive. For some of his customers, there’s no question that the event really does herald the end of the driving season, because at the conclusion of the drive, they drop off their cars at VSR1 for over-winter repair work and storage. and when Tom asked me if I was going, my knee-jerk response was No. Too busy. Too much to do. Blue stuff. Family stuff. Stuff. So, no.
“Bagels at 8:00 a.m., head out for the drive at 8:30,” Tom gently prodded.
Not surprisingly, once the siren’s song of a fall drive entered my head, I couldn’t get it out. I’d spent some of the week rotating the cars between the different places they’re stored, trying to get a hundred miles on each of the underused ones before they went into hibernation for the winter. I had some quality time in my recent fave, the ’79 Euro 635CSi, and the woefully under-driven Z3 M coupe. In addition, I had just returned the ignition system and fuel pump to Kugel, the ’72 tii, who had graciously loaned her internal organs for the troubleshooting of several tii’s during the prior six months. Further, I had, just days earlier, installed an absolutely yummy set of newly reupholstered E21 Recaros into Kugel; now I realized that this car hadn’t seen any real mileage since I got back from MidAmerica 02Fest in 2014.
It was her turn to run.
So what, exactly, was stopping me? Occasionally we have that moment of clarity when we ask ourselves that question, and realize that the answer is “nothing.” It’s a beautiful thing when you can actually feel the weight fall away.
So Saturday night I threw the usual retinue of tools and parts into Kugel’s trunk. And at 6:30 Sunday morning, I headed north to Bow, New Hampshire. I got to VSR1 by eight, and by 8:30, the parking lot had four E9s—Duane Sword’s award-winning Alpina tribute car, Chris Auty’s CSL, Andrew Winston’s CSi, and Stan Chamallas’ CS—three E30 M3s, and an M6.
And bringing up the rear, size and value-wise, were my tii and my friend Tom’s 2002.
We fueled up, then began heading north around the eastern edge of Lake Winnipesaukee. The roads were a delightful combination of highway, two-lane, and twisties; I hadn’t been in this area since doing a bicycle trip around the lake the summer of 1972. There were times when, looking out the window of the tii, I felt like Robert Pirsig and his alter ego Phaedrus in Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, getting small flashbacks from a person you used to be long ago, traversing over the same ground.
We took a short mid-morning break for coffee and pastry and soaked in the vibe of what was shaping up to be a spectacular day.
Then we hit the Kancamagus Highway, the legendary two-lane that cuts through White Mountain National Forest. The leaves were off the trees, but it was a bright, absolutely magnificent 50º fall day. The cars, the people, the twisties, the weather—it was all almost too much. At one point on the Kanc, we pulled into a scenic overlook and had the entire place to ourselves. We arrayed the cars for an amateur photo shoot and just took it all in, looking and smiling, almost pinching ourselves at having the good fortune to experience the moment.
We stopped for lunch at a brewpub at the western end of the Kanc in Woodstock, New Hampshire. After lunch, about half the party called it a day, but with about two and a half hours of sun left, some of us elected to keep driving.
Mario led us on a merry chase down some absolutely spectacular mountain roads west of Woodstock. The curves, my flawlessly-performing tii, the amazing new Recaros, the view of the back end of whichever car I happened to be chasing—I truly did not want it to end.
Finally, with the sun setting, we doubled back onto I-93. The New Hampshire crew headed back to VSR1 to stow their cars for the winter, and Kugel and I piloted southward back to the Bay State. I got home about 6:30 p.m., roughly twelve hours after I’d left. I’d forgotten to zero the trip odometer in the morning, so I don’t know the exact mileage, but looking at the route on a map, I’d estimate it at about 350 miles. By the standards of my insane runs to the Vintage in Winston-Salem (800 miles in fourteen hours, with only a bare minimum of stops), it was a very leisurely drive.
When I pulled into the garage, of course, Blue was still there on the lift. My regular smattering of junk was everywhere, just as I had left it. I had missed no time-critical wrench window, blown no logistically coordinated opportunity to dedicate yet another day to Old Blue.
The only thing that had changed was me.
I was happier, much more relaxed. It was so obvious: The fall drive was the thing with the time-critical window, not another day of grease and rust flakes in my hair. As much as I love wrenching, it could wait—and wait it had, with no consequence whatsoever.
Sometimes you have to remind yourself of this stuff. To Bowdlerize a classic 1980s movie, sometimes you just gotta say, what the heck. Make your move. I’m so glad I did.
God, I love these cars.
Next week, back to Blue’s brakes.—Rob Siegel
Rob’s book Memoirs of a Hack Mechanic is available through Bentley Publishers, Amazon, and Bavarian Autosport—or you can get a personally inscribed copy through Rob’s website: www.robsiegel.com.
