The Cars Of Ralph

A few years back, on a Porsche Club of America driving tour of the great mountain roads that surround Asheville, North Carolina, I witnessed a near divorce. We were pushing kinda fast that day, to be honest probably too fast. Suddenly one of the other cars pulled off. We didn't see them again until evening. Seems the guy's wife took exception to the overall speed, and general nature of our motoring activities. My wife Lynne was along for that trip. She enjoyed herself completely, did some of the driving and took video during the faster, curvy sections. I'm lucky. Lynne gets it. I married a car girl. Lynne's Sprite was a Mark II, not a Bugeye. Growing up in Raleigh, on Saturday mornings Lynne's dad would take her downtown to see the new foreign cars at Harmon Roland Motors. While his tastes went generally to big Chryslers, she was drawn to sports cars from the start, as was her sister Nancy.

I wish I had known her then, blond hair blowing as she flew down Dixie Trail or zipped across the old narrow Lake Johnson bridge. Lynne's first husband tried to hand her the keys to a Ford Aerostar minivan. She drove it once. Over the years she went through VW Cabrios, a Plymouth Laser (I had an Eagle Talon about the same time, essentially the same car), and briefly a brown Pinto. A low point to be sure. She was driving a Ford Contour SE when I met her. Hard to remember now, but the performance version of the Contour was a heck of a sport sedan for the time. We bonded over cars early. On one of our first dates, driving through the Five Points neighborhood of Raleigh I spied an old MG parked on a side street. I would have married her right there, by the old Piggly Wiggly, if the deli counter guy could have presided over the ceremony.

Before we married I had sold my Contour SE (yes, we both had the same model of car鈥攈er's had leather), and bought a 1996 Mazda Miata M-Edition for us to share. Lynne loved that car, stealing it every chance she got. We took some great trips in it too; Wrightsville Beach, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Washington DC via back roads. It was our first sports car together, but far from our last. Lynne encouraged me to return to Porsche ownership and we shared first a 944 S2, then a 968, and finally our current Carrera. When I was searching for a Carrera she specifically asked if we could get a red one. How many husbands get to hear their wives say that? Over the past ten years she has developed an appreciation for BMWs, starting with an E90 330i sedan. She had me cold. I didn't have a good answer. I took over the X3 and found her a 2005 BMW 330i convertible. So now my lovely wife has come full circle, once again zipping around Raleigh in her little black sports car. Too bad they replaced that twisty narrow bridge over Lake Johnson. And she will get behind the wheel of that car again soon.

That's when the problem started. See full article and comment. Our 2015 Porsche Macan S has a neat feature. If you leave it parked and locked, the alarm will randomly, frequently go off. For a long time. For no reason at all. You know this, though. Dan told you so back in August when we took it to Beverly Hills Porsche to be told that it was a known problem, and that Porsche didn't have the new part yet. We got the call last week that the new motion sensor was in stock. See full article and comment. Our 2015 Porsche Macan has wider tires out back than it does up front. The Macan's 295/40R20 rear tires are considerably wider than its 265/45R20 front rubber. Traditionally, staggered fitment like this is the territory of sports cars where it's done to create balanced handling. And that, I'd wager, is the same reason Porsche has opted for such an arrangement. See full article and comment. I like a lot of things about our 2015 Porsche Macan S but the way it deals with Bluetooth streaming audio is not one of them.