When the Car Kid Grows Up

It happened. I was going about, living my life, minding my own business, when – completely out of the blue – I wanted a Porsche.

Me? A Porsche.

The skies are falling.

But, you say, Porsches are amazing. They have a long and remarkable history of performance, design, and innovation. For years, the Porsche marque has symbolized luxury, wealth, and speed. Porsches routinely win races all around the world and their styling rivals the silhouette of Swedish models. How could you not want a Porsche?

Let me explain.

I’ve been a car enthusiast my entire life. From the very first 1957 Corvette convertible that I coveted from the tender age of four, cars have been a constant companion in what I wrote, what I read and where I went on the weekends. Twenty years after spying that first ‘Vette, my love for the industry and the hobby had grown into a profession – stronger and more embraced than ever.

The thing is, I’ve always been a specific kind of car lover. A New Jersey native, I was raised on the muscle car and hot rod diet, fed street performance and Americana for breakfast, drag racing, and aftermarket customization for lunch. I reveled in the grease-stained world that was American power at its finest, craved classic Camaros, and celebrated the muscle car resurgence this past decade.

Certainly, I didn’t exclude other classic cars. In fact, many of them stood proud beside the six Camaros in my fantasy garage. I wanted Alfas and Fiat Roadsters, used the elegant curves of Mercedes Gullwing doors as my computer background. I learned about all cars equally, dreamed of driving the Amalfi Coast in a Spitfire or taking a Volkswagen Bus through the Redwoods. Fantasies churned through car company and country of origin, but still, I came back to my beloved muscle cars, like returning home after a trip abroad.

Porsche was never excluded from these lessons. As an automotive enthusiast, I know full well the impact of the Porsche marque on the car world. The Porsche brand is legion, and for good reason. Objectively, I understood the truth of this, respected the marque for its impact on the classic car and modern car worlds, and moved on. Because Porsche wasn’t for me. I wasn’t their target demographic and they weren’t my target product. I never wanted a Porsche.

Until now.

Because the moment I realized that I could see myself driving around in one of the most popular sports cars ever produced, was the moment I realized I had evolved as a car enthusiast.

Perhaps some of the rebel in me had grown up. The raw power of early muscle cars enticing to an emotional teenage soul who wanted nothing more than to burn rubber as fast and rough as I could. It’s possible that I’ve outgrown that desire. It’s more like that the journey from my early teen years to the ripe old age of twenty-four has both made me more susceptible to marketing of the Porsche lifestyle, and opened my mind to the potential of what a car like that can be. For me. That’s something I never thought I’d say.

Ultimately, cars prove a timeline to our lives. They record our earliest driving days, the road trips and significant others that filtered in and out of our lives. They are memories about where we lived and, fundamentally, who we were at the time. Realizing that a dyed in the wool muscle car girl could actually picture herself behind the wheel of a Porsche, well, that’s a marker too – a signpost that, while I’ll never give up the American muscle completely, I might actually like a little finesse, a little subtlety to go with my performance. Maybe I don’t want that burning rubber roughness all the time.

I’m still a Corvette and Camaro kind of girl. I’ll always be. But as my tastes and interests in the automotive world evolve, I now believe I can also be a Porsche girl too. For now, I’m content to be both. One thing’s for certain, though, I’ll never want a Bentley.