There I was, Nürburgring, 1980-something. My friend Dan and I were both working for a German publishing company in Frankfurt that had just purchased a car magazine. Through some bizarre cosmic hiccup, I became the editor and Dan became associate editor. We were in our 20s, with all of Europe spread out before us—Le Mans, Formula 1, the autobahn—and no adult supervision!
And then our publisher, a kindly German man named Herr Beltz, introduced us to an even more amazing phenomenon: press cars.
“You mean they just give them to you?”
Yes, turns out they do. Some do. Not all of them. Volkswagen, for instance, actually hung up on me, if I recall correctly. Mercedes, too, but only after stating offhandedly that they had thrown the magazines I’d sent them into the trash can. Yet for some odd reason that science still can’t explain, Porsche loved us.
So there we were, Dan in the most beautiful light-blue 911 I’d ever seen and me in a car that was not at all a beautiful light-blue 911. We were at the Nürburgring, in the rain, and a lap was only 15 deutsch marks.
What could possibly go wrong?
“Uh, you wanna go first?” Dan asked.
“Why don’t you go,” I suggested.
So I rode shotgun in the 911, to learn the track—you know, all 45,000 turns of it—and to give Dan advice at critical points. This sounded like a solid plan.
In those days, for the same DM15, you got to lap both the old, deadly dangerous Nordschleife and the new, far-safer Grand Prix track that had so much runoff area you’d be out of gas before you hit a guardrail. Dan did an admirable job on the Nordschleife and was doing a great job on the new portions of the Nürburgring. Until almost the very end, on the back side of the track, where there’s this blind rise. Just as he was cresting it, I think I said, “Right! No left! No ...”
He lifted and steered at the same time. The rear-engine 911 became a front- engine 911 and there we were, sailing backward over the gravel, stones ping-pinging the wheel wells of the beautiful car, me praying that we would stop before hitting the Armco, Dan looking at me like maybe he hadn’t really needed that advice. The car stopped. We hadn’t hit anything.
Dan put it in gear, we drove off, expecting to be pulled over by the Nürburgring police department, dragged from the car and beaten with knockwurst. But no one at the Nürburgring cared. No fines, no lectures, no permanent lifetime ban.
We returned the Porsche a couple of days later ... and they gave us another one!
Porsche is still giving West Coast Editor MARK VAUGHN cars! He can be reached at mark.vaughn@hearst.com and on Twitter and Instagram @MVaughnAW
