Pulitzer winner Dan Neil writes this week about the Porsche 911. Go read it, after all how many auto columnists begin with a discussion of Ezra Pound.
It’s fair to say I hadn’t thought of Pound since the moment I put down my pencil in graduate school — until I climbed into the cockpit of the redesigned Porsche 911 Carrera S. There, atop the richly upholstered dash, was a handsome stopwatch-style chronometer. Want to test yourself on a favorite piece of road? Tap a wand on the steering column and the instrument’s sweep-second hand and digital readout begin to march forward with unappeasable accuracy. Now you can time exactly how long it takes to lose your license.
The chronometer is a little bit of genius, design as metaphor. If you had to choose an image to capture the soul of the Porsche 911 — a car with thousands of road-racing victories to its credit, a car that virtually owns the production-based classes at Le Mans, Daytona and Sebring — that image wouldn’t be a wheel, or an engine or even the raring black stallion on the Porsche escutcheon. It would be a stopwatch.
Oh, and if you have $92,355, it’s a helluva car.