The $183,000 Question

I USED TO WONDER why my old landlady, vastly obese, would cram herself into an incongruously teensy Miata to tool around Portland's West Hills. Now that I'm 47, I understand. It's not that I'm fat, and no midlife crisis yet makes me yearn for a red hot rod. In fact, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation-sponsored study reports that the vaunted midlife crisis is a quackold farts don't freak out at higher rates than our less-decrepit juniors.

But we do decay. A bundle of nerves as angry as an Al Qaeda cell recently erupted in my foot, and despite a successful surgical strike to remove it, there are no more fun runs in my future. And so, as my carcass gradually grows, like my old landlady, less mobilereflecting the wisdom of the disabled wheelchair wag who dubbed the rest of us "the temporarily able-bodied"I find myself craving a comfy, zippy locomotion machine to compensate. It's like that issue of Marvel Comics wherein the Fantastic Four somehow lost all their superpowers, and their leader, Mr. Fantastic, fashioned gizmos to give them a faint approximation of their former soaring gifts. It's not the same as being an intact superhero, but you have to admire the ingenious engineering.

I CONSIDERED MY zippy mobile options. The new Mini Cooper caught my eye, a rising star car so maneuverable (especially the sporty Mini S) that it serves the same function in this week's flick The Italian Job that the BMW does for Bond. I drove clear to Fife for a test drive at the nearest dealership. "Do you have an appointment, sir?" said the woman at the desk. The car is such a celebrity, you have to call ahead. I'd made the mistake of trying to drive a car more important than I am.

So I went back to Seattle to seek other candidates. I sat in a Mercedes SL-500, with the nifty hardtop that retracts at the touch of a button. It seemed a bit bulkyit takes too much hardware to make a hardtop retract. Also, its aesthetics, while sophisticated, weren't up my alley. The SL is too ritzy to look good on me, a guy who was grungy back when grungy wasn't cool.

I was struggling to decide between two less haughty alternatives, the Toyota MR2 Spyder and the Mazda Miata, both modest, circa-$24,000 convertibles (the Miata prettier, the mid-engine Spyder lighter and reputedly faster), when the paper got a call out of the blue from a Porsche representative. "Would you like to test drive a Porsche 911 GT2?" Hmm, how much is it? "$183,000." Cost of a test drive: $0. It appeared at my house the next day, and the sleek key was dropped in my palm.

STEPPING DOWN INTO the body-embracing seat of the GT2way down: it rides just a few inches above the groundis to step up into the realm of dreams. If Star Trek's U.S.S. Enterprise were a car, it might resemble this. Its top speed is irrelevant to a sane person not on the Autobahn: 195 mph. What is relevant is its surprising practicality for a DINK like me with no golden retrievers or objects larger than a grocery bag to lug around. Rounding the hillsides of Seattle, I found the GT2 as sensible as a vegetarian diet. Lots of sports cars practically whimper when forced to observe posted speed limits; the GT2 feels just fine as a low-velocity projectile. It would actually work as a commuter car (if one could park it in a miniature replica of Fort Knox).

There were only two disconcerting things about driving it: Two unprosperous-looking guys on Beacon Hill glowered at me; and elsewhere, people grinned and waved, including pretty girls. Suddenly I got the whole Warren-and-Jack cruising thing. "Why didn't I drive a Porsche when I was single?" I wailed to my wife. "Why didn't I wave at guys in Porsches?" she wailed back.

I first detected the GT2's superpowers when I got onto I-5 and discovered the unutterable acceleration it was capable of in second gear. I didn't dare glance at my watch, but I do believe the specs when they say it can go from zero to 62 in about four seconds. The GT2 makes the regular Porsche 911 look like my old landlady: It jettisons over 200 pounds of stuff, such as all-wheel drive (it's rear-wheel), the spare tire, metal brake discs (they're ceramic), and the PSM system used in less hell-bent-for-leather Porsches to keep wheels from spinning out of control when one loses contact with the road (kind of like ABS, only during acceleration instead of braking). Huge but not vulgar intake scoops channel air into the 456-horsepower engine. When the turbos spin up to speed and the fuel mixture is under greater than atmospheric pressure, the sensation is very like hitting hyperspace mode with Han Solo at the wheel. This rookie howled like a Wookie.