Butt First

“You gotta get in butt first,” he said as he entered the automobile.  

“ Okay,” says I as I maneuvered  my seventy-eight-year-old body into the sleek machine. Flexibility is one of those things that fades away with age. 

I settled into the body hugging comfortable seats. It was a four passenger vehicle and I was riding shotgun. Tiny colored icons appeared on the glossy sections of the instrument panel bathing interior with another worldly light. Patrick touched some of these hieroglyphics as the Porsche moved into the street. There was a slight whine and motor sound from the engine. He maneuvered the machine through light traffic in the onset of evening. I felt the gear change which surprised me. He noticed my surprise and said unlike most vehicles of this type the Tayman had a transmission. There was also the sound of an internal combustion engine which I was told was included in the design primarily as a warning device for pedestrians. (Electric vehicles are silent.) The automobile accelerated quietly and moved deftly through light traffic until we turned into a wide street (I think all streets are wide in Phoenix.) and he stopped the car. I looked through the windshield over a slightly sloping hood of which Porsches are famous for a view of the desert sky. It was lit with fiery orange accented with streaks of purple against an advancing darkness. Patrick was tapping icons on the touch screen  putting the car into which I would learn was “launch mode”. “Are you ready?” he asked and added, “I always ask everyone this. They say they are, but usually aren’t. Are you ready?”  I answered in the affirmative and had a mental flashback to an event of nearly sixty years ago. The car seemed to be attempting to move but was being held back. In my youth I would watch Torqueflite equipped Dodges and Plymouths on the starting line at the local drag strip rev up their wedge head and hemi engines. The entire cars would twist due to the tremendous torque of their engines. But I wasn’t at a drag strip in the 1960s, I was on a street in Phoenix, Arizona. And then it happened. I was slammed into my seat as the low profile tires on twenty-one inch rims grabbed the asphalt like a bulldog grabbing a bone. I was one with a projectile shot from the cannon.  It has to do with eight hundred volts of electricity delivered from a battery to an electric motor driving the rear wheels. A perfect system developed and produced by the German company created by Dr. Ferdinand Porsche many years ago. I’m sure this launch had Dr. Porsche turning over in his grave.  Indeed the epitome of German automotive technology. Patrick continued to extol the features of  his electric four door sports car as we drove along. However, no other features compared to what I would call the “blinding acceleration” demonstrated. Patrick’s smile was bathed in the light of the instrument panel .

It was a  sho nuff electric hot rod.