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The Gold-Plated Porsche: How I Sank a Small Fortune into a Used Car, and Other Misadventures
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12 new or used available from CDN$ 37.89
Average customer review:
(5 )
Product Description
Quirky, cool, entertaining, and opinionated, Wilkinson's rebuilding project leads to inspired digressions on his life. Learning about the inner workings of a car is also a lesson in tracing the thought-streams of the human mind. While rebuilding his car, Wilkinson waxes eloquent on the history of Porsche, American engineering and culture, personal status, his unfulfilling stint as editor of Car and Driver, his love of flying and all things mechanical, not to mention the integrity of wedding dress silk when it's woven amidst engine pistons. According to Wilkinson, "Most of the work that my Porsche required, I was confident I could do myself. Turning nuts and bolts, replacing pieces and parts, disassembling and reassembling, rewiring and renovating were within my basic-competence envelope. Anybody who can overhaul a lawnmower knows how a car engine works. Anybody who can drive a vacuum cleaner or polish shoes can redo a car interior. Anybody who can read a home-wiring diagram can at least begin to fiddle with a car's electrical system." He makes it all sound so easy. Yet, the expensive misadventures he had while rebuilding the German masterpiece were like mirrors of a life experience; the eventual purr of the redone motor felt like a long-awaited jaunt upon a road temporarily closed, and the traveling sure was sweet.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1201939 in Books
- Published on: 2004-06-01
- Original language: English
- Binding: Hardcover
- 224 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Wilkinson’s spunky and entertaining memoir is a yarn-spinning and wise-cracking romp over the author’s many occupations, hobbies, blunders and idiosyncrasies. Bored after finishing an addition on his house and building an airplane, Wilkinson, automotive editor at Conde Naste Traveler, turns his antsy, irrepressible need to tinker on a well-used 1983 Porsche 911—and two years and $60,000 later, he has a car worth far more in hard-earned experience than blue-book value. Among other misadventures, Wilkinson recounts how he spent his undergraduate years at Harvard under the hood of a 1936 Ford Phaeton; his ill-fated tenure as the editor of Car and Driver magazine; his small-plane reconnaissance missions over Kansas for the leader of the American Indian Movement; and a stint as a teenage merchant marine in South Asia, where he survived two typhoons, helmed a 10,000-ton freighter and witnessed a drowning off the docks in Saigon. The author also offers up philosophical musings on the manias of car aficionados, the weirdness of German engineering and the importance of crankshaft-to-bearing clearances and proper torquing technique. Although there is a good deal of shop talk and automotive jargon, it is a testament to Wilkinson’s writing skills that he can make his description of the unbolting of a transaxle as engaging as his stories about crashing test cars and absconding with the company jet to visit his girlfriend. The author’s nerdy enthusiasm and sassy wit will be irresistible to both the technically disinclined and the die-hard gear head.
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Review
"...fascinating and delightful. He dissects enthusiast car ownership with such clarity and spirited writing that it is refreshing. Brilliantly crafted and a great read no matter what season."-- More magazine
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