My Porsche Story: “A bit of a commute”

I have a really tatty old 986 Boxster S. I bought it a few years ago for a bargain price, without much in the way of history, from someone I believed would have looked after it. To cut a long story short, not long after it became mine the engine gave up the ghost and I was left with a choice of selling the car for parts or getting the engine rebuilt. Fortunately, it wasn’t the dreaded IMS bearing that had let go, and there was no bore score so the rebuild wasn’t as bad as it might have been. AMS Porsche did a great job of discussing options and providing updates as the rebuild work was carried out, but since then the 986 has been the common “triggers broom” story of unloved cars; many of the very tired bits and pieces that have seen many years and miles of use have slowly been attended to in my ownership, and whilst there’s still some way to go it feels like hopefully (mechanically at least) the Boxster is slowly regaining some of its former glory. 

Interestingly, although my ownership journey with the Boxster has been financially painful and unviable (I’ll never get back what I’ve had to put in), I don’t resent it. I probably know this car better than any I have had before, mainly because I’ve had so many conversations and decisions to make around it, and have had to spend time learning about its mechanical constitution in order to inform those decisions. I should also mention I have absolutely ignored any aesthetic items; my limited budget has to go on the mechanical stuff because for me, it’s about using the thing. I have also found having a scruffy car to be liberating; for me, it just makes it even more usable as I don’t worry about where or how I use (or park) it. 

As context for what follows, I have recently found myself increasingly in a mindset that is probably familiar to some men of a certain age. I think I’m somewhere shy of a full-on mid-life crisis, but a few events in the past couple of years have made me more aware that our time here is not infinite. Nothing should be taken for granted, and more specifically, I had begun to feel like I should prioritise the things that I enjoy in life, when I can. 

When I had an opportunity to attend a conference with work in Barcelona in May, I was speaking to a colleague about getting the train there as I prefer not to fly and, knowing that I enjoyed cars, he asked if I’d considered driving. You can probably see where this is going…….

If you start to look at that journey, you quickly realise it’s just not sensible. This is a solo, 1,000-mile trip, each way. I’ve never done a road trip like this before. The car is 22-years-old with 140,000 miles on the clock, the seats (and a few other bits) are knackered, the roof leaks and I’m not exactly in my prime either.  Anyway, with my not-quite-midlife-crisis mindset now taking hold, I couldn’t shake the idea. A part-subsidised solo road trip across Europe started to seem like an opportunity for adventure that might be too good to let pass me by. 

I questioned my choices more than once, but decided to give it a shot. I knew it might be testing at times, but even if it all went wrong, I would at least have some experiences and memories to look back on. My decision was put to a stern test when just a few days before departure, the Boxster’s offside radiator sprung a leak and started dumping coolant when it got hot. Fortunately, my trusted independent specialist came to the rescue and at short notice managed to fit me in for a replacement. So with a fresh radiator and coolant as well as the thumbs up from a general health check thanks to the top guys at Classic Sports Cars Kent, I loaded the car up, and off I went. 

With so many miles to cover, the initial objective was to just get down to Spain as directly as possible. With more time available some French D-roads would definitely have been on the agenda, but the logistics of the journey required just covering ground, especially in Northern France, so I took the Autoroutes. Day one took me from Calais to Massiac, just south of Clermont-Ferrand. I was keeping a very close eye on the dashboard as I rolled across Northern France because the car had presented me with more than its fair share of challenging moments so far, including the recent radiator failure. Suffice to say, my confidence in the car was far from unshakeable. 

Including the UK miles from home to the Eurotunnel, that first day was pretty long and the weather had been mixed on the last leg of the drive, so I left a slightly soggy but otherwise healthy Boxster under its half-cover in the hotel car park and just grabbed some much-needed sleep. I was glad we had made it that far without incident. 

Day two saw me drive from Massiac to Barcelona. Again, I wanted to cover ground for the early part of the day, so I took the Autoroutes heading down towards Montpellier. This was a surprisingly good stretch; the A75 through the ⁨Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region is not like a UK motorway at all; the surface is obviously better (we all know that’s not saying much these days) but the road also climbs and descends and sweeps through the beautiful landscape. With the roof down and some good French coffee onboard, the choice to take the car began to seem like it perhaps wasn’t so mad after all.

My route continued to head south-west and took in the Autoroutes that run parallel with the French Mediterranean coast. This is where an opportunity to drive a road that I had researched beforehand presented itself, and since I had made good time, I was able to break off the Autoroute and head up into the Pyrenees to take the Col d’Ares (D115) to cross into Spain. 

I had envisioned twisty mountain roads and views to be soaked up in the sun from an open-topped car. In theory, this should be a realistic expectation in late May, and I had indeed been driving in sunshine for most of the day. However, as the mountains grew closer they looked a bit cloudy – maybe with a little rain in places. I decided to put the roof up and see what the roads up there were like anyway; I could always turn back if necessary. Ascending the foothills, the towns and villages slowly passed whilst I meandered behind a huge, slow caravan. By the time I was released from the tailback and could make some progress, it was raining hard, and water was running down and across the roads, as well as into the car via my badly bodged rear screen. With a couple of judiciously placed towels wedged above the roll hoops catching the worst of the water ingress (always know where your towel is) and water still pouring down from the heavens, fast driving was now definitely off the menu. However, I was there, in the Pyrenees, in a Porsche Boxster with no traffic around. How many times do opportunities like this present themselves?

I pressed on, and as I did, found sections where the rain eased off or even stopped. Sections of road began to look more inviting, and with the sound of the flat six often bouncing off the rock escarpments next to the tarmac, I found myself cheerful despite the conditions. Progress still had to be tempered due to standing water and the odd rock in the road but I found a groove that was not trying to drive fast, but just following and being sympathetic to the road and the grip available. Revs were kept nearer the middle of the range than the top. Hard braking was avoided. In this way I made satisfying progress up the mountains in less than ideal conditions. However, I was now grinning – quite a lot. 

As the summit approached, the weather suddenly worsened. The rain grew heavier still, and then it began to hail with huge stones that were unbelievably noisy under the soft top of the Boxster, which had now become a big drum, with me inside it. The skies darkened and then the lightning started. Questioning my life choices a bit, I don’t mind admitting that I was getting a bit nervous as I carefully negotiated all the hairpins to the very summit of the pass.

The scary moment happened exactly as I reached the top. As I crested the mountain, there was a widened, level section with a layby (presumably for photo opportunities if you could actually see anything), but the hail had settled thickly on the tarmac here and very suddenly all grip was gone. There was none at all. With no warning it just went directly from “a bit sketchy” to “ice rink”.  Fortunately I was being sensible and not travelling fast, but a big understeer moment saw me sliding onto the other side of the road. Luckily not many other people were stupid enough to be up there, so nothing was coming the other way. With a bit of accidental throttle-induced oversteer I managed to avoid the barriers, gather it all up and resume progress on the correct side of the road. I proceeded gingerly, with underwear that was now probably slightly past its best. As I passed an incredulous couple in their car in the layby, I smiled at them like I had meant to do it and carried on to start my descent.

My thinking was probably somewhat muddled by the massive adrenaline boost I’d just had, but it was still hailing and snowing pretty hard and the conditions were not improving. I was suddenly feeling very much out of my depth in an old, rear-wheel drive, mid-engined roadster on top of a foreign mountain in the snow, and my overriding gut instinct was to continue to make slow progress while I could. If things continued to get worse, I really didn’t want to be stuck on the top of a mountain range in snow in a car that had a leaky tent for a roof. The next half hour therefore consisted of very tentative driving down to a safer altitude and hopefully escape the crazy conditions. I’m just annoyed that I didn’t have the presence of mind to stop and grab a couple of pictures of how white the road was…

The descent was slow and laborious and not in the least relaxing, but as the piled-up snow started to melt from my windscreen wipers, tarmac once again started to be visible in between the white. A short while later, I joined the back of a small convoy of other cars also carefully making their way down. This buoyed me as I was no longer alone, and before I knew it we were sweeping along dry Spanish roads as we scythed our way down the lower slopes of the mountain range. 

The fact that I’d been navigating snow and ice just an hour ago felt quite surreal as I gently cruised along in the sunshine with the roof down, heading towards the traffic of Barcelona. By the time I tucked the 986 Boxster away in the underground hotel car park that night, I was elated at having completed (and survived) the journey, and was more than ready for food and rest before work the following day. 

Three days later, after a pretty full-on conference, getting back into the Boxster felt like climbing back into a piece of home. The familiarity of the cockpit was comforting and all the little idiosyncrasies of the car now felt like character traits rather than frustrations. I realised that on the drive down my confidence in the Boxster as a machine had grown and I was no longer constantly questioning its reliability. This allowed me to relax more, and I was genuinely happy to be pulling out of Barcelona in the sunshine on the start of another long journey behind the wheel. 

My plan was to put a few hours in on Thursday afternoon and evening and stay overnight in the foothills of the Pyrenees further north, so that I could get up and make the journey through the mountains via a different pass, feeling fresh, on Friday. 

Once off the motorway I found myself on roads that should have been great but were spoiled by a poor surface. Being unsure of local speed enforcement and not confident of reliable grip, I therefore rolled along, generally observing the speed limit shown on my phone. However, as the surface improved, I found myself being tailed by a local in a hot hatch. I let him past at the next straight and he immediately pushed on. Figuring that he must know the area and likelihood of speed enforcement, I gave him some distance so as not to be tailgating, and then just kept him in view. The words of Mike Wilds on 9WERKS Radio were echoing in my mind as I found an easy rhythm, enjoying the road as it undulated and curved. I wasn’t trying to drive fast; I relaxed into it and let the car do its job. The road and the countryside were spectacular; the roof was down and the sounds of the 3.2-litre flat six behind me were sonorous, even though it wasn’t being wrung out. Without even trying, I was reeling the local hot hatch back in. 

As I swept round a curve the Pyrenees were revealed in their full glory, and plenty of them had a lot of snow on top. With a flashback to my experience crossing the mountains earlier in the week, I couldn’t help but wonder if the next day might be a repeat of that experience. Fortunately as I checked into my hotel, the hotelier reassured me that the Biers Tunnel road from Bielsa to Aragnouet  would be no problem. Then, as I walked out to explore the fabulous medieval town of Aínsa I saw a group of motorbikes coming down from the mountains, and their riders were all grinning. Perhaps it would all be OK after all. 

Friday morning saw me depart a little later than planned as there had been early morning rain showers and I wanted to give them time to pass and for the roads to dry a little. As I left and headed up towards the mountains, I found myself almost alone. The road was excellent; the landscape and scenery was outrageous and I was able to find my rhythm, once again making decent progress without drama. It’s at moments like this that an open-topped car is especially rewarding; with the sky and scenery above and around you pick up scents and sounds that would be missed in a coupe; you are much more aware of the conditions and the ambient temperature since you are not shielded from them and as a result I think you feel more fundamentally connected to the environment that you’re travelling through. I’ll save the superlatives, but this was definitely a part of the drive to remember.

The Biers tunnel was managed by traffic lights and I found myself in a queue that contained some lorries. This made me realise just how lucky I had been on the ascent, as I had a pretty clear road and been able to easily overtake the couple of vehicles that I caught up with. It was a different story on the way down; the road was fantastic, but as we exited the tunnel into France we were in the clouds and with all the corners and hairpins, there was just no overtaking to be done: the articulated lorries further up the queue were often using both sides of the road to navigate the turns. Once we descended below the cloud, I tried stopping for a few minutes to let the traffic get ahead and take a couple of snaps, but found myself catching the back of the queue again quickly. Waiting too long would only result in the next load of traffic from the lights coming through, so I resigned myself to a gentle descent and sat back to enjoy the stunning scenery. 

As the roads became less mountainous, a beaten-up local diesel car being driven with astounding commitment came sailing past both me and the car in front, despite there being no room for such a manoeuvre. However, following him, he then demonstrated where he felt it was safe to make good progress. I didn’t always agree and consequently gave him plenty of room, but he did make me less concerned about potential speed cameras. This meant that when a sensible opportunity presented itself I was off, and carving my way down through the foothills. Bliss!

From there, it was using the Autoroutes to make good time again up to my final hotel stop near Poitiers on Friday night. If I had any hair the wind would have been in it, and despite cruising along at speeds that Marty McFly would have found more than a little interesting, small French vehicles would often come cracking past with a modest four-pot being spanked to within an inch of its life. The attitude and lack of mechanical sympathy exhibited by these drivers never failed to make me smile. I particularly remember a VW transporter towing an empty car trailer that flew past me even though I was travelling, ahem, within 10 or 15mph of the speed limit. I reckon he was pulling a trailer whilst doing well over 100mph…

Porsche is more special in France and Spain it seems; it definitely felt that I saw fewer on the road than in the UK, and as a result even my lowly and scruffy Porsche 986 saw boys peering down from the family car in the next autoroute lane, and an old workman stop to lean on his shovel and watch me drive by in the foothills of the Pyrenees. When I did see another Porsche, the fraternity still works, too; I spent a little while in convoy with a random French 993 Carrera who was super-friendly to a fellow Porsche driver. 

The final drive back to Calais saw me take a flying detour to Le Mans just a few weeks ahead of this year’s 24-hours race, with the idea that I might drive a short piece of an iconic road circuit. I was well-warned about speed cameras on the Mulsanne Straight so took it easy, but amazingly, the barriers across the entrance to the Daytona chicane had been left open and, well, it would have been rude not to pull in and take a snap of the 986 parked on the kerb…

It was on the final leg of the return journey across France that I began to appreciate the real value of what I was doing, as I found myself unwinding and able to really let everything go for a while. Cruising along watching the world roll by, I occasionally found myself in that perfect state where the mind is calm, not thinking about the future, what’s happening elsewhere, what’s next or what happened before, just fully absorbing the present moment. Without getting too Zen, it was a really tranquil state of mind and it’s a trick I have found hard to replicate since returning to “normal” life, but I’m trying…

I also observed how tough a language barrier can be when travelling; I was so much more relaxed in France where even my schoolboy French is enough to get by, whereas in Spain I felt much more isolated because I have no Spanish at all. This was felt especially acutely in more rural areas where locals often had little-to-no English. Isolation in turn leads to being more easily intimidated in any given situation. Nevertheless, I resisted that mindset and found myself celebrating cultural and geographical differences as without exception, people were friendly and kind even on the most unfamiliar terrain. The trip was therefore a welcome reminder that most people are decent. and that faith in human nature is not often misplaced. 

Solo driving means freedom to stop or divert whenever the mood takes you, which is a fantastic way to travel. However, as well as the physical challenge and managing energy levels, the psychology of a solo trip is not always easy. The solitude did occasionally bite, especially when I was tired or well outside of my comfort zone. However, this definitely taught me not just about my limits but also some strengths, and I suspect I have come out all the better and maybe even just a little bit wiser for it.

I guess this is why I bothered to start writing about the trip. The driving adventure turned out to be only a part of the reward for making the journey. A solo trip like this is not just a driving experience: it’s therapy, it seems.

In terms of driving, I don’t kid myself that I’m a skilled pilot with other-worldly car control, and was glad to have figured out early on that I shouldn’t set myself up against how fast I imagine others might drive a given road, but should enjoy it by finding my own rhythm. Accepting and embracing my comfort zones and limits made for happier, less stressful and more sustainable progress, which for me meant that I was probably enjoying the driving more, and for longer.  

My scruffy old Boxster S proved itself a great machine for a slightly bonkers solo 2,000-mile jaunt across Europe. I can already hear the Driven Not Hidden Collective cries of “fluffing”, but judging by recent WhatsApp group messages, I’m not the only one thinking positively about the 986 these days. The driving experience is satisfyingly analogue, with a decent soundtrack from the flat six just behind you, and the car is compact enough to comfortably thread along a twisty road. Don’t get me wrong, it’s no 911, and doesn’t have all the associated power, character or niceties, but it has enough of those things. It comfortably stowed more gear than I needed and took me from cool motorways, up soaking mountain roads, through hail and ice, along fast roads and into stop-go city traffic. It’s done this there and back (a lot of it with the roof down), covering 2,000 miles in just over 4 days. and it didn’t miss a beat. It’s been fun, comfortable, fast enough and reliable. And the CD player still works.

I think the fact that it’s a scruffy old example with a fistful of foibles actually added something to the experience, too. I don’t mean the jeopardy of a potential failure (although that does add a certain “je ne sais quoi” on a long international trip), but whereas I imagine the latest metal from Stuttgart might be “Concorde business class”, i.e. comfortable, smooth and blisteringly fast, my Boxster is a bit more “backpacking”. It’s still a great way to see a bit of the world, just in a different way.

There were so many wonderful moments on the trip, even on the autoroutes: majestic birds of prey soaring in the mountains, cloudscapes, rainbows, vast fields and open spaces. A fighter jet blasting east-west overhead somewhere in the Gascogne region as I cruised along, roof down, heading northwards beneath it. Camaraderie in overtaking a couple of Brit motorcyclists somewhere in the middle of France, raising my hand above the windscreen in greeting and seeing them both wave back in my rear-view mirror, before they peeled off into an exit lane on their own journey. Old tunes hitting just right, the way they used to back when it was a battered Austin Mini rather than a Porsche Boxster, and remembering good times that I hadn’t thought about in years. Batting along with the roof down as it started to rain, looking at the clouds and thinking “that’ll be all right – I’ll be out the other side in a couple of minutes.” Getting that right several times and once getting it pretty wrong; the airflow only keeps you dry up to a point, it seems.

If you start to look at this journey, you quickly realise it’s just not sensible. It’s a solo, 1,000-mile trip, each way. I’d never done a road trip like this before. The car is 22-years-old with 142,000 miles on the clock, the seats (and a few other bits) are knackered, the roof leaks and I’m not exactly in my prime either…..  

Would I do it again? Absolutely, 100%. These are the good days, my friends. #drivennothidden