12 62
PORSCHE BY DESIGN: SEDUCING SPEED
PORSCHE BY DESIGN: SEDUCING SPEED
DE NI S E Mc CLUG G AGE
63
I N THE D R I V E R ’ S S E AT
I
t’ll all come back to you. Regular H pattern shift. Enjoy.” Bob Snodgrass is handing over to me the Brumos now-vintage Porsche 550 RS60. It’s 1989 at Laguna Seca Raceway, and this
is practice time for an exhibition run in celebration of Porsche’s fiftieth anniversary. The car is as shining black as a licorice whip and twice as smart. For all its vintage status, it is a year newer than any of the 550s I had raced in prime time, mostly for Briggs Cunningham. I go out on the Laguna course. H-shaped shift,
the Maserati brothers’ lovely OSCAs were. So
huh—so why am I grinding these gears like
why not stick with OSCA? Simple. Porsche was
a dental college dropout? Then midway into
whipping OSCA’s snick-snick like a fairy-tale
the first inept lap I remember: Ah, a script H.
stepmother. Porsche was tellingly faster, And
Script! And I extend the gear lever far up to the
fast, as Phil Hill once spelled out for a journal-
right, and it did indeed all come back: the ex-
ist, is the whole intention of the thing.
tremely wide throws on the Porsche gearboxes
It came to me during the rest of my
of the era. Not a proud feature. And I recalled
now-delightful ride in the licorice 550 RS60,
how much more snick-snick the lovely gears in
Porsche’s entire plan of development that
Porsche Type 718 RS60, 1960, Bowman Motors, Photograph © 2013 Michael Furman