The Amazing Test Driving Adventures

When I first saw that black TransAm driven wildly by Burt Reynolds in the movie Smokey and the Bandit in 1977, I was completely captivated by how cool that car was and I wanted to drive one, but I didn’t have my driver’s license yet. My first car was a 1974 Mustang hatch-back and it was a manual transmission, so I had to quickly learn how to drive a stick in order to drive my car. It didn’t take long for me to master the manual transmission, and although my mustang wasn’t a super fast car, it was still fun to drive. I think it was around this time before I learned how to drive a stick that I test-drove my first car at a dealership. You would think that I would target the TransAm as my first test drive, but not me…I had big aspirations so I test drove the new stainless steel Delorean at Key Cadillac in Edina, Minnesota. The Delorean was a four-speed manual transmission, and the poor salesman that went with me was sweating terribly because I just couldn’t get the handle on driving a stick and so I jerked the car back and forth until I finally got it into gear…it was not a pretty sight, I’m embarrassed to say. I think the salesman kissed the ground when we finally got back to the dealership.

I personally didn’t have the money to buy a car like a Delorean or a TransAm or anything even close to that, but I really wanted to drive these cars to experience for myself what it would be like to have a fancy sports car. This was the beginning of kind of a hobby for me….test driving sports cars. Through trial and error, many test drives, and dealing with many car salesmen, I learned a unique skill, which was to manipulate a car salesman. At first, being a young kid with a driver’s license, why would any salesman even consider allowing me to test drive a brand new TransAm? I had to come up with a story that was believable, so I would tell them things like, my uncle is giving me a lot of money to buy a car, or I inherited a lot of money. You see, if I could get the salesman to see dollar-signs in his head from selling this car to me, then he would let me take it out for a test drive. I also took advantage of the basic courtesy that car dealerships offer which is to demonstrate their product. After many test drives, and feeling a little guilty lying to these salesmen, I changed my story. I learned to say as little as possible, and simply give the salesman the impression I could afford the vehicle because I was a business owner, which was true, although I still didn’t have that kind of money to really buy these cars. After driving many cars, I learned a lot about the differences and the many features of these vehicles, so I could come to the salesman fairly knowledgeable about the cars, giving off the impression that I was an informed buyer. Basically the salesmen wanted to sell cars because that’s how they made money, and I zoomed-in on their desire to sell a car and make money off me as a buyer. Basic salesmanship 101 is to find out what the buyer wants, qualify the buyer, answer any objections, and try to close the sale. Before the salesman knew it I qualified myself, and threw out a couple of objections which usually would lead to the salesman offering to let me drive the car. Sometimes I had to ask if I could try out the car, but that was usually after I had qualified myself. I developed a formula for dealing with car salesmen, so it didn’t matter if I was trying to test drive a $25,000 Ford Mustang, or a $150,000 Lamborgini Countach, I manipulated the sales process to my advantage so I could drive the car.

I had fun. The whole purpose was to have fun. I know….I was having fun at the expense of a poor car salesman who is just trying to feed his family, but I found other justifications for what I was doing. I could say that I was honing a salesman’s sales abilities. I could also say that after driving these cars I would be able to give an intelligent referral. There was a day when these car salesmen would just give me the keys to a fancy car and let me go out on my own to drive the car. That was the best opportunity for me to really test out the car and see what it could do without worrying that I would make a salesman nervous. Tires still fuming and the engine crackling from an intense test drive, my next challenge was to get out of that dealership and away from that salesman as gracefully as possible. Some of the cars I had fun driving the most were Corvettes, TransAms, five-liter Mustangs, Porsches, and the Maserati Bi-turbo. I really had to put my skills into high-gear when trying to test drive the exotics like Ferraris, Lamborgini’s, Rolls Royce and Aston Martin. When I moved to southern California, I found myself in exotic car heaven. We just don’t have the exotic cars in Minnesota like they do in Newport Beach. Oh, I probably should also mention that I became quite good at driving fast cars and putting them through the paces. Some cars like the corvette and the mustang were fun to spin around in an empty parking lot, forming a plume of tire-smoke and leaving black spin-tracks on the pavement. These cars were designed to be driven hard like that. I also enjoyed testing out the efficiency of the anti-lock breaks, which involved zooming at 60-70 mph and then abruptly applying the breaks, initiating the ABS system and coming to a controlled stop. I recall a time when I was test-driving one of my favorite cars, the 928 Porsche, and the salesman came with me. I also had a friend a long for the ride, so the salesman sat in the back. I was speeding down the freeway at about 100 mph and took the curvy exit at a high speed, and then timed my stop using the ABS breaks, right up to the stop light. I was confident in what I was doing, but the poor salesman, not knowing my driving abilities, literally soiled his pants while sitting in the cramped backseat.

There are so many stories I could tell about my test driving adventures, and I drove just about every exotic car I would ever dream of. Some of my ultimate accomplishments were the 959 Porsche in Stuttgart, Germany at the Porsche test track, and the Vector which could go from 0-6mph in about 3.8 seconds with a max speed of 240 mph using a V8 Chevy-block engine at 1,100 horse power. It got to a point where I basically drove everything I ever wanted, so I then took those same skills and began test flying airplanes. One of my favorite test flying experiences was when I flew a Mooney out of Orange County Airport, over Newport Beach, to Long Beach, I circled the Queen Mary, then flew back to OCA and landed the plane, all without the help of the salesman who of course went with us.

I wanted to expand on when I test drove the 959 Porsche in Stuttgart, Germany. I visited the Porsche factory and got a personalized tour, then was taken to the test track where they had the 959 out for a some test runs. I simply asked if I could give it a drive and they were more than happy to drive the thing around the track a few times. There were only a small number of these 959's built and priced out at over $350,000, in fact they were so powerfully fast and they didn't conform to USA regulations, so you couldn't buy one and bring it in to the States. The 959 clocked out at around 0-60mph in about 3.5 seconds, that's what a motorcycle does! It's not a car to be driven by the weak-hearted, it was most certainly a racing machine built for not just speed, but precision, intense driving.