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| A most worthy adversary. |
Met up with a friend today and was headed home afterwards... didn't have anything to do so I decided to take the long way home... the twisty way. This is a short backroad that is not too much of a major thoroughfare so when you are lucky, you can get this road all to yourself. I love this road and have driven it many times. I will not say the name of the road, to protect the identity of the innocent and the secrecy of the road So I turn on to this road and ... what's that behind me? A pair of bright headlights, HIDs... within a few seconds I realize it's a McLaren. Oh snap! It's like the epic Motor Trend Best Drivers' Car comparo, only with me cast as the pudgy bespectacled Jonny Lieberman. And probably Randy Pobst behind the wheel of the 592hp, $250K McLaren.
My BRZ is totally stock motor and suspension. I already know how this is going to end, but I know in my heart I have to give it a go. So I floor it and we charge into the canyon together, engines roaring. His a lot louder than mine of course. We go into the first few turns hot -- for me it's flat out. When I have time to glance in the rearview he is right there with me. I maintain a ferocious pace, this might have been the fastest I've ever taken these corners. It's a tight snaking road, and you get to the point where you start slowing down not because you don't have mechanical grip, you slow down because there are blind corners and you don't know what might be around the next corner. I think in a few of these corners, I "outbraved" the McLaren because I carried more speed through the turns and he slowed down, so I could see that he dropped back. Perhaps he wasn't as familiar with the roads, or perhaps he wanted to give me some space. But a few turns later he was back on my tail.
We carried on this way for maybe a quarter mile, maybe half mile. Hard to say for sure. Then we came upon slower traffic -- a VW Jetta doing it's own normal thing. We slowed down and formed up behind it. And I thought, with some relief, here is my honorable way out. After perhaps another half mile of following it, a small turnout came up. The Jetta didn't take it. I nudged my BRZ to the right to give the McLaren enough room to pass and slowed. He came around and now we were VW - McLaren - BRZ.
Now closely following the McLaren, I rolled down my window and waited for what I knew would come. The next patch of road that was semi straight, that V8 roared and off went the McLaren, passing around the VW in a matter of seconds. I wasn't going to try the same thing, I knew how short these straights were and I just didn't have the power to pass if the VW didn't cooperate. And a good thing too as we passed oncoming traffic a few turns later. So I followed meekly behind it for a while longer, when it finally pulled out to let me pass and I picked up my pace once more, the McLaren was nowhere to be seen. I eventually caught up to another car, an Acura TL, and passed that one on one of the longer straights but before long I reached the end of this fairly short route. Did not see the McLaren again.
So that's my story. I don't know what was going through the head of the McLaren driver, whether he thought "oh good show, this BRZ's got heart", or it was "what is this ricey rubbish, make way, peasant!". I just know that we had a rip roaring good time and it was a memorable highlight to my day. I had a big grin on my face as I drove the rest of the way home, and it just got even bigger when I got a call from the local Subaru dealership, asking if I was interested in buying a WRB BRZ they had available, and my response was "actually, I'm driving one right now. But thank you for calling."
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