Re: Do you let Non-VR6 driver drive your VR? (Grumpy-Smurf)
I was on a long road trip (Denver to San Diego via Phoenix) and I ended up
caravaning with my Aunt and Uncle and two kids from Phoenix to LA.
Somewhere along the way we stopped to get food, and I
offered to let my Aunt drive my car. We pull out, her husband in the
lead in the minivan, and he takes off down the interstate. We get
to the onramp and as she's barely up to 3k rpms before shifting to
2nd, so I told her. "Ok, now leave it in 2nd. Plant your foot
and take it all the way to the redline." So she did. I sensed
that moment of hesitation at about 4k rpms where her instincts
told her to shift, but she stuck with it, per my urging. She finally
gets to the top of 2nd with a big sh*t eating grin on her face,
totally misses the shift to 3rd and ends up in 5th.
Big deal, we're going 70mph.
She catches up to her hubby in the people mover. We sit there
looking at the back of the minivan for about 2 miles and finally the
VR6 calls out to her, she drops it into 4th, pulls out and zoom
we're long gone. About another mile down the road she slows down
a little to what she feels is a comfortable pace and finally looks down at the
speedometer and goes..
"Oh crap. This is ninety and this is
nothing! This is nothing."
I'll always remember that line.
A few miles later I had to explain to her what that noisy, flashy
black box on the dash was, as we blasted by a cop going about 85 in
a 75. Luckily we didn't get pulled over.
On my last roadtrip to SoCal mid September of this year (yes, the
week after, or we'd have flown), my mom came along, and she
drove my now supercharged VR6. Turns out, she's totally deaf
to the call of the VR6. She wouldn't use the cruise control (never driven with it
before, so it freaked her out "It feels like it's speeding up, but the speedometer doesn't
move at all." Umm.. ya, that's because it *isn't*. Sigh.), so she was constantly
speeding up and slowing down. Mostly slowing down. I've
never spent
so much time going 60-65 in a 70-75mph zone. Uggg. Her gradual speeding up and
slowing down was so annoying to me, I couldn't sleep, even when I was very tired.
I finally ended up driving 85% of the 2300 mile trip just so I could relax. She'd pass someone
and then slow down, and 10 cars would pass her on the right, before it would
occur to her to pull over. Then when most of the cars were in front of her, she'd speed up
again for a while. It drove me crazy. And it's not that she's incapable of going fast
either. She just seemed oblivious to her own speed, and the VR6 lugging in 5th gear,
up a hill at 60mph, back at Colorado altitudes was noticable only to me trying to
catch a 40 winks.
I've got a highschool buddy who's always owned Volvos, and now owns a WRX. I've let
him drive my car many times. First time I saw his new WRX, he tossed me his keys, and I
mine. His comment when we got back to his house. "I sure wish the WRX sounded like
your car. You can actually hear the exhaust note just cruising around with the window open."
BTW, the answer is yes.
ian
