I envy you.

But seriously, great story, really interesting.

 

Appel à témoins de monsieur Didier de Radiguès: [English translation below]

Ce matin, le réveil aura été plus dur que les autres jours parce qu'en me levant, j'ai dû constater qu'on était venu me cambrioler et m'arracher toute ma collection de casques, de trophées, de combinaisons et de souvenirs de ma carrière!!!

Si vous avez des informations à ce sujet ou que vous avez entendu parler de quelque chose qui vous semble étrange, vous pouvez toujours m'en avertir à l'adresse mail suivante trophees27@gmail.com.

De tout coeur merci.

Pourriez-vous aussi faire tourner ce message?

Bien à vous,
Didier de Radiguès

Call for witnesses by Mr. Didier Radiguès:

This morning waking has been harder than other days because when I got up, I found that someone had come and robbed me taking my collection of helmets, trophies, and racing suits, the memories of my career!

If you have any information on this or have heard of something that seems strange, you can always let me know at trophees27@gmail.com.

Wholeheartedly thank you.

Could you also run this message?

Sincerely,
Didier de Radiguès

 

What an absolute shame- especially due to the personal nature of the items. I hope he recovers those special pieces.

 

It takes a real low life POS to steal those kind of personal items from someone.

 

This wonderful car is undergoing restoration by its current owner. Here is a note concerning the car from friend and former owner Gary Wales:

“I traded the car straight across from Ed Jurist of The Vintage Car Store in Nyac, New York for my A6GCS 2000, After blowing up the engine [Note: This happened when Gary was ‘flipped-off’ by the driver of a 427 Corvette. Gary returned the salutation and a speed contest ensued with catastrophic results to the V12 engine]. I traded it for a Mercedes-Benz 190SL convertible which had been put together from two damaged cars. 1203 GT was maroon with black interior and I did no mods on the car whatsoever. As far as what color I would choose, I would have the original color that it now has but would have a biscuit interior. Black leather is to damn hot in a sunny clime.”

 

My experience driving Porsches is very limited. For a short time I had a Speedster and loved looking out through the narrow slits that were the windscreen and side windows giving the impression of driving a Sherman tank. As much as anyone, I enjoyed watching Paul Newman in the movie Harper driving the faded blue Speedster with primer patches and especially liked that the engine heard on the soundtrack was actually that of a Porsche Speedster. Kudos for Hollywood on that occasion. But having most of my automotive experience in high powered, high top-end machines like the GTO and 454 Corvettes, the Speedster felt underpowered on the freeways--nimble though it was on Mulholland--and I always felt like I was having to keep out of everyone's way and in constant danger of being run over by an 18-wheeler. That was not the case with the 911S.

I didn't own the pale yellow 911S Targa I speak of and we may never know who actually did--but more about that later. What was known at the time is the it belonged, if you will, to a friend who came and went in my life leaving a lasting impression and introducing me to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. He was a hold-over hippie with a long braided ponytail and a seemingly endless supply of patchouli oil, also known as hippie perfume. He was a contradiction in terms in every possible way but we hit it off as both of us enjoyed fine restaurants, good movies and a few other things as well. High speed driving counted among them.

I only drove it the one time but could have grown to like the 911S even if it didn't have a V12 that revved to seven grand. It was a thoroughbred and it liked to be let off the leash, which is exactly what happened that night. Running across the desert floor at about three in the morning, I was seeing 130 on the speedometer. I don't know how much the Porsche had in reserve but it felt comfortable and very stable. As it pushed through the dark night, Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida came on the tape player. Up went the volume and, possibly too, the speed. We were listening to the full, seventeen-minute version for those taking notes.

At speed in the dark desert, the road ahead appeared like the opitcal effect used by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey to represent Dave Bowman's flight through infinity & beyond--an impression enhanced by In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida dialed in to 11. Six minutes, thirty seconds into the song, the music fades to feature a drum solo by Ron Bushy that is at once pagan and mystical. At 9:11, the organ brings us back to the theme which at 11:00 becomes agitated. At about this itme, I see bright lights in the distance reminding me again of the Kubrick film when the Monolith is being inspected on the moon--an eerie extraterrestrial scene with cosmic resonance. At 13:04, Ron Bushy is seriously back on the drums and the music incorporates plaintiff sounds that could come from an animal in distress as we come up to the highway construction crew which occupies the right lane for a distance of what seemed like several miles using huge machines that look grotesque half hidden in the dark and partly overexposed by the dazzling work lights.

Should I have slowed? Yes. Did I? I'll leave you to know the answer for yourself. By the time the music played out, the strange scene with its blinding lights was at our six and disappearing into a small speck on the horizon when the vast darkness snuffed it out. It was the most surreal seventeen minutes of my entire life. I've put the video of the song below in case anyone should want to close their eyes and imagine the experience I've described.

As for my friend, he disappeared like those lights in the desert night never to be seen again. Before he was gone, I learned that he had ties to an East coast crime family, the Porsche was stolen and the police had issued him a document certifying that the Porsche was not stolen. How surreal is that? I'm just glad I didn't know all of this that night in the desert.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIVe-rZBcm4&feature=player_embedded

 

As my plane is sitting in the queue for take-off from Lax to JFK the other day, I glance out the window to see a most unlikely sight. What looked like an aircraft tow tractor passed by going the opposite direction using a lane that ran between the taxiway and the runway. Strapped to its platform was an immaculate, white Maserati Type 61 'Birdcage' like the one pictured here. As the plane made its U-turn and accelerated down the runway, I looked to see what had become of this rare race car but to no avail.

Would that the camera had been nearby.

 

Back in the day, it seemed we were always going somewhere. It could be Matthew Ettinger and I taking our girlfriends to Las Vegas sampling the restaurants, the shows and the health club facilities (neither of us gambled--with anything but our lives, that is) and 'Vegas was still an elegant sort of place to be. Baseball caps were seen only in the downtown area or near the bus station and if you showed up on the Strip wearing flip-flops anywhere other than by the pool you would have been taken away and buried in the desert along with the other miscreants who had committed cardinal sins against the casinos.

Sometimes the excursions were local. Many's the time Matthew and I darted about Los Angles, his son Marcus with him in the Breadvan and his son Mason with me in the GTO. Occasionally, we were joined by John Andrews in his Lamborghini Miura--a beautiful car in orange with, I think, a standard a grey leather interior. I don't know that I would ever order an orange car--it was Frank Sinatra's favorite color, by the way--but the only other color offered initially by Lamborghini for the Miura was a vibrant, pale green. I'll take orange. On one very memorable occasion, John joined Matthew and me for a night ride which featured an episode of Matthew cliff-hanging in the Breadvan after sliding off a mountain road in Ice Canyon and losing power because the battery wasn't bolted down. It had slipped its cables.

There were times when John and I were off to see someone or something at some distant place and we would take the Miura. He would suggest that I drive, which I was always happy to do. It meant that he would have to share the passenger seat with my girlfriend Ruth, a tall, slender, pretty brunette with big brown eyes that could have inspired a Margaret Keane painting. I wonder who was getting the better deal in that arrangement.

The Miura was the first mid-engined car I'd ever driven and the handling dynamics are different than those of a front engine car. It felt very neutral as it tracked through corners. The big surprise for me though was when I first stepped on the accelerator pedal. It didn't budge. I thought maybe I was pushing on a dead pedal--the sort one finds to the left of the clutch pedal as a footrest--but that was ridiculous. I pushed harder and it finally moved and I heard the engine revs increase. I imagined that this is what the pilot of a Vickers VC10 must have experienced pushing rudder pedals attached to sixty yards of cable offering up maximum resistance. It was a stunning change from the GTO in which you only had to wiggle your toe to get a few thousand more RPMs on the tach.

I never knew whether John had effected some modification to the car that made the accelerator pedal a constant adversary or if the cause could be attributed to the flood of '66 in Florence, Italy. It seems that John bought the Miura used and sight unseen from Tom Meade and discovered the fact that it had been submerged at some point only after it landed on the docks in San Pedro. Life is an adventure and when you bought an exotic car in those days, you had doubled-down.

The Miura made a lovely noise and I enjoyed driving it very much. All things considered, I would have preferred a Lusso and the GTO was way out in front as far as I was concerned. However, the Miura was fun and it was different. It was a car that entertained the driver and I would like to drive one again sometime--preferably one that hadn't been in Florence in 1966.

 

I just made a fresh cup of coffee and read your story. Thank you.

Can you come to Philly sometime this winter and tell me car stories by the fire while me, my girlfriend, and my cat listen on?

Merry Christmas!

 

Booking the ticket now.

Merry Christmas to you, your girlfriend and your cat!