Cars are, in a sense, milestones in our lives. When I “finally” got my first roadster in 2002 it seemed a lifetime of driving had passed already, though it hadn’t even been ten years since I got my license and I couldn’t have predicted I’d have five more, spanning more than twenty.
Technically, the headline is wrong. I’ve had six roadsters, but my first, a 2002 Mazda MX-5 Miata from what is known as the “NB” generation was a five speed. Why does it matter? Because in my memory, as in how I remember the car, I couldn’t say for sure, even though I drove it for over a hundred thousand miles over five years. Why does my love for roadsters matter? Likewise, in my memory, I am not sure where my fascination with a small, relatively light, two seater, manually transmission convertible truly came from. Like many things that we decide we love when we are young, it just sort of happened. If you asked me to put a finer point on it, when my parents were getting divorced, my mom was close to a gentleman that moved to Martha’s Vineyard for the summer for work, laying down old fashioned cable across new frontiers. Before I’d even graduated fifth grade in June of 1987, at the tender age of 11, my mom, my sister, and I departed from Staten Island, NY to the Massachusetts island for an extended escape. My sister had just celebrated her ninth birthday, and we were both equipped with brand new “pogo balls,” bouncing around the dock, waiting for the ferry, no idea what was in store. At the time, I was interested primarily in Martha’s Vineyard being the filming location for Jaws, having always been a fan of horror movies, but once I arrived, my mom’s friend Michael had an old red MG convertible and a parrot – or at least I think it was an MG. It was definitely British, definitely tiny, and definitely a two-seater. He was a big dude, about 6 feet, four inches with a medium to large frame. I’m not even sure how he fit into the thing, nor am I sure how he drove it around with a freaking parrot on his shoulder, but he took that parrot everywhere, much to the thrill of the locals. The bird, a large one to my young self with quite a vocabulary of sometimes colorful words, sometimes known to start cursing when it didn’t get its way, would sit with us at restaurants, eating human food including BBQ ribs it would hold in one claw, and getting upset when the cups were too small to stick its beak in. I remember liking the car, but truly loving the bird, especially having not spent much time with such a truly remarkable creature at that point in my life. It would be another year until I fell in love with Porsche, writing from the point of view of their pinnacle of automotive excellence in the 1980s, the legendary 959 for a sixth grade creative assignment. The 959, however, wasn’t a roadster. It wasn’t even a convertible. Porsche wouldn’t produce a roadster for more than a decade when the company saved itself from oblivion with the Boxster, but clearly, something must’ve stuck with me in the strange, inexplicable way things do when we are young, because for whatever reason, I desperately wanted a roadster. Of course, it would be almost six years before I even got my license, but a kid can dream, can’t he, that’s why we had pictures on the walls back then?
Alas, my first car certainly wasn’t a roadster, far from it, though it was something of a sports car. It was a 1979 Pontiac Firebird that my dad picked up for $500 and promptly put truck tires on for reasons long forgotten, though it certainly was fun in the winter. He was a man I had a complicated relationship with, but if you count on him for one thing, it was anything having to do with cars. He might not have been interested in paying the mortgage, utilities, food, and clothing, but he did come through with a first car for me, at least one of my brothers, and my sister, and as every red blooded American teenager knows, that is something, even if it was an automatic with the small block V8 rather than the big block monster. Needless to say, I still wanted a roadster and I definitely wanted a stick. The funds, perhaps equally needless to say, were the problem. I was working in the car business and earning decent money for a teenager, but college and associated college partying had me strapped for cash, literally to the point where if I didn’t have a dollar in my pocket for the PATH and an old school paper train ticket, I’d have done some begging to get home from NYU. As a result, I moved through a rather bizarre and eclectic succession of hand-me-downs after the Firebird was beyond repair, largely because I took a joy ride with my friends in the snow on what we used to call Ultimate Backroad, actually the scenic route through the Atlantic Highlands in NJ. If you aren’t familiar, it could’ve been the inspiration for Bruce Springsteen’s classic “Backstreets,” a twisty, turny, hillside road where caution is required most of the time, albeit caution is in short supply for a 17 year old as I took the thing at around 40 miles per hour (I had truck tires afterall) in near white out conditions, my friends crammed in, screaming like we were on a rollercoaster, and somehow the brake line got partially cut after we swerved off the road into a ditch. It drove away, but the speedometer no longer worked and when I say the brakes were bad, I mean I still have dreams sometimes when I am slamming on the pedal and the car won’t stop. Fortunately for me, my grandmother stopped driving around that time and I inherited her old Buick Riviera. I ran that into the ground, but then my brother, the lawyer in the family, started making real money and purchased himself a BMW, leaving me his Dodge Colt (at least it had a stick). That too was driven until it disintegrated, then somehow I found myself in possession of the Plymouth Sundance my father bought for my sister (bought, but didn’t pay for for a couple of years as he sold it to himself, a Twiste family tradition as we shale see, and accounting wasn’t that sharp in those days), which I literally drove until the wheels fell off.
Seriously, I’ll never forget getting pulled over on the Parkway at around 5 in morning after a college house party. The state trooper asked me, do you know why I pulled you over, son? I said, because I have a flat tire, but I am just trying to get to the next rest stop, not doing anything crazy, officer. He said, I pulled you over because sparks were flying off of your wheel. How about you come out and take a look? Stinking of booze, drinking a coffee, I extricated myself from the car, and sure enough there was no tire left on the rear driver’s side, just a bare metal rim. How much have you had to drink tonight? Nothing, officer. Bullshit, your eyes are bouncing around all over the place and you’re drinking a coffee. A couple of beers sir? In that regard, I wasn’t quite lying. I didn’t leave the party particularly late, but somehow passed out on the PATH for a couple of hours to the point where I could’ve been abducted by aliens. Regardless, the trooper’s response was, so now no beers becomes a couple of beers? I’ve never been a person who frightens easily, but the phrase almost shitting my pants is the best description of my mental state at that point. Miraculously, however, rather than slapping the cuffs on immediately, he told me to get back into my car and wait. I had no idea why, as I figured I was headed straight to the pokey, but I didn’t think it normally worked that way. Surely, the cuffs would be out by now?
I can’t tell you the thoughts that went through my head while I was waiting in the car. It was one of those moments when you think your entire future has simply been wiped away, like a black tunnel closing in, everything you planned to do reduced to a DUI with nothing past it. I’ve always been a lucky son of a bitch though, so a few minutes later, the cop called me on his loudspeaker back to his car and I’m thinking I can’t be quite that lucky in this situation, no one is. Sure enough, he tells me that he called me a tow truck and I might well have pissed myself. He ordered me to get back in my car and not dare to move an inch until the tow truck arrived, an order I was only happy to comply with, because if he had pulled me over normally, I’d be in the back of his car, taking a breathalyzer and in handcuffs. As he pulled away, he said, “And don’t bullshit the troopers. We’re here to help.” I’m not sure how many cigarettes I smoked afterwards, hands still shaking, but at some point the tow truck arrived, taking me and the car, and dropping me off at the rest stop I was originally aiming for, where I had to call my mom at around 7 in the morning now and beg her to pick me up – collect, from a pay phone in those days. Ironically, while I was awaiting her arrival, I got yet another coffee, and saw the same trooper. He nodded to me, rather than taking this second opportunity to lock me up. Somehow, we got the car, sparked rim and all, back up and running for another year or so, but shortly before graduation in 1998, the time had come for my first new ride, a decision that was made quite suddenly when I sold it to myself following the family tradition and won a sales contest after delivering nine cars in a single weekend. Thus, I went from not being in the market for a new car on Friday to taking one home on Saturday. To be sure, the Twiste family in general has always been an odd combination of extremely conservative in some respects and ridiculously spontaneous than others, though I was just learning this myself at the time. As it was, I still wasn’t exactly flush with money. I did, however, get a little lucky the year earlier, note the repeating pattern, when I had to withdraw for a semester because I couldn’t pay the tab. I re-enrolled the following year, but lost my housing points and was unable to move back in with my fired up Texan roommate. To most, this probably would’ve been a set back. I sure as shit wasn’t going to be living with a Freshman at that point, so I decided to commute. Back in those days, the right hand of an institution didn’t know what the left hand was doing some of the time. In principle, they were supposed to reevaluate my scholarship because I wasn’t living there anymore. In practice, they messed something up, and I saved around $10,000 a year. Commuting wasn’t exactly fun, but I was coming home every weekend to sell cars in any event and I scheduled classes no more than two days a week, taking whatever fit in, regardless of the prerequisite. This included math, philosophy, and history classes I wasn’t remotely qualified for, but who doesn’t like a good challenge?
Even so, I was still stuck in a 1998 Dodge Neon that I bought almost on the spot, and more than four years from my first roadster, but things began to improve from there as my career began to take shape. The second generation Miata became a third generation, then a Nissan 370z, then a Porsche Boxster, which truly was a glorious machine, the one that finally got me into racing for real, but then something happened on the way to automotive nirvana. Porsche, in their infinite wisdom, dropped the legendary naturally aspirated flat six from both the Boxster and the 911, replacing it with a turbocharged four and a turbocharged six respectively. Much as I was a lifetime lover of the brand, I simply couldn’t bring myself to spend that kind of money on a four-banger of essentially the same design as a Subaru. As far as I was concerned, if I was going to get a four cylinder roadster with a manual transmission, it just simply had to be a Miata, this time the fourth generation of the car, smaller and lighter than the previous version, smaller even than the original, and my first and only red sports car. (On a side note, they say red sports cars get pulled over more than any other car on the road, but not in my experience. I was never pulled over in the Miata, but had been pulled over in a white Porsche Macan several times, though oddly never in my other two dark grey ones, so go figure.) This was back in 2016, shortly before I got married, then promptly laid off, which ultimately served as the underpinnings of an independent movie, my first to ever have a distributor, though don’t mistake that with actually making money given my net proceeds remain under $500. I couldn’t know it at the time, but that little Miata would prove to be the longest car I’ve ever owned and it was truly an exceptional vehicle, more fun to drive than anything on the road, good looking enough to get compliments, a joy to take on the track even though it’s not that fast, and built like a tank despite the diminutive size.
At the same time, nothing lasts forever and as a married man, who’s wife can’t drive a stick, I was frequently stuck driving the Miata in the winter with the top up and after more than eight years, a few uncomfortable squeaks and rattles, natural to a convertible at this age, began to creep in, marring the experience. I had no immediate plans to replace the vehicle, but began looking at options. Unfortunately, the pickings among manual roadsters are far slimmer than they ought to be, at least according to this self-proclaimed aficionado . Porsche still makes the Boxster of course, but they are hard to get, still have the four cylinder, and if you can find the six cylinder GTS 4.0 or Spyder, you’re talking well over a hundred thousand. The new Nissan Z is an intriguing car, especially having had one previously, but no convertible is planned. The Toyota Supra, the same, and so it seemed I’d be stuck in the Miata until I stumbled onto what seems to be a unicorn these days: BMW, largely thought to have abandoned sports cars in general, changed direction and began offering a specially tuned Z4 roadster with a manual transmission late last year, the updated version of James Bond’s classic car from Goldeneye. If you build it they will come? To put it bluntly, this was something I simply didn’t think would ever exist again. In the era of the electric vehicle craze, when even non-electric cars are rarely offered with a stick, I’d resigned myself to the reality that I’d never own another new six cylinder manual transmission car again. Of course, once I found out that wasn’t the case, my conservative side began warring with my spontaneous side for about 48 hours, when half drunk, fresh from the hot tub, I told my wife I had an “insane” plan to trade in the Miata on a BMW roadster. She said, what do you mean trade in, like they were of equal value? Can you at least think about it for a few days? By Monday, we were at the dealership, by Wednesday it was in our garage, where it awaits the first track day and the summer.
In the meantime, all I can say is that I might, emphasis on might be getting old. Cars are, in a sense, milestones in our lives, and recapping most of those I’ve had here for your enjoyment, one hopes, makes the reality that decades have passed since I first got my license undeniable. When I “finally” got my first roaster in 2002 it seemed a lifetime of driving had passed already, though it hadn’t even been ten years and I couldn’t have predicted I’d have five more, spanning more than twenty. Yet, here I am, looking back on a half a lifetime of cars and unable to accurately remember the transmission in my first one. Thus, both the future and the past to some extent remain unknowable, leaving only the present. In the present, I can say for certain that I’m a fortunate man able to reminisce about this at all. I can also hope that my younger self, even as young as eleven, might look forward to this future of cars, and think, wow, is this what my life will be like one day, I can’t wait? Once again, I’m lucky to even think such a thing, but let’s be serious, life doesn’t work that way and youth is wasted on the young, as ever. I can finally say that, back in the present, the BMW Z4, technically the M40i model with the “handschalter” package, appears to be a rather exceptional vehicle in its own right, sort of like a hypothetical car that fits between a Miata and a Mercedes SL. It’s not a pure sports car like a Boxster, with a focus on overall ride quality over cat-like reflexes. The engine, however, is truly something special, a 382 HP mill in the classic inline six layout with a single twin scroll turbocharger. I’d been fortunate enough to drive its big brother in the M4 at the track, which has two turbos, but while powerful, found it bland and boring, with an almost cement mixer sound. The little brother might not pack as much punch, but it’s a lot more fun, has a lot more character, is a lot more free-revving, leading you to believe it might just not have a turbo at all, and sounds infinitely better, burbling and barking in the way sports are supposed to, yet rarely do anymore. The manual transmission the engine is tied to took a little getting used to getting out of the Miata, known as having the best stick shift on Earth. The throws are longer given it has twice as much horsepower and the overall feel is a little more removed, but after a few drives, it’s accurate, fast, and most importantly, a blast to flick through. Handling, meanwhile, might not be Boxster-level, but it sticks into turns, you can feel the car moving around you the way you should in a proper sports car, it goes where you point it and has some serious grip, not to mention a lot of power pulling out of turns. Did I mention I was a lucky bastard?
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 