A Car Life, by Larry Crane

There were too many revs (about 2000). The clutch clunked home abruptly and launched the Testarossa across the drainage indent and too quickly into the street. My mind’s eye saw my three new friends standing behind me in the garage doorway, backlit, wondering if I’d make the first turn, never mind an all-night sprint to Nevada.

Starting a race surrounded by red-misted drivers has never given me the kind of anxiety I had leaving the Ferrari dealership on the outskirts of Denver at 9:00 p.m. on a cloudless spring evening. It wasn’t the car. We had accurately diagnosed the problem back in Laramie, Wyoming, the previous afternoon; the rear bearing in the Motorola alternator had failed (only the second such failure in a Testarossa). The repair had been quick and clean, but it hadn’t been simple.

The car and I were trucked to Denver, where we were met by Ken Sindall and David Tourtlot, service technicians at Roger Mauro Ferrari. Later in the evening, John Amette, technical manager for Ferrari North America in Los Angeles, arrived with a new alternator under his arm, and by 8:30 p.m., Ken and John took the car out for a test drive. For the previous two hours, I had been going over maps and planning my route for a flagrantly disrespectful dash across two states. I was determined to arrive in Wendover, Nevada, before our Automobile magazine Lincoln Highway cross-country caravan made its early-morning departure.

Most of my anxiety was simple excitement, with the added increment of knowing the U.S.-spec headlights would be inadequate for the entire trip. Georgetown was behind me and Loveland Pass somewhere above before my confidence in the outer limits of the headlights exceeded my imagination and the black abyss of moonless mountain canyons.

A high average speed was limited by the dense population centers through the ski areas. But the TR’s willingness to accelerate into the nether reaches of its speedometer and them brake quickly back to reality did help me maintain a reasonable average for the first couple of hours. The cost, of course, was fuel consumption. Just like the big kids, I had to weigh the time made on the road against the time lost filling the tank. My advantage was the fantastic time I was having as the big twelve sang up through the revs, with the gearsets a faint harmony. I could conduct the selection with the heavy chrome baton, which had the added attraction of adjusting my visceral response to the multiplication of torque.

The Testarossa is not a silent specter as it sweeps through the night, either inside or outside. There is no radio. At other times, I have sung old railroad songs too loudly, or listened to someone else doing the same thing electronically, to pass the time, but not in this car. The sounds are miracles of a heritage reaching back to the dawn of motor racing history. I hope all owners of these cars are sensitive to that truth. The buyer who orders a sound system should be refused ownership of the car.

By the time I saw the moon, it was to late to help in the mountains. But the TR and I made great time in the desert. Little settlements along the way interrupted the real speed, but the average quickly rose. I was still unable to pack 100 miles into a single hour; 97 mph was the best hour average. That included some time at 130-and-a-bit, but it was forced to be brief. I even saw 145 once, but that was far beyond the headlights’ ability to give any indication of what I would be passing in a few seconds.

Utah became an undulating blur. The sound and the intensity of concentration began to flatten my senses. It had also been six hours since dinner. The second fuel stop was at about 3:00 a.m.; the car took eighteen gallons of super unleaded and I took a packet of cheese crackers with dry peanut butter between them and a Diet Seven-Up.

It was interesting to me that I had seen only one highway patrol car since I left Denver. He had caused my radar detector to beep once and slowed me down until I passed him parked alongside the highway doing paperwork. I passed through the remainder of Colorado and all of Utah with nothing less than tacit approval.

On the approach to Provo, I had a couple of unsettling experiences in which, with my eyes wide open, I was suddenly aware of the car’s being somewhere I had not expected it to be. That was enough. Within a few miles I saw a Motel 6 sign and headed for it at the next exit. As I selected second gear and rolled into the parking lot I spotted a little sign that read, “Entrance to Denny’s.” Perfect. After a Grand Slam breakfast and three cups of coffee I pulled out of the lot past three warm highway patrol cars. I saw 6000 revs in three gears as I climbed the on-ramp headed north.

Salt Lake City passed quickly and the long causeway across the Great Salt Lake stretched westward through a streaming rain. Heavy trucks have grooved the pavement during, I presume, the long summers when the pavement is hot and soft. The rain water filed those grooves and formed puddles an inch or more deep, a foot wide, and miles long. By positioning the right-side tires between the long puddles and the left-side on the berm, I was able to maintain 100 to 110 mph on the run in to Wendover.

The Testarossa, elegantly stained with aerodynamic streaks of road grime, rolled in to the Nevada Crossing Hotel at 6:45 a.m. mountain time. Discounting two fuel stops and a Denny’s breakfast, I had covered 710 miles in nine hours. Michael Jordan and then Jean Lindamood (now Jennings) chauffeured the sleeping Crane through half the next day. I was in San Francisco before I felt recovered, but in that wonderfully satisfying Ferrari I would do it again tonight.

Published with permission of “Automobile” magazine.