Beetle 1300, Artificial Intelligence and driving pleasure

I was born at the very end of the 1960s, almost at the turn of the 1970s. I learned to drive in a Kombi 1200 ’59, owned by my grandfather, there on the streets of Sorocaba. He was 12 years old. And I spent my adolescence washing my father’s Voyage (later two Monza) and my mother’s Beetle 1300 ’75 unfailingly on Saturday mornings… to earn the right, at the age of 14 or 15, to take a walk around the block.

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I accumulated a lot of mileage in this Beetle in the following years. It is precisely because he drove so much in it that this passion for automobiles flourished.

As my father’s background was in mechanics, he took care of the maintenance of the cars at home. I remember seeing him transforming the 4-cylinder gasoline engine of a Commodore (1978) into an alcohol version, using copper wire to heat the intake manifold, in addition to living with a collection of giclés in his pocket. The Beetle had Brasília wheels (14-inch rim) and wider diagonal Opal tires. I think it was 7.35/14. Otherwise, totally original.

In years of use, this Beetle has never broken down. Nothing. Nothing at all. In fact, only once, when the dynamo’s belt broke. And I was there in the hat house. Of course he had a spare belt and my father had taught me how to change. It was easy. But that’s all, in more than eight years he was at home. I drove this Beetle a lot. I even think that my passion for cars is born from having driven a car so much… so bad! The Beetle is like the taste of a citizen who only knows spaghetti with a sweat! The day you taste a Bolognese sauce, oh, what a difference! “How is it better!!” You need to ride a Beetle every day to give value to other sauces, I mean, cars.

As all incoherence is welcome in passions, today, of course, I have a Beetle 1300 (1976). But I also have a Variant 1600 (1974). The Beetle only exists to justify the qualities of the Variant: every time I drive one, I am immediately extremely happy to have the other!

Artificial Intelligence

Being this old guy, I confess that I am resistant to using AI. I’ve tried a few times and I was even scared by the accuracy of the result compared to what I ordered. One day, I’ll end up joining. To write my texts, however, never.

Except today.

I asked one of these tools to come up with a text that talked about pleasure when driving cars and motorcycles. It came something like this:

The road calls, a silent invitation that the soul recognizes. It’s not about fate, but about dance, the mechanical symphony that begins by turning the key or pressing the ignition button.

In the car, pleasure settles in a cabin that is a sanctuary. The cabin welcomes, the seat embraces, and the commands respond to a touch, to a thought almost. It is the orchestration of movement: the deep roar of the engine, the precision of the steering, the way the chassis reads the asphalt and translates the landscape into tactile sensations.

On the bike, the experience transcends the shelter. Stripped of the glass and steel barriers, the pilot merges with the wind, the temperature of the air, the smell of the approaching rain. There is no cabin, just the perfect union between body and machine.

And so on.

Guys, it’s not like that at all. I’m glad the AI doesn’t know what I’m talking about. It parades a litany of poetic sentences, but it will never, ever be able to synthesize what it is to brake a Porsche 911 Carrera GTS, the new (or the old, it doesn’t matter) at the end of a straight, on a racetrack, at more than 220 km/h. She doesn’t know. So let me explain to you what driving pleasure is, at least for me.

I speak with a racing heart when you feel the back of a car, in a fraction of a second, start to escape. Or the sweat on your forehead when you lay the bike on a curve at an angle beyond what you had done… And it works. Or feeling the hairs on your arms when braking hard, above 200 km/h, to get into Senna’s S at about 70 km/h, with the rear end loose and you hitting the steering wheel.

Driving pleasure

I’ll highlight some cars and their respective whys.

• Gol GTi – I remember the exact moment I started one of them, back in 1990. It was the first, a Monaco Blue, launched at the end of 1988, model 1989. I worked as an intern in the press area of Autolatina (the holding company that managed VW and Ford). And I was sent from the central office to the VW plant, on Via Anchieta. I remember the majestic feeling of not needing a choke to start! And I remember very well the low footprint that that engine had… Years later, I bought one for myself.
• Alfa Romeo 164 V6 – I picked up this car from the Quatro Rodas garage to take it to a photo shoot. I had just entered the magazine. When I left the car from the Editora Abril building and entered the street, making that usual 90-degree maneuver, I was startled by how much he had a direct driving relationship! Years later, I had a 145 Quadrifoglio. And it was the same thing. I don’t remember other cars that made me so horny to make curves… not for the suspension which, in the case of the Alfa 164, had a very loose rear. But for the minimal movement you had to make on the steering wheel.
• Honda CBX750F – In my early twenties, I had already owned a Honda CBR450F and a Yamaha RD350LC. In the first, I paraded. In the second, I learned the meaning of mixing speed with snoring. Nothing, I repeat, nothing is as seductive as the bellow of a 2-stroke engine as you gain speed. But behold, the queen of Brazilian motorcycles of the 1980s was missing: the SeteGalo. I had an 87, which had the nickname Hollywood at the time, due to the colors. And I confess that it was a big mistake: once you have the first 4-cylinder motorcycle, you never want to ride anything else again. It had exquisite performance, a full-bodied rumble and, better than the RD, a much more balanced set of suspensions and brakes. Especially because the idea was to stay alive, even at very high speeds.

There is a risk that I will not be able to finish this text, because I have not even begun to describe the “crème de la crème”. And it starts with the…

• BMW 3 Series – I have two tickets. One was the first one I tested, a 325i Cabriolet ’93, manual transmission. People. I would have a Series 3 today, quietly. Thinking about it, there would be no… I understood there how much BMW’s essence in promising a car built to generate driving pleasure corresponded, in fact, in practice, to the product itself. BMW is the pure definition of driving pleasure.

I fit in the car like I had never felt anything before. I sewed with him in traffic as if I had known him for a long time. I didn’t even change gears. He slapped the lever with contempt. And she always understood where to go. What about the balance of the car in high corners, versus the rear-wheel drive without any electronic controls? Good. The second unforgettable 3 Series was an M3, I think the E46, in 2000 or 2001: the first one that came with a paddle shift. People (2). I’ll summarize it in the following: I ground a tank and a half of gasoline in 3 days (this is not force of expression. I spent all that.)

• Uno Turbo i.e. – In the year of grace 1994, turbocharger was synonymous with engine preparation. It was not used in production cars, until Fiat, in a brilliant way, created an absolutely aspirational product for its most popular car. I’ve already told this story: at the launch, I interviewed the president of the manufacturer at the time and mentioned the fact that the car “birded” in the drag races. If the geometry should not be revised.

The Italian replied: “Questa macchina non ha nemmeno 120 hp. Questo fenomeno è intenzionale. Si ha l’impressione che cammini molto più di quanto non faccia in realtà”. Or “this car doesn’t even have 120 hp. This phenomenon is deliberate. You get the impression that he walks much more than he actually walks.” Is this or isn’t it great? From that moment on, I became much more of a Fiat fan than I could have imagined a few years before!

The list is long. Will you come back next week for the second chapter? I’ll talk about cars like the Dauer 962 LeMans, the Chevrolet Zafira, the Chevrolet Omega CD, the Ford Ka 1.6, the Kawasaki Z900RS, the Honda Civic VTi, the Porsche Macan Turbo (the electric one), plus a few others that I’ll remember. Oh, of course, and the 911. Until then.