|
SWAN DREAMS
AND OTHER MINUTIAE…5
By Chris Carey
Fairly recently, it dawned on me as I was tinkering with my ’74 914 (‘Jezebel’). Owning any half-century old car is a fiscal challenge of the most substantial kind, but owning an older Porsche has become an especial exercise in tossing available financial wherewithal down a virtual rathole.
Now, speaking as someone who is not a hedge-fund manager, a physician, an attorney, street pimp, drug dealer, software magnate, famous comedian or ‘inherited wealth’, person, but a rather unremarkable retired pensioner who just happens to like older automobiles, I do not own a 50+year-old Porsche 356, or even a similarly aged 911.
Nope, I’m one of those fringe-renegades whose resources can now barely support the lowest rung on the Porsche ladder…the humble VW/Porsche Type 47 (914). And so, after years of much earlier 914 ownership (at least 4-5 VW/Porsche 914-4s and one spectacular 1970 Porsche 914-6) and having felt I had reached what one of my old UC Santa Cruz profs quaintly termed ‘Sportscar Menopause’ (the title, actually, of one of his books), I divested myself of my 914s and reverted to good old (even more humble) VWs (Typ 181, Bugs, Type 2, and Typ 412, etc.) for some years.
Given that I’m a historian by both natural inclination and academic training, the history of what we call ‘The German Miracle’ (a reference to that era of post-war German economic recovery that was led, to a substantial degree, by Volkswagen GmbH (“Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung,” or ‘Limited Liability Company’), and its companionable associate, Herr Doktor Porsche’s brilliant car design bureau, as well as someone with south Austrian maternal ancestral roots (now part of the sovereign nation of Slovenia), I’ve always had a fascination with kaefers and their fraternally related ilk.
The political history of modern (1900 onwards) Germany is also a special area of interest of mine (as is military history…something I share, albeit to a far lesser degree than distinguished academic Victor Davis Hanson) and until fairly recently I was involved in a living history organisation that portrayed the German WW2 Luftwaffe aircrew experience in historical reenactment performances at various airshows.
Now, before visions of Nazis and other demonic wraiths rise ominously from the shadows of your imagination’s darkest crevasses, let me hasten to reassure you that I am no lover of Hitler’s particular brand of National Socialism. I, like my colleagues, merely got tired of all the grade-B Hollywood epics that exploit that unfortunate period of Germany’s past by cranking out lurid action films in which the Nazis always appear as the eternal, blood-soaked villains everyone loves to hate, and decided to portray an objective, balanced insight or two into the German aviators and aircraft technology of that period. After all, once you get past all the dodgy, emotionally titillating political nuances of the Third Reich and its inarguable crimes against humanity, the story of German engineering genius and scientific, technical alacrity emerges as well worth a serious look or two.
I shouldn’t need to remind anyone reading these observations that almost all of America’s post-war advances in aviation technology (as well as those of the Soviet Union) derived directly from Germany’s wartime aeronautical scientific researches.
It might startle those completely unversed in history that both the American Korean-war vintage North American Aviation’s F-86 Sabre AND its Soviet counterpart, the MiG-15, shared common roots in one special focal area of advanced German aeronautical development (exemplified by the radically advanced, swept-wing Messerschmitt P-1101 jet fighter). Or the fact that Convair’s (nee Consolidated-Vultee) famed ‘Cold War’ delta-winged air-defense interceptor (the F-102A Delta Dagger and F-106A Delta Dart) sprang, like Athena from the Greek God Zeus’s head, directly from one Herr Doktor Alexander Lippisch’s late-war visionary prototypes for futuristic delta-winged jet aircraft.
The F-86 Sabre and the MiG-15 were the principal chess-pieces of the epic Korean War struggle and Convair’s F-102 and F-106 together constituted the primary American air defense shield against a feared Cold War Soviet nuclear bomber threat for almost 30 years! But these are but two examples of many that emerged from Germany’s wartime aviation industry.
Beyond the aircraft themselves and examining the actual aviators who flew for Germany’s wartime Luftwaffe, they were not the blood-thirsty criminals so often made out (like the German U-boat crews) as irredeemably savage, heartless and wicked aerial beasts, but ordinary human beings serving their country at a time when political passions ran high and unchecked, fanned by the flames and destruction that any major war incites. It was our effort to clarify this distinction that led to my participation in the historical reenactment group I was a member of and NOT any sympathy with the political regime under which they served.
Is such a seemingly fine distinction possible, given the inevitable war crimes that BOTH sides participated in, back in those now somewhat hazy days of more than 80 years ago? I am strongly of the belief that it not only is but that it must be done to protect subsequent generations from the distortions wreaked by so-called historical revisionism of our modern era.
I will refrain here from trotting out Spanish-American historian and philosopher George Santayana’s oft-quoted classic observation about failing to learn from history’s mistakes, but it remains even more apt than ever, given the present epidemic of socio-political distortions that increasingly characterise the machinations of America’s present political arena. Sadly, only older individuals such as I remain aware of the priceless lessons and insights into human behavior that history confers. By contrast, today’s younger generations seemingly almost delight in eschewing even the slightest interest in what preceded their lives, historically speaking.
Pardon the lengthy digression above, but I felt it is important to make it clear that, despite the oft-quoted admonition that history is merely a subjective interpretation of events previously occurring, human beings are essentially all the same in the overall, longer assessment. Centuries pass, but people remain largely the same as always and prone to the same failings of their predecessors unless wisely guided.
As anyone who has taken a serious look at the Volkswagen’s astounding rise, Phoenix-like’ from the ashes of total wartime destruction fully knows, the humble ‘kaefer’ (and Porsches also) had its origins in Hitler’s Germany. Hitler was himself a keen motorsports enthusiast, whose avid interest in building a national system of highways (facilitated by both Dr. Porsche and Hitler’s Chief engineer, Fritz Todt, for national defense and public use) inspired Dwight Eisenhauer’s (a German-descended individual, of course) plan to initiate our own remarkable post war Interstate Highway System.
Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, that creative genius behind our beloved Porsches and VW bugs, was not by any means an enthusiastic National Socialist, but given the subsidies and favor conferred upon his work by der Fuhrer des Deutsches Volk, it is understandable that he went along with the prevailing regime to the extent that he did in the 1930s. Had he not, and like so many others fled Germany for the West before the war began, the Porsches and Bugs we drive today might well have had an exclusively American identity!
Lest there be any strident objections at this point to my pointing out these above clarifications, I would highly recommend one of Professor Victor Davis Hanson’s recent (2024) historical studies titled THE END OF EVERYTHING: HOW WARS DESCEND INTO ANNILATION. In it, Hanson presciently highlights four specific nations that, despite having reached the height of civilised development in their respective eras, were eventually completely destroyed and their cultures virtually eradicated (classical Greece’s Thebes, the Punic Empire’s Carthage, Christendom’s Constantinople and the Mexican Aztec Empire).
Wars, as most can understand, are not a healthy nuance of human history but that doesn’t make them totally avoidable. They shall continue to occur, despite our most fervent wishes and best efforts to establish a ‘lasting world peace.’ And it is generally during wars that radical advances in science and technology progress most rapidly. QED: the Volkswagen kaefer and Herr Dr. Porsche’s wonderful sports cars. Had it not been for the German National Socialists, as bad as they were, our favorite wheeled, road-going ‘money pits’ might not have come to fruition!
Cars, in a similar fashion to morally corrupt regimes, are also a decidedly mixed blessing, as it were, but despite wishing them to be less an intrusion on our quality of life, they seem destined to remain as ineluctable as sun, wind and rain (at least in America). I say this, as the world braces for at least three major wars that loom over us in 2024 alone.
But I digress even further (my worst habit when I write, it has been said). As I was remarking much earlier in this tome, I am not one of those upper-middle class exemplars of America’s economic fortunes, nor am I even a vestige of my formerly wealthy expatriate status (when I was making and squandering beaucoup bucks in the Middle East). Today, I am merely another pensioner, existing principally on the benison of Uncle Sugar Daddy (e.g. thanks to a retirement pension and the usual Social Security stipend), so I am unable to afford the latest expression of Porsche extravagance and have remained faithful to my humble but (in my eyes) aesthetically delightful little VW/Porsche 914 bastard-child.
That said, I recently took a hard, cold look at all the money I keep pouring into my Jezebel. In the clear light of a strong, caffeine-enhanced morning, I recognized that (given my relative poverty) I really shouldn’t be tossing so many of my hard-earned rasbuckniks (that’s USA dollars to you) down the Porsche-serving business rathole, as I am wont to do.
Consequently, after taking a seat by my Jezebel in its corner of the garage and quaffing coffee, I started ruminating on exactly why I engage in such financially impracticable habits when sheer German economic prudence and common sense would demand otherwise. As I reflected, many long-closed doors opening into cob-webbed-filled rooms in my mind’s attic gradually creaked open, and I ruminated upon this question. Predictably, out flowed a miasma of not all unhappy considerations and points to consider.
Finally, after what seemed like hours of intense pondering, I finally concluded that my primary motivation for opting to remain true to Jezebel’s needs and comforts was its strong link to the salad years of my earlier, formative period: the 1970s. It was then that I realised that Jezebel is my indestructibly forged bond to those years of my earlier life, when everything seemed possible, when it seemed as if my dreams had no limits and my ambitions could soar off into the ethersphere forever.
Those were good times, filled with great memories of friends, activities, associations and personal development. And at the center of most of those memories was a little red 1971 Porsche 914 1.7 liter (named ‘Big Red’) that belonged to the love of my life, J, that red-hot, brunette nursie I have so often written about before.
Yep, that was it. That was and still is the core of the emotional bond I have with my Jezebel to this day and why no exciting Boxter, no gorgeous Caman and no nostalgic 356 can ever have as much meaning for me as my adventures with J in her little red 914, back in the 70s!
But even beyond this, the 914 is a product of a time of remarkable and singular automotive turmoil on several levels, not the least being the Saudi oil crisis of 1973-74, which precipitated not just a world-wide rethinking about oil needs and consumption but affected automotive production economics across the spectrum. It was of course, entirely coincidental that just as the collaborative agreement between VW and Porsche was being finalised in 1968, concerning a replacement for the Karmann Ghia sportscar, VW chief Heinz Nordhoff who had led VW GMbH out of the ashes of the Second World War devastation suddenly passed away. Given that the 914 project was at that point not a formalised finished agreement but a mere handshake, his demise had a profound impact, with the car’s being forever stigmatised as a ‘VW/Porsche’ bastard, instead of a dedicated, exclusively Porsche project!
As far as this being what it is, and despite my daily second thoughts about rashly throwing money into Jezebel’s continual improvements, Jezebel may be a certified Porsche ‘money pit’ by most standards but it’s MY personal and meaning-filled money pit and so it shall remain, regardless of all the expen$ive and tantali$ing toy$ that Messers Porsche GMbH come up with for the wealthier among us!
Fall is just ahead of us, so let’s all hit the tour trail when the weather permits, as the Equinox’s door into Autumn opens wide, beckoning us seasonably. Hopefully my Jezebel will be among the Happy Porsche Warriors answering the call of this best time of the year!
| 
