The Gold-Plated Porsche: How I Sank a Small Fortune into a Used Car, and Other Misadventures
Wilkinson’s spunky and entertaining memoir is a yarn-spinning and wise-cracking romp over the author’s many occupations, hobbies, blunders and idiosyncrasies. Bored after finishing an addition on his house and building an airplane, Wilkinson, automotive editor at Conde Naste Traveler, turns his antsy, irrepressible need to tinker on a well-used 1983 Porsche 911—and two years and $60,000 later, he has a car worth far more in hard-earned experience than blue-book value. Among other misadventures, Wilkinson recounts how he spent his undergraduate years at Harvard under the hood of a 1936 Ford Phaeton; his ill-fated tenure as the editor of Car and Driver magazine; his small-plane reconnaissance missions over Kansas for the leader of the American Indian Movement; and a stint as a teenage merchant marine in South Asia, where he survived two typhoons, helmed a 10,000-ton freighter and witnessed a drowning off the docks in Saigon. The author also offers up philosophical musings on the manias of car aficionados, the weirdness of German engineering and the importance of crankshaft-to-bearing clearances and proper torquing technique. Although there is a good deal of shop talk and automotive jargon, it is a testament to Wilkinson’s writing skills that he can make his description of the unbolting of a transaxle as engaging as his stories about crashing test cars and absconding with the company jet to visit his girlfriend. The author’s nerdy enthusiasm and sassy wit will be irresistible to both the technically disinclined and the die-hard gear head.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.