Magnus Walker - Urban Outlaw: Dirt Don’t Slow You Down

With MARTIN ROACH

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright Magnus Walker 2017
Cover photograph Jon White
Design by Rhys Willson

Magnus Walker has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

All photographs courtesy of the author unless otherwise stated.
Photograph Justin Bell.

Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473542006
ISBNs 9780593077849 (hb)
9780593077856 (tpb)

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This book is dedicated to the loving memory of Karen Ann Caid Walker

I like to get in a car and drive. Thats my meditation, my exercise; Ive said its my drug, my religion because nothing beats it when you are behind the wheel. It is from the gritty streets of Downtown LA that I have set out on some of my most memorable adventures which I will tell you about in this book but it is also from my warehouse there that I take out one of my Porsches for a drive.

Every journey begins by walking through a big rusty gate into the compound, then into the warehouse and through a second big black gate into my garage. Inside this former machine shop, you will find my Porsches parked up, some super-rare, some less so, but they all mean something special to me. Some people call that garage a little slice of heaven. Its one of my favourite places in the world.

Each of those cars gives me a very different experience, just like in my life I have been lucky enough to enjoy so many great and varied adventures. Any journey I take begins by deciding on the destination and how I want to get there. If I want to step back fifty years and feel what it was like driving in the sixties for a laid-back Sunday outing, then maybe Ill choose the Irish Green 66. If its more of an adrenaline fix, a pedal-to-the-metal, spirited run, then maybe Ill take my most famous car, 277, or perhaps the 78 SC. I dont always know what Im going to choose until I get to the garage, just as I havent always known where my life would take me next over all these years. Im not precious about them, either; these cars are there to be driven. They are not all examples of concours perfection. Theyve lived a life. They have rough edges. Like me. Im not polished, lets put it that way.

Today Im going to take 277, so jump in.

Driving one of these early 911s covers all the senses. As I am walking over to the car, the sensory journey has already started. They might be forty and in some cases fifty years old, but they can still fire up the heart-rate instantly. Each car is visually stimulating and really exciting in its own way; even just walking up to them pulls you in. 277 has the red, white and blue of so many of my childhood influences and also of so much Americana, and as you get close you can see the paint chips and scuffs that signify a hard life of being raced and enjoyed.

You walk over to the drivers side door, feel the door handle the cars are never locked, so you know theres no fumbling around with keys, theyre always in the cars ready to go, because I dont want anything to delay the adventure. Sure, the cars are exciting to look at standing still, but the real adventure starts the minute you get in. Slide into the seat and pull the door shut with that reassuring Porsche clunk. You breathe; youre relaxed. Hopefully the car starts, because sometimes it may not have been driven for a couple of weeks, but even that creates a sense of anticipation, excitement. You know within the first twist of the key and two or three pumps of the accelerator pedal if that days adventure will begin clutch in, gear into neutral, pump the accelerator, prime the fuel pump, wait for the car to fire. Then you hear a buzzing and that smell of the oil thats just spewed out from the exhaust because its drained down while the cars been sitting there, waiting for you. Smoke flickers up in the rear-view mirror as the engine springs to life, so now you can smell the car, hear the car and feel its power.

Let the car idle for a minute, pull it outside and then close the garage gate, then open the front gate on to the street, engage first gear, let the clutch bite and roll out on to Willow, turn right at the corner, take a right turn on the bridge, drive a mile out to the freeway, getting on through the gears.

By now, the car is getting up to operating temperature, so I give it a little blast on the ramp, then through second, third gear, merge into traffic, get over as quickly as possible to the left lane the fast lane.

The adventure is under way.

The destination is often either Angeles Crest Highway or the Santa Monica Mountains. Out there, its almost eight thousand feet above sea level, even though thats less than sixty miles from where Im sat writing these words in my warehouse in Downtown LA. One of the greatest features of southern California is the accessibility and diversity of spectacular world-class roads that begin within thirty minutes or so of my 1902 two-storey brick warehouse hidden away down one of Downtowns many side streets. Just eight miles in and you begin to see the mountain range up ahead of you. Its a sweeping freeway that gains altitude pretty quick, so the excitement level increases, you feel the senses fire up even more, your whole body is starting to merge with the car. This is where I believe man and machine become at one with the open road. You get into the pace and the rhythm, inseparable from the car. At this point, nothing else matters. There is no cell-phone reception, I dont have radios in the car, its a little ideal slice of paradise. Ultimately, its all about freedom up there.

You need context too: 120mph in a forty-year-old 911 feels pretty fast; 150 in a modern 911 feels like you are probably doing 80. Newer cars can make the driver feel isolated from the experience. You dont really smell them; you dont really necessarily even hear them. 277 is loud, its moving all over the place, the sound insulation is not great. With a car like 277 you smell the gas, you smell the oil, you just smell everything, you can almost taste the engine, you hear the wind, you know the seals dont work good, so its ssssshhhhhhh, theres all this road noise because theres not much insulation, its the mechanical-ness, the creaky-ness, the throttle response, the squeaky brakes, the smell of the rubber, the oil, the smell of the brake pads when they get hot, its all of that stuff to me its an emotional high. Like I say, driving one of these machines uses all of your senses.