Let’s just say I’m really good at traffic stops – I’ve had my fair share. And so, when I saw the flashing lights behind me, I pulled onto the shoulder of US Route 84, just outside of Justiceburg, Texas, and shut off my engine so as not to alert the police officer behind me to the abnormal power that my demure little Porsche 912 produces. I had been hustling through Texas all morning and, up to that point, this day had been amongst the best (if also one of the longest) days of my maiden voyage in this car. In fact, I had only spent a few days with the car at this point, and here we were, already getting into trouble together. 

The trip had begun three days earlier when I set off from Benton Performance in Anaheim, California, taking the southern route back to the East Coast. Or, on second thought, maybe it began in 2017 when I pulled the car out of long term storage and sent it to Potzinger Reworks in Huntington Station, New York, to begin the extensive restoration and modification. Or did it all start back in 2010 when I first bought the car…or in 2007 I first laid eyes on it…or in 1991 when I first saw a 912 and when the seed of desire for one of these often overlooked Porsches first took root? Or did all of this start in 1967 when the car rolled off the assembly line in Stuttgart? All told, this journey was a 30-year dream, a 13-year plan, and a 6-year, bicoastal restoration project, all 56 years in the offing and all of which culminated in me sitting here on the side of Route 84, awaiting my fate. 

After leaving Anaheim, I made stops in Palm Springs and Phoenix, where I spent time with friends, and I was now making my way across the Southwest as I headed across the country and back home to New York City.  The Southwest has no shortage of incredible vistas, and over the course of the past 1,100 miles I had driven through high desert replete with saguaro cacti, red rock canyons, and monumental geographic formations. I had driven through Arizona’s Sitgreaves National Forest, where I played tag with a late-model Boxster, ripping past incredible scenery and the last remnants of winter snow that still lay shady patches on the side of the road. I had also driven through countless open spaces and the incredible Very Large Array of radio telescopes – always searching for otherworldly transmissions – southwest of Albuquerque. 

I had spent the night before in Roswell, New Mexico, a small oasis of civilization amidst an expanse of sand and grass. I rolled in around 5:30 in the afternoon, and pulled into the first hotel I spotted, pleased to find a room was available with no prior reservation. After a shower and a wardrobe change I hopped back into the 912 and explored the historic town, hopeful for a close encounter, and popped into a local restaurant for a bite before bed. Waking early that next morning, I made my first stop at the International UFO Museum. I mean, how could I not? The museum is the perfect balance of history and kitsch, satiating my X-Files-fueled childhood fascination with the mythology of this region. From there, I set off for Dallas. 

After hour upon hour of blasting through the desolate high country and farmland with its freshly tilled soil, stopping only for fuel and water, I entered the aptly named town of Justiceburg, Texas. It was here that our young Texas state trooper from the opening scene of this story decided to introduce himself on the side of Route 84. 

“Do you know how fast you were going?” the trooper asked.

Ah, I thought. He’s going with the classic opener. 

“Well, to be honest I’m not sure my speedometer is correctly calibrated,” I said. “I just had this thing restored.”

“I got you at 90 miles per hour.” 

Straight to the point, I like that. 

“Wow, really? If you’d told me 80 miles per hour, I would have believed you. I can’t even imagine this 56-year-old car could do 90 miles per hour, though.” 

“License and registration,”  said the trooper. 

Here we go again…

In all of this, Mr. Trooper didn’t show the slightest interest in the car itself. He didn’t seem to care that Peter Potzinger and his team in Long Island had completely restored the car, bringing it down to its bones, blasting and rust-proofing the frame, bringing the body down to bare metal and repainting it in its original single stage color of Irish Green. He didn’t ask if the Benton Performance gang had installed an enhanced twin-plug motor for this car, which generates somewhere around 140 horsepower over the stock 616 motor’s 90 horsepower, even as it keeps the weight down and preserves the 912’s legendary handling. The trooper also never bothered to ask after my upgraded brakes that feature newer Super Carrera units, the improved suspension, or the brand-new set of aluminum Group 4 ‘steelie’ style wheels wrapped in 16-inch tires. And he never even mentioned the car’s bespoke interior that I had spec’d out years ago. Had he asked, I would have happily talked his ear off about the car’s bevy of finishing touches, including a bespoke herringbone interior fabric treatment, custom switchgear, two-stage heated racing seats, door cards from a 1968 model, a hidden wireless sound system, hidden USB charging ports, custom rear deck emblems or the twin center exit pea-shooter exhaust system that round out the Outlaw components and make the car a reflection of my own personal taste and style, while increasing usability and performance. But he never asked about any of this. So much for curiosity. 

The trooper merely proceeded to give me a stern talking-to and an invitation – in the form of a judicial summons – to visit Justiceburg again in the near future. I should have realized that arriving in a little green hot rod Porsche with New York State tags meant that he already had my number, and neither engine noise nor any number of the Easter Egg details on this car were going to alter the outcome one bit. With a curt farewell, the trooper sped off in search of some other out-of-state prey and left me on the side of the highway, pondering the damage this might do to my insurance rates. 

“Well,” I said aloud to myself , “Let’s just say I’m not as good at traffic stops as I once thought.”

The thing about solitary cross country road trips is that you have to make a deliberate effort to meet other people…unless you’re driving an old car, that is, in which case the vehicle will do the job for you. As the Texas state trooper drove away, I turned the ignition key to restart the car but was met with deathly silence. Great. I made a quick call to John Benton, who surmised that the culprit was most likely a heat-soaked solenoid in its new starter, properly cooked from a day of spirited motoring in 100-degree temperatures. The only real solution to this problem, John informed me, was to wait it out and let it cool down, but with the afternoon sun reaching its peak, this seemed like a ways off. And with limited water, it also seemed somewhat dangerous. I weighed my options and phoned a Porsche specialist in Dallas I’d found with a quick internet search - Nine Eleven Automotive Restorations, nearly 350 miles down the road. I spoke with the owner, Randy, who was an absolute gentleman and offered to come in early the next morning to troubleshoot and get me on my way if I ended up needing assistance. I thanked him, expecting to be flat-bedded on to Dallas that evening.

Just as I was dialing AAA, however, a blue Tesla Model Y came to a stop on the shoulder in front of me. A man emerged from the driver’s side and walked back towards my stranded car

“Hey there,” he said. “I saw you sitting here in this awesome car and I couldn’t just leave a fellow Porsche driver stranded on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. I have a 991.2 back home. My name is Brian. Anything I can do to help?”

“Short of a bump start, I don’t think there’s any way to get it going,” I said. “Too bad I’m at the bottom of this hill with no gradient. If only I’d stopped a half mile up the road, at the top of this next rise…”

“Hang on,” said Brian. “I think I have just the thing.”

Brian produced a recovery strap from the trunk of his Tesla and deftly attached one end to his Tesla’s rear end and looped the other under the Porsche’s front bumper. He then hopped into the Tesla and we started to roll slowly into motion – and, lo and behold, the twin-plug motor snapped to life on our first attempt. Down the road we went, as if nothing had happened. After uncoupling the cars, Brian stayed with me for another 20 minutes before waving goodbye as he took his exit.

Now, I am outspoken on my feelings about electric vehicles. I won’t break out my soap box but, suffice it to say, I’m a fan of good old-fashioned internal combustion, and I believe they are also the greener option over the long term, particularly if you are, like me, driving a car that is old enough to qualify for membership in the AARP. But in that moment, saved by Brian’s kindness on that lonely stretch of Texas highway, I was forced to concede that a well-placed electric car capable of big torque was indeed a very good thing to have around.

I tempered my speed a bit for the remainder of the day’s drive, getting an easy 30 miles per gallon as I coasted into Dallas at sunset. I decided to risk a fuel fill-up before reaching my friend Pierre’s home, and was delighted when the car roared right back to life afterwards without the slightest hesitation. The next morning, the car fired right up again and so, feeling a renewed sense of courage, I called Randy to thank him for his offer of assistance, did some quick rides with Pierre and his lovely wife, Katie, and then got on with deciding what the trip’s next stretch would be.

The next day took me through Little Rock and on to Memphis, where I stopped for the night. While I was unloading my luggage on the curb in front of the hotel, a  local fireman came running across the street towards me. I first assumed he’d like to know what year the car was (a question I grew accustomed to answering several times a day on this trip), or worse, that he might chastise me for parking in a fire lane. Instead, he told me my brake lights were out; he’d noticed when I pulled in and thought I should know. He kindly offered to press the pedal while I observed from behind, and sure enough, they were dead. Once unloaded and parked in the hotel lot, I confirmed all the fuses were in working order and rang John Benton again. He suspected a faulty brake switch was to blame: I'd probably bumped it loose when I hit a particularly nasty pothole driving into Memphis. Call me cowardly but I wasn’t keen on driving the rest of the way to New York City using only hand signals in the absence of functional brake lights. 

Thanks to advice from a follower on social media, the next morning I found my way to Porsche specialist Pat Williams of Pat Williams Racing on the outskirts of Memphis. Pat’s resume – which includes engine building, race team support, and a racing career of his own, including a one-time land speed record in a built 912 –  is impressive, but so too was Pat’s skill in immediately identifying the source of my brake light failure. The devil, in this case, turned out not to be the switch itself, but the contacts on the wiring harness leading into it. Quickly pulling up the floor underneath the pedals, Pat had it diagnosed, sorted, and reassembled in under 30 minutes, leaving me more than enough time to visit Graceland before once again hitting the road. I couldn’t offer much more than a tremendous thank you to Pat and his daughter, Ivy, for prioritizing the needs of a total stranger who showed up on their doorstep with no warning. Vintage car people truly are the best.

The coming days took me across Northern Tennessee, Illinois, and Southern Indiana – all lovely places, I’m sure, but hardly the most exciting from a driver’s perspective.  Windy, dusty, and flat, it’s a stretch I’m in no hurry to do again in the 912, but stretches of road like that do give a person plenty of time to think. This was my first solo trip since the pandemic – a time that consisted of tremendous professional and personal upheaval – and I hadn’t really had time to just sit and think about it all and what that time had meant to my life. During those seemingly endless months of isolation and being homebound, the idea of a cross-country walkabout sounded appealing, if not downright necessary. It was for this reason that my plans for this car’s restoration workflow took a turn. Instead of shipping the motor east from California and installing it at Potzinger’s shop, I opted to ship the entire car out to John Benton and his team in Anaheim. When it was ready, I’d go retrieve it and drive it home.

With plenty of time to myself along these flat stretches of the midwest, the little green car became my meditation space, the steady growl of the twin-plug motor providing a soundtrack to the journey I was taking both literally and figuratively. I’m sure other writers could turn a better phrase about the transcendental qualities of a solo journey, but I’ll just say that while I made this journey alone, I nevertheless had my own thoughts as a constant companion, a companion with which we should probably all spend a little more time. And, besides, my car eliminated any chance of anonymity and drew plenty of attention, which yielded countless interactions with many wonderful people all the way across the country. 

After stops at the Motor Speedway Museum in Indianapolis, the United States Air Force Museum in Dayton, and a visit with friends in Columbus, I knew that it was time to get home to New York. I missed my dog and I still had another 600 miles ahead of me. By the time I hit bridge traffic on my way into Manhattan – after a thirteen-hour endurance “sprint” at an average speed of 45 miles per hour through torrential rains across Pennsylvania – I had covered thirteen states, 3400 miles, poured five quarts of oil into the 912’s motor, received countless thumbs-up and smiles, taken hundreds of photos, visited four great museums, enjoyed numerous visits with friends, and had experienced only about 95 minutes of inconvenience the entire way. It was a hell of a journey, and this car had proven itself to be one hell of a machine.

Those on the outside might think New York City is a horrible place to be a car enthusiast – but that’s simply not true. You see, in New York you simply don’t need a car. You don’t need one for your commute. You don’t need one to go get groceries or make a run to the hardware store. You have a car here for one purpose and one alone: as an escape pod. That simple fact makes New York the perfect place to be a car enthusiast, and it even allows me to justify the 912, hardly the most practical, all-purpose vehicle. 

I was still lost in these thoughts, sitting in traffic three lanes wide on FDR Drive, when the sudden crackle of a PA system mounted on an ambulance two lanes to my left snapped me out of my reverie.

“Hey, man,” the driver called out via the roof-mounted loudspeaker for all to hear. “Awesome car.”

Meet our contributors

James Lamdin is the founder of Analog:Shift, a New York City-based vintage and pre-owned watch retailer, part of The Watches Of Switzerland Group. When he’s not scouring the globe for rare timepieces, he’s scheming on how to squeeze another classic car into his Manhattan garage.