You either get it or you don’t

Special to the Star-Telegram

Have you ever wondered why in the world a woman would pay $1,000 for a pair of ridiculously impractical Italian stiletto high heels when she could have bought a perfectly good pair of sensible shoes at the local discount shoe store for a tiny fraction of the price?

Yeah, me neither.

You see, it’s nearly impossible to explain the value of a well-crafted pair of designer shoes. You either get it or you don’t.

It’s the same thing with high-performance luxury sports cars.

If, to you, driving is simply a task that helps you get from point A to point B, you’re just not going to understand why someone would be willing to pay $80,000 for a car.

But for those of us who consider the act of driving to be a thrill in and of itself, the attraction of a well-crafted high-performance luxury sports car need not be explained.

This week, I had the privilege of testing a 2009 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe. A red one.

Now, while no sports car enthusiast would ever think to question why this little beauty has a starting price of $75,600, some people out there may not quite understand. I mean, it’s just a car, right?

Wrong.

In the words of a dear friend of mine who is a devout Porsche fanatic, the 911 is not a car, it’s a "spiritual experience."

The Porsche 911 has a long history dating to the early 1960s, and though it has gone through a number of different body styles and engines, to this day it still retains many of the same distinctive design elements that have made it such an iconic sports car, such as the classic two-door body style and the rear-mounted engine.

Another smaller, yet no less iconic, design feature which still remains is the left-handed ignition, a Porsche tradition that got its start in the early days of the 24-hour LeMans endurance race in France.

In the old days, the race began with a running start — drivers had to run to their cars, jump in, and start their cars as quickly as possible. This led Porsche to design a left-handed ignition, which enabled drivers to start the car with their left hand while shifting gears with their right, giving them a fraction-of-a-second advantage over other drivers.

The 2009 Carrera Coupe features an impressive 3.6-liter horizontally opposed six-cylinder engine (rear mounted, of course) with direct fuel injection (new for 2009) that cranks out a whopping 345 horsepower and 288 foot-pounds of torque.

In other words, this baby can move.

The engine is still water cooled (not air cooled), which might not seem like a big deal to you and me, but is a fairly major deal to diehard Porsche enthusiasts (trust me—just ask one). These cars were air cooled from their beginning in 1963 until 1996, and some aficionados believe that air-cooling gave the cars a unique personality that’s missing today.

Two transmissions are available: A six-speed manual with a self-adjusting hydraulic clutch is standard, and an all-new Porsche Doppelkupplung (PDK) seven-speed double-clutch transmission with both manual and automatic modes is available as an option.

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