Maybe the worst thing about this electric car business is the way it will – if it succeeds – homogenize cars, make one just like another in every meaningful way. Think about bumper cars. You pick a different body or color – but the cars are all exactly the same.
So it is with electric cars.
A motor is, after all, a motor. One spins the same as the others.
Unlike engines – which reciprocate. Pistons, up and down. Valves opening and closing. And which can be (and have been) made in an almost infinite variety of ways: Fours and sixes and eights and tens and twelves; in-line, 90 and 60 degree V. Horizontally opposed. Overhead valve and the overhead cam.
Air and water-cooled.
Big and small block. Fuel-injected or turbocharged.
Buy Silver at Discounted Prices
Supercharged.
This variety having endowed the cars they powered with distinctive character. Consider, for instance, the Ford small block V8. Nothing in the world sounds like a solid lifter-cammed 289 HiPo drawing air through a Holley four barrel.
Or – on the other end of the spectrum – the classic VW Beetle’s air-cooled flat-four. Not another car on Earth sounds like a classic Beetle – which even non-car people can ID by ear. This was a big part of the Beetle’s charm, the quality that endeared it to generations – notwithstanding that it was slow and effused more environmentally unfriendly compounds than the Exxon Valdez (almost).
Point being, for more than 100 years now, the engine has been the literal heart of the matter; the element that not only defined the car it powered but the brand it represented. Think E-Type Jaguars and the mechanical music made by the straight six. The contumacious bark of the Dodge Viper’s outrageous V10.
Rocket 455 Oldsmobiles. One liter Wankel Mazdas.
VTEC Hondas that spin to 9,000 RPM.
Benz diesels that chuff to life no matter what.
I just spent a week test driving the Fiat 124 Spider (reviewed here) which is a Mazda Miata in custom-made Italian sheet metal threads. With one key difference. It has a different engine – smaller and turbocharged. And this makes it a different car, not just a skin job bumper car – as would be the case if it had the same engine as the Miata.
Or – far worse – an electric motor.
Which brings up, among other things, Porsche.
It stood alone as the only major car company to not embrace the electric car tar baby. And for a damn good reason.
What would Porsche be – the cars and the brand – without the uniquely Porsche boxer sixes that power them? What would make an electric Porsche any different from, say, a Tesla?
Which, for the record, sells cars that are bullet-quick. Quicker than most Porsches, in fact. The Tesla Model S is capable of accelerating to 60 MPH in about 3.5 seconds. It will not do so more than a few times, of course – not without running down its electric battery pack. But the point here is it is very quick, even if only briefly. The only Porsche (production model) that can match its acceleration is the 911.
But Porsche brings other things to the table – and not just being able to refuel in less time than it takes to run to the men’s room (as opposed to the minimum best-case 30-45 minute partial recharge that comes with the keys to an electric car).
Ever start a Porsche?
Ever turn on an electric car?
It is the difference between actual sex and Internet porn.
The Porsche is a machine that comes to life. An electric car is an appliance that moves.
