This Emotional 'Art Of Driving' Letter Gets To The Heart Of Being A Petrolhead

While checking out the Car Throttle Garage Facebook group, we came across this cool post by Ammar. He was feeling inspired and wrote about how it feels to be a petrolhead. It was well received in the group, so we thought we’d share it here. Read it below!

The Art of Driving

Open the door; climb in. Adjust your seat. Fix your mirrors. Key in. Disengage the clutch. Gear change in neutral position. Key to the heart of the beast turned to ON. Take a breath, relax yourself, and start her up. Feel the roar as the cylinders come to life. Soothe her into a calmed state. Fasten your harness. Feel as if you are in safe arms. Now, prepare yourself for the thrill we are fortunate enough to experience every day. Clutch in, select first. Rev, rev… hold it… now dump the clutch. My friend, you are free.

We, are an endangered species, you and I. We, lovers of speed. We, devotees of power, performance, and noise. ‘Go away,’ we are told, ‘And take your carbon fibre and your fire-spitting V12s with you.’ There’s hardly a place for us here anymore. Not amongst all
the commuters and congestion. Not in this growing age of safety and restraint. Where practicality trumps adrenaline. Where the ratio of miles to gallon is championed over horsepower to the weight. The evidence is everywhere. You and I are being squeezed out, pushed aside, and hunted down at every hairpin turn.

Jeremy Clarkson.

The art of driving is a fine art. Not your ordinary Picasso or Bach piece. No, this, is something entirely different. It is extraordinary. Driving is an art that no one man, or woman, for that matter, will ever master. One will never become perfect. One will never reach his top potential. So, why do we spend our lives, our fortunes, our nerves, striving to be the best?

Well, that’s just it. We do it because it is in our blood. Hell, it is our blood. It, for lack of a better word, drives our being. We were never given a choice whether or not to be motoring enthusiasts. It, more or less, just happened. From the day that we heard our first fire-spitting V12, we fell in love. Many won’t understand this, but that’s just it. That is the essence of what we love. That is the beauty of it. They don’t have to understand. They don’t need to and we don’t need them to. Not even other motorists need to understand what you feel. It is about you and your vehicle. It is a most beautiful symbiotic relationship. You need her and she, you.

Whether you are on the track or on a beautiful scenic road, it is still just you and her. You direct her through the curves, she returns with a bit of under or oversteer, just enough to make sure that you are on your feet. She begs for you to creep into her redline right before that shift that puts you right in the middle of her power band, which you’ll need for that straightaway as you apex Bentley Bend.

Hear the spool of the turbochargers, boosting the savage 6.0-litre AMG V12; hear the simply monstrous, yet delicate roar of the 4.5-litre Ferrari V8. Perhaps you’re a bloke who prefers four-bangers and favours the 2.0-litre VTEC powering the reasonably-priced S2000 sports car all the way to 9000 RPM. See, the case in point here is that it does not matter what you drive.

While petrolheads constantly rip on each other for what each other drives, in the end it is just about you and your car. There is a reason why you drive what you drive. That reason is that a unique bond exists between you and your machine. Quite naturally, we all want to drive the faster, leaner, more powerful machines; but for those of us not fortunate enough to own them, we must settle for lower-tier cars. And you know what? I accept that, and I regret nothing.

It all goes back to the main point. We. Love. Driving. Full stop. Nothing will ever change that. And why should it? I know that other petrolheads, gearheads, grease monkeys, what have you… are out there. My own best friends, for starters. Our passion for hitting open roads: undying. Our love for beautiful road machines: endless. Our sheer excitement and joy that hits when we drive: unfathomable. These small things will never change.

Motoring enthusiasts, amidst all the flocks of drivers on the roads of the world, we blaze a trail of our own. We stand out in the crowd. Where others conform and fail to be one with their cars and the road, we accelerate, quite literally, through. We overtake. We let not a single obstacle stand between us and the road. So hear us now, world. We may be an endangered species, but this won’t be the last time you’ll be hearing from us.

Ammar Ikanovic
2013