The thrill of driving - an attempt to write for Evo Magazine

Ten years ago I sent this to EVO magazine http://www.evo.co.uk/. They had - maybe still have - a page in each issue for readers chronicles and I attempted to get it published. They confirmed that they recieved it but I did not hear back again, so here it goes on the blog. Enjoy! /KR

The thrill of driving - EVO

Cars matter to me. Perhaps more than I would wish. In the earliest days at the maternity ward I drew cars instead of the customary cephalopod expected from children. I never knew what to do except I was interested in technical stuff, so kept on studying. Engineers training, focusing on combustion engines was just a start. After trainee work as an engine mechanic I started working as a consultant vehicle development engineer, working mainly on tuning of chassis and electronic driver aids.

It was the evo dream job. I've climbed the passes of in Italy, slid down dizzyingly high ice covered roads above Norwegian fjords, experienced 50 deg C ambient and a baking 80 deg C in the cockpit in Arizona where tape melts and the laptop screen shows a blob of lava instead of curves and variables. I endured the biting chill of -40 in Swedish town Jokkmokk, bouncing around with steering, damper and brake fluids frozen into sticky dough.

At the Industrie-Pool at the Nürburgring, I was watching Walter Röhrl passing me in a carbon clad Porsche 911 Turbo prototype and I was getting paid for it! Mind you, mr Röhrl had two Toyota Supras glued to the tail most of his laps, driven by white-overalled Japanese engineers were obviously new to the track but depending on hugely capable cars. 

Many months were spent on ices and test tracks across Europe. Flat out Autobahn sessions knit them together.

When working with suppliers, your engineer could act as liaison and arrange an exchange drive with a competitor to the benefit of all involved. In other situations the gentlemen's agreement to turn a blind eye applied. Sometimes blind eyes can’t help against obvious clues. First to spring to mind was an inappropriately fast Mini on the Ring slowly catching me despite me driving a 280bhp saloon. ‘Zupercharged’ muttered a deadpan German engineer, revealing the Cooper S in the making.

The evil-looking matte black SUV sporting 911 seats, a glorious V8 bellow and massive performance on the snow became the Porsche Cayenne. A surreal experience was stumbling upon a gathering of absolute mint VW Santanas in Northernmost Sweden. They were last spotted in the eighties if any of you are old enough to remember. They turned out to be Chinese-made, produced under license.

Cameras were never allowed. When I come of age I will have only a few pictures to reminiscence over these moments!

An endless supply of tyres, cars and tracks is indeed a dream. An occupational hazard is to lose fear of speed. Spending some years doing lane changes at up to 250 km/h, all kinds of provoking and then dissecting every input move as recorded by the ever-present laptop and measuring equipment you lift the level of your performance. Most of the people in this trade are diehard car nuts, many displaying simply amazing driver skills and professionalism. You can’t lose respect of speed, though. Bad drivers or frequent crashers - just like in motor sport – don’t cut it with managers, mechanics or colleagues. What's expected of you is the ability to quickly tune the system, find faults and nail test procedures. Time is money…

As the years pile up the insane hours, the endless travelling, the rough test hacks and the pressure of huge industry projects starts getting on you and many guys go for a desk job after some years. (Females are still too few in this profession, although things are getting better by each passing graduate year.)

Where’s the evo angle of all this, you wonder?

First, getting under the skin of everything removes your illusions of badges, images, names and marketing blurb. Beneath gleaming metal resides the usual half-dozen suppliers. As an engineer you quickly learn that few buyers, or indeed many of your colleagues, care about the minutiae of steering geometry, damper settings, torque transfer and ESP variables. It’s up to the project engineers to specify what they want and how to achieve their results. You do the best but the end result always depends on the management.

Weak project managers get sucked into the swamp of focus groups; the type of customer clinics which inevitably creates wooden steering, sneezy brakes, trigger-like throttle response and more understeer. At the performance end, add some fast test track lappery and design-dictated wheel sizes and the result is a mess. First hand racing experience pays off here – the people who actually raced cars know the difference between race and road tuning.

I wouldn’t worry too much. There will always be talented engineers led by a Chapman, Murray, Newey or Brawn/Byrne of the mainstream car industry – individuals who have the ability to drive their project team to deliver the best products. If you get your part right, the others get their parts right, the package is right and all the talent in the company is used to the full, the result will be a great drivers car. If it fulfils other needs it becomes a classic.

The completeness is what the customer gets in the end, what they cannot help feeling regardless of their own experience. You don’t have to be a virtuoso driver to get it, be it in a cheap hatch, the latest supercar or perhaps even some yet to be revealed environment special carrying the evo spirit - the thrill of driving.

The top teams may change over the years; some are consistently top, while others luck in or fail.

I’ll keep reading Evo to find out who’s on top.