“它看着太棒了，配上“橡木绿”金属漆，又克制得恰到好处。是有些电子小噱头，比如换挡自动补油，但这些玩意儿都被藏了起来，好像见不得人似的——对这样一台纯粹的车来说，它们确实见不得人。它纯粹得一塌糊涂。开起来爽到飞起。就好像保时捷为了一辆已经不复存在的世界而设计了一辆车。如今它在市场上的处境，就像一支四人摇滚乐队突然出现在音乐排行榜上——老天爷啊，我谢谢保时捷全家。”
Wow. I’m feeling a bit shellshocked. I thought the age of the proper car was over and we’d never see greatness again. Because why make a great car for a world that plainly doesn’t want one any more?
哇……我有点被震傻了。我一直以为正经汽车的时代已经玩儿完，咱们再也见不着什么惊世之作。为啥？因为这个世界明明已经不想要它了，你还费劲造它干嘛？
There’s always been a small number of beardy people who resent nice cars. If you arrived at a petrol station in a Ferrari, say, they’d sneer at you, and at road junctions they’d never let you out. Now this resentment is everywhere. You have a nice car, so you’re a billionaire and a tax dodger. A drain on both society and the world’s resources.
总有一小撮留着胡子、酸了吧唧的货色见不得好车。你要是开着法拉利进加油站，他们冲你嗤笑；到了路口，他们死活不让你先走。现在这种酸劲儿无处不在。你有辆好车？那你就是亿万富翁、逃税犯，是吸社会和地球血的寄生虫。
When I started driving in the late Seventies, it was perfectly acceptable to overtake a slower car. Now, if you drop a cog and squeeze the throttle to get past a communist’s Citroën, he’ll lean on his horn because you’re the bastard love child of Donald Trump and Margaret Thatcher. And it’s hard to enjoy your nice car when you have to drive it everywhere through a forest of extended middle fingers.
我七十年代末开始摸方向盘那会儿，超一辆慢车天经地义。现在呢？你降一挡、轰一脚油门，超过一辆“共产主义者”开的破雪铁龙，那孙子能摁着喇叭不放——好像你是唐纳德·特朗普和玛格丽特·撒切尔偷生的杂种。你想舒舒服服开辆好车？每走一步路都穿过一片竖着中指的森林——还享受个屁。
So imagine working for Porsche, knowing that if you design a really nice, really fast car, it’s going to cause nothing but resentment and outrage. You wouldn’t bother, would you? It would be like designing a hand grenade. Every evening you’d have to tell people you worked for the RSPB.
所以你想啊，你要是给保时捷打工：明明知道设计出一辆又快又猛的车，换来的只有怨恨和暴怒——你还费那劲？那不就跟设计手榴弹一样么？每天晚上你还得跟人说你在皇家鸟类保护协会上班。
And that’s before we get to the problem of government regulations. You want to build a really nice, really fast car but it has to meet environmental standards laid down by an idiotic Swedish girl who’s never been to school, and it has to be fitted with a series of bongs that sound whenever the driver does anything remotely interesting. Again, you wouldn’t bother.
还没算政府那些破规矩呢。你想造一辆又快又猛的车，可它必须符合一个没上过学的傻叉瑞典小丫头定下的环保标准，还得装上一堆“叮咚”乱叫的破喇叭——只要驾驶员干点稍微有意思的事，它就响。再说一遍：你根本懒得鸟它。
And what is the point of a really nice, really fast car anyway? Because now we have average speed cameras and 20mph zones. So you’ve got to make a car that can do 190mph but must not cause affront to the world’s increasingly noisy socialists or harm a polar bear in any way. That’s impossible. Or so I thought. In the past couple of years I’ve driven a handful of cars that are nice despite all of this anticar nonsense, but I’ve not driven a car that shrugs off the idiocy and is just plain old-skool brilliant. Until now.
再说了，又快又猛的车有个鸟用？现在满大街区间测速、32公里限速区。所以你造的车得能跑305公里，还不能得罪全世界越来越吵的社会主义者，更不能伤北极熊一根毛——这他妈根本不可能。我原来是这么想的。过去两年我也开过几辆还算不错的车，尽管满世界都是反汽车的无脑嚷嚷。但我从没开过一辆能把所有蠢货都踩在脚下、纯粹老派牛到爆的车。直到现在。
It’s the new Porsche 911 GT3 Touring. If you ever watched Top Gear or The Grand Tour, you’ll have it in your heads that I am no fan of the 911, and to a certain extent that’s true. It was spawned by Hitler, which is not a good starting point, and early on it was extremely difficult to drive. But my main objection was that James May and Richard Hammond loved it, so I was duty bound not to.
就这辆新的保时捷911 GT3 Touring。你要是看过《最高档》或《伟大的旅程》，肯定记得我从来不是911的粉。某种程度上这话没错。它从希特勒那爬出来的，这起点就不咋地；而且早期的911难开到你想砸车。但我主要反对的原因是：詹姆斯·梅和理查德·哈蒙德那俩货爱它，所以我出于原则必须讨厌它。
Also, I believe that only the Italians can make supercars. They understand that reliability and ergonomics are of no consequence in a car that by its very nature should be mad. Porsche never got that. Which is why the 911 always looked like a three-piece suit in a budgie-smuggler competition. 再说了，只有意大利人才能造出真正的超跑。他们明白：一辆骨子里就该疯的车，可靠性和人机工程学算个屁。保时捷永远不懂这道理。这就是为啥911出现在“紧身泳裤”比赛里，看起来总像套了件三件套西装。
But then one day Richard explained the 911 is not meant to be a supercar but a sports car. And everything clicked. There’s nothing wrong with a “sensible” sports car. So off I went to a Porsche showroom in Mayfair to buy one. It didn’t go well. I told the salesman I wanted a battleship-grey 911 GTS. He adopted a pose that looked like the Fonz at the beginning of a John Travolta dance routine and said, with a Swiss Toni grin, “And I want to sell you one.” I left immediately and bought a Lamborghini Gallardo instead.
可后来有一天理查德跟我解释：911不是超跑，是跑车。这一下全通了。“正经”的跑车没啥不好。于是我去了梅费尔的一家保时捷展厅想买一辆。结果那叫一个糟心。我跟销售说要一辆战舰灰的911 GTS。那家伙摆出一个像约翰·特拉沃尔塔跳舞之前、又像“方兹”刷酷的姿势，脸上挂着瑞士·托尼式贱笑，说：“我也想卖给你一辆。”我扭头就走，转身买了辆兰博基尼Gallardo。
Would I buy one now I’m older? That brings us to another issue. Ten minutes after you buy a 911, they bring out a better one. You get a GT2. They launch the GT3. And if you buy that, they bring out the GT2 RS. Or the GT3 RS. Or the GTS. You’re always one step off the pace.
现在我老了，会买吗？这引出另一个恶心事：你买完911才十分钟，人家就推出一辆更好的。你买了GT2，他们出GT3。你买了GT3，他们又出GT2 RS、GT3 RS或者GTS。你永远差一步。
And the kicker is if you do buy a GT2 or a GT3, you are buying a car that is brutal, loud and difficult. These are borderline supercars. That’s not what a 911 is all about — 911s are meant to be small, nimble and sporty. Not festooned with spoilers and space lasers.
最要命的是：你要是真买了GT2或GT3，你买到的是一辆野蛮、吵闹、难开到爆的车——一只脚踩进了超跑的烂泥坑。但911根本不是这玩意儿啊！911应该小巧、灵动、运动，而不是挂满尾翼和“太空激光炮”。
Now we have the car pictured here. A GT3 for people who don’t want a GT3. Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first. You can have the dual-clutch PDK gearbox but my test car came with a six-speed manual. And unless you give it a bootful of revs when pulling away from the lights or manoeuvring it is ridiculously easy to stall.
现在咱们说图上这辆：一辆给那些不想要GT3的人准备的GT3。先把恶心事说清楚。你可以选双离合PDK变速箱，但我这辆测试车配的是六速手动——除非你起步或挪车时往死里轰油门，否则它熄火熄得你怀疑人生。
This isn’t so bad unless you are trying to reverse into a space in the car park at your local crematorium. I have never felt so embarrassed. The mourners were all gathering for a very upsetting funeral, and here was an absolute dingleberry making sports-exhaust revving noises as if he was in a Sainsbury’s car park on a Saturday night in a souped-up Vauxhall Nova.
这倒也没啥，除非你刚好想倒进当地火葬场的停车位。我这辈子没这么丢人过。送葬的人们正聚在一起，准备参加一场悲到极点的葬礼，而我这个彻头彻尾的傻子在这儿制造运动排气的轰油声，好像我周六晚上开着辆改装沃克斯豪尔Nova在森宝利停车场烧胎。
Then there are the tyres. I’m sure the grip is exceptional but the din they make when you’re just driving along meant that I heard not one word of Lisa’s interesting stories about crisps.
然后是轮胎。抓地力没得说，可正常行驶时那噪音大到——Lisa跟我讲薯片的趣事，我一个字儿没听见。
The worst thing is the way the full beam arrives as if it has been delivered in a cloche by the waiter at a fancy restaurant. You leave the village, ask for full brightness as you urgently need to see where you’re going, and it’s as though you’re waiting for a set of curtains to open.
最操蛋的是远光灯的开启方式——跟高级餐厅里侍者用银钟盖子端菜似的。你驶出村子，急着看路，需要全亮——结果像等剧场大幕拉开一样慢吞吞。
Everything else is sublime. It looks fantastic and, with “oak green” metallic paint, restrained too. Yes, there are electronic gimmicks such as an auto-blip feature that guns the throttle between gearchanges, but these are hidden away, as if they’re an embarrassment. Which they are in a car as pure as this. And it is pure. It drives beautifully. It’s as if Porsche has engineered a car for a world that no longer exists. It sits in the market today like a four-piece rock band would sit in the charts. And, my God, am I grateful to Porsche for that.
其他一切都绝了。它看着太棒了，配上“橡木绿”金属漆，又克制得恰到好处。是有些电子小噱头，比如换挡自动补油，但这些玩意儿都被藏了起来，好像见不得人似的——对这样一台纯粹的车来说，它们确实见不得人。它纯粹得一塌糊涂。开起来爽到飞起。就好像保时捷为了一辆已经不复存在的世界而设计了一辆车。如今它在市场上的处境，就像一支四人摇滚乐队突然出现在音乐排行榜上——老天爷啊，我谢谢保时捷全家。
The steering is perfect. The gearchange is so delightful I actually purred every time I dropped a cog. And the power is more than enough. It’s fast but not scarily so. It’s not just a sports car. It’s the best sports car I’ve ever driven.
转向手感完美。换挡手感美妙到——每次降挡我都忍不住像猫一样发出“呼噜噜”的满足声。动力绰绰有余。快，但不会把你吓得尿裤子。它不只是跑车。它是我开过最好的跑车，没有之一。
And at £158,200 it’s not even stupidly expensive. That said, the car I drove, which had a few extras fitted, such as seats and wheels, was £203,700. Too much? Nah. Not if you want to remind yourself what the world could have been like if it wasn’t run by socialists and foolish politicians.
158,200英镑——甚至不算贵得离谱。不过话说回来，我开的这辆加了点选配（比如座椅、轮毂这些破玩意儿），价格蹦到了203,700英镑。贵吗？贵个屁。如果你想提醒自己——这个世界如果不是被社会主义者和蠢猪政客管着，本来可以活成什么样子——这价真不贵。
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