Dear Mr. J. D. Davis,

Nearly a decade ago, you handed me the keys to your 1995 Porsche 911 Carrera 2 in exchange for what I now understand to be a sum of money significantly

below the car's value at the time. In exchange, you obtained a promise that I would never put the 911 on a racetrack. You were a Porsche club racer at the

time, and I was preparing for a racing career of my own, so you did not make the request out of ignorance, nor did I agree lightly. I expected I would keep

my word, as did you.

I no longer know where to find you, so I am using these pages to tell you that, on August 18, 2012, I knowingly broke that promise. If you are still alive,

I hope you will forgive me.

You hadn't bothered to name the Carrera; although you owned a few 911s, the low-option, six-speed, Grand Prix White car was simply "the Porsche" to you.

You never shared what the car meant to you, but perhaps I can guess. You grew up in a world where Porsches were rare sights, upended bathtubs blatting down

the back roads of Michigan. They gradually disappeared, gracefully fading away as most old cars do. You were not surprised. On the frost-heaved roads of

the Midwest, no car is forever. You bought the 911 knowing you would eventually sell and replace it with something newer, faster, better.

Porsches meant something different to me. They were the frog-eyed companions of my lonely youth, friendly faces staring out from magazines and brochures,

their specifications locked in my head, a catalog tucked under my pillow.

The 911 was the forever car. When Porsche began galvanizing the 911's body in the mid-1970s, something special happened. The car transcended the salt

states' appetite for rotten metal and became seemingly everlasting. It acquired a quality of permanence, a pride in ownership that could attach equally to

the most outrageous Turbo or the humblest old 911SC. It was an admirable philosophy, simultaneously powerful and simple.

The day you shook my hand in the paddock at Mosport and made me a 911 owner, I knew that I would never sell the car. In the years that followed, other cars

came and went—faster, flashier, more expensive—yet the garage slot closest to my bedroom always sheltered the Carrera. I put thousands of track miles on my

other Porsches, but I remembered my promise. I loved and cared for that car perhaps more than anyone or anything else I knew. I did not expect that would

change.

Three and a half years ago, my son was born at slightly over three pounds and delivered directly into a neonatal intensive care unit, where he was

separated from me by a plastic box and an array of breathing tubes. In the evenings, I sat next to him and read stories aloud to soothe him. Since he

couldn't understand what I was saying, I read what amused me: Karl Ludvigsen, Paul Frère, Bruce Anderson. I read the stories of the forever car to him,

stroking his feverish forehead with a latex-gloved hand.

When the first two-syllable word he spoke was "Por-sha," I wasn't surprised. He plays with miniature GT3s and Turbos now, steers them around tracks of his

own imagination on the tile floor. I took him to a PCA club race and he cheered for a purple 911SC that finished in last place, trailing blue smoke.

On that August day I mentioned, Mr. Davis, my son John and I took that Carrera you sold me around Mid-Ohio. He was firmly strapped down in his car seat,

the passenger seat cranked forward to make room. For three laps, we diced with a black Boxster, my son yelling at me to make the pass, and the old flat-six

willing to push me there, but I chose to lift on the back straight and leave the position uncontested. "We're going to six!" came the cry from the rear

seat; he knew what the center-mounted tach meant and wouldn't accept a short shift. Then we returned to the pit lane and drove the 60 miles home.

A promise is a promise, Mr. Davis, but I am not the same man who bought that car from you. All I can do is this: I will leave the 911 to my son, and I will

bind him as you bound me, and we will leave those three laps to his dreams, lost as he ages, gone as you may already be, as I will be. Until it is just him

and his Porsche, the young man and his forever car.

Jack Baruth is a club racer, Porsche owner, and R&T contributor from Powell, Ohio.

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