Inspiration behind the Slow Car Movement

My inspiration for a Slow Car Movement initially came from an article I read in Road & Track magazine in the 80s. Jackie Stewart (cooler than me or you) was a paid consultant for Ford Motor Company, and the article was about how driving as smoothly as possible was a skill to be appreciated and mastered.

Essentially, smooth driving according to Sir Stewart meant pretending you had an egg between your foot and the accelerator pedal, and anticipating the movement and flow of traffic ahead of you. You could exceed the speed limit, but not at the expense of those driving around you. Success meant not having to make any sudden deceleration, acceleration or lane changes, and getting to your destination composed and collected.

This was a novel concept for me, though my teenage self didn't apply it when driving. My goal was to drive as fast as reasonably possible, and damned if anyone got in my way. I thought because I drove a European Car, they were meant to be driven fast! A continuous stream of speeding tickets and ever-increasing fines and insurance costs began to change my mind.

When I moved from Georgia to New York City, I left my car (then a 1990 Acura Integra) with my parents, and embraced public transit and walking for 5 years. After moving to the Bay Area (Alameda), and trying for 6 months to exist without a car, dissapointed in the futility of mass transit for my commute to the Richmond district of San Francisco, I purchased the car I own now, a 2000 Saab 9-3 coupe.

This car, even in it's base form, was as fast as any high-performance car I might have lusted after in 1984, with a top speed of over 140mph and 0-60 of 7 seconds. This was the fastest car I'd ever owned, my previous Saabs being quite underpowered by comparison. I wasn't tempted to get the higher-performance SE, nor the Viggen.


This notion of underpowered cars was first introduced to me by my boss (David Wolfe) at the Saab Garage in which I worked as Parts Manager and apprentice mechanic. He raced cars for fun, and during my tenure there, he drove a 2 cylinder Panhard in SCCA events. I thought, "This was a 'race' car? It wasn't fast!" However, I learned that even slow cars, when driven with skill, could be fast on the racetrack.

So, many years later, I'm living in Northern California, at the tail end of Internet Boom #1, and I'm surrounded by rich adults in high-performance Porsches, BMW M3s, Range Rover Sports, AMG Mercedes G-wagons, and such. Owning and driving cars like these seemed cool, but wasteful. I understood driving something well-engineered, solid and stable, but driving these cars around the Bay area seemed like wearing mountain climbing or Scuba gear to a cocktail party. When were they able to really exploit even 50% of their car's performance while driving to Blowfish Sushi?


Thinking of these things, I was reminded of a day when I was asked to return a customer car to their home after repairs were completed. Her car was an early 70s bright red Saab 95, with a Ford V4, and 4-speed column shift. It was slow! However, the entire drive was a blast! I had so much fun learning to master a column change transmission, while working within the limits of 65 horsepower on Atlanta highways. I was getting close to 100% from that Saab.

Slow seemed more fun, and with so much more style than fast. Who is cooler, the sweaty guy rushing around frantically to get where needs to go, or the composed guy walking with poise and grace, on time, and going with the flow on the sidewalk? Driving smoothly from point A to point B, unfrazzled, without sudden lane changes, rapid acceleration, tail-gating or raised tempers is driving with style.

Driving a car should be a luxurious pleasure, to be appreciated with time dedicated to it's preparation, the journey, the stops in-between, and it's completion.

In another post, I'll try and elaborate further on what the Slow Car Movement and driving with style means to me.