A Second Life

Membership Corner

by Ryan Partin, GCR member

If you were a kid growing up in the late 80s and early 90s and crazy about cars you had a poster of one of the three iconic cars at the time. Surprisingly, mine was a red Italian. I would laugh later in life about that childhood decision. My mother’s car would be my first experience with a Porsche. I was so young when she had that 1972 red 914, but I can still remember every spot of rust on it like it was yesterday. Being a blue collar family, my parents couldn’t afford the “nice Porsche” but my father, being a mechanic, did his best to get her a Porsche. Over the years her Porsches would evolve from that red 914 to a bronze 1977 924 that always smelled like gas, to a yellow 944, which was made from two cars welded together and spun out every time it rained. Let’s just say none of these cars would win a concours show but she loved them as if they could.

Fast forward twenty-plus years and a lot had changed. My parents divorced and I followed my father’s footsteps into auto racing. My mother also followed her passions, building a career and finally buying that “Nice Porsche”: a two-year-old 2002 986 Boxster. I was proud of her never giving up on her dreams and on owning that Porsche. The purchase of that car marked an important achievement in the second chapter of her life.

In late 2020, I got a call from my mom asking what she should do with her beloved Boxster. For the last 16 years the car lived outside in the South Florida weather and time had taken its toll—seriously taken its toll. The car was at a local German auto repair shop for the third time in a year; it wouldn’t start, and none of the electronics worked. The estimate would start around $5,000 to diagnose and repair some but maybe not all the issues. My mother didn’t want to part with the car but asked me if she should sell it; sensibly, was it worth repairing again? I told her I would come get the car and dig into it as I wasn’t racing with Covid going on and had the time. I knew my mom didn’t want to part with her Boxster, for it symbolized so much of what she had been able to achieve in the second chapter of her life. So I hooked up the race car hauler and headed south to see if I could be my mom’s hero. Boy; I had no idea what I was getting myself into! I’ve worked on a lot of different types of race cars, but nothing of the German sort. I didn’t even know what a “Frunk” was or how to get the thing open. After a couple weeks and learning what a Frunk was, I figured out that the Boxster suffered from the dreaded convertible top drains being clogged. This had led to some serious corrosion. After about 45 days I sent my mom

2002 Porsche just purchased

a video: the Boxster was running, windows working, the central alarm working, everything working. But now that the car was running, my mom asked if I was ok with her selling it; being an older car, it needed constant TLC that she couldn’t give to `it.

To be honest, I didn’t want her to sell the Boxster. I became attached to this machine—probably like mom was with that yellow 944 back in the day. Well, maybe not that one, but the other ones. I was bitten by the Porsche bug. This couldn’t have happened at a better time as I was considering after 25 years of amateur and professional racing everything from dirt track cars in Oklahoma to Endurance racing at Sebring that it might be time to call an end to my racing career. Now what would I do? I have spent every day and night of my life centered on racing, whether in the race shop or on the track, as a child with my father and as an adult. Going fishing or stamp collecting isn’t really my speed. A couple days later I got a call from my mother saying there is a FedEx letter coming and to let her know when I get it. When I opened it up it was the title to the Boxster with a note saying, “I hope she brings you as much happiness and joy as she did me. Promise you won’t turn her into a racecar. And when can we go shopping for my next Porsche?”

Just as the Boxster was so important to my mother in the second chapter of her life, it would now be the same for me, no longer racing. Oh—remember that poster on the wall when I was a kid earlier? Now it’s one that I’m truly passionate about, a German from Stuttgart, not the red Italian. What about shopping for the next one? Well, we did go shopping together and my mother found a black 718S that she adores.

I have always been passionate about cars, but they were always tools: something that was built to compete with and then on to the next one that’s faster or more capable of winning. I now understand why, after all those early Porsches my mother had, she is just as passionate about her new 718S as she was with her first 914, because that’s how I feel about my Porsche Boxster.

PS: If anyone knows why a 2002 986’s fast flashers come on randomly for no reason, I could really use the help. lol Boxster in 2004