I was in a horrible motorcycle accident 9/13. Sold my bikes and bought the IM 11/13. I thought at that time I needed to slow down. At that time I was right. It was a great therapy car. Over the next 2.5 years I underwent 3 surgeries and hundreds of hours of physical therapy to rebuild by body. As I recovered all I could think of was how can I make this gentleman roadster a runner. Placed a new cam, upgraded the brakes, tweeked the suspension and built a new exhaust system. And you know what its pretty darn quick. But the need for speed was too strong. Ducatis do that to you. The obvious great advantage of the IM was its weather versatility. That's why the IM6 would have been a nice car for me. Speed and comfort. Lost it. So I decided to sacrifice comfort for speed. I'm still a reasonable young guy (56) so I think now is the time to build that last spyder. Got a feeling there is still another 356 in my future a little further down the line. See you guys Saturday.
I hear you there, Phil.
Until I was married, I could not seem to operate a motor vehicle for more than 15 minutes or so without determining its terminal velocity.
I cycled through dirt bikes as a kid, muscle cars as a punk, and street bikes as a young man (It was a value decision. A bike wins the speed/money contest every time).
It took some time, but eventually I realized my personality was pretty ill-suited to continued survival on a motorcycle (I once threw a chain going 120 while racing an Interceptor 1000, etc.). Besides, my kids were young and there wasn't a lot of loose change hanging out in the couch cushions.
I sold the last streetbike (a modified RZ350 I rebuilt from the frame up. That bike was faster than my old old Z1900), and bought my first good bicycle.
I was deep into bicycles for about 10 years, and even considered opening a bike shop. As an aside, I should have just stuck with it – I was the healthiest I've ever been during that period. Anyhow, it always amazed me how people could scold me like I was an axe murderer when I would put my kids on the tank of a motorcycle, and look at me like I was father of the year when I put them in a bicycle kid-carrier. As you know, both are pretty equally dangerous.
A little later on, the speedster was supposed to scratch the "cool car" itch, and keep that inner hooligan at bay. However (and somewhat unfortunately), I figured out pretty early on that an air cooled flat 4 is an amazingly expandable engine platform. Even worse, it can be made to be pretty powerful.
So here I am 17 years into it, having had more engines back there than I can remember, thinking about what might be even more cool. I'll always have the speedster so that I can take my wife places, and maybe drive out to California again.
But, I still have that same itch I had when I was 12 years old, and there are way less people depending on me than there were 25 years ago. I think a nice, light, stupid powerful mid-engined car mashes just about all of the right buttons for the 53 year old version of me.
Keep us updated with build pictures, etc. I want to live the curiously through you, and it's always fun to spend somebody else's money.
