How do you know your vehicle is over-revving? – If you’ve never heard an over-revving engine.
How do you know your car has stalled? – If you’ve never seen or heard a car stall?
We take so much for granted and most of the time we don’t even know it. Take my wife and learning to drive for example. – When we got married, Tanya didn’t drive, so one of the first things she did was to organise some driving lessons for herself. This proved to be a something of a disaster, because at the time I was driving a large Volvo estate, which is not the ideal learner-vehicle. ‘Safe’ perhaps for the occupants – but terrible for parking practice!
Tanya did pass her written driving exam in a foreign language with a 100% mark – something I’m confident I couldn’t do in the UK or back in her native Russia. Only her failure in the practical test was a surprise to Tanya. This highly intelligent woman with a ‘near-photographic memory’ had never ‘failed’ any test before in her life. She immediately booked another test and promptly failed that too, complaining along the way that she needed more driving practice. Then everything was put on the back burner for six months when we moved to Devon.
After settling in Devon, Tanya decided to restart her driving lessons, only this time she was convinced to accept extra driving practice in the Volvo – no matter how far away the rear bumper was.
It’s all true about husbands teaching their spouses to drive! The arguments we had in that confined space! All but one were quickly forgotten, but that event was very memorable. – We’ were approaching a country bend at a fair clip. Here’s the essence of our exchange:
“‘Slow down before the bend”, I said. Only our speed didn’t alter. “Slower still“, I repeated, with just a hint of concern creeping into my voice.
“I’m in third gear”. She replied. Her voice was pitched in such a way that the ‘like you said I should‘ was left unsaid but clearly heard.
I automatically glanced at the shift. She WAS in third gear. But the tachy was also heading towards 4000 rpm!
“SLOW DOWN!” I yelled, the instant before being flung hard against my seatbelt and the pillar. The car appeared to broad-side the rapidly approaching hedge, tyres screeching their torment and the brambles scratching the paintwork. But we’d survived the turn.
Afterwards, I realised my subsequent tirade was a result of the dangerous nature of the occasion, but equally it was also due to an outflow of relief that neither of us hadn’t been injured! Only a miracle had prevented our vehicle from rolling over. Tanya of course never considered the possibility. – Still hasn’t.
Yet only a woman could wait until her ‘driving instructor’ finished before replying, “But you didn’t have to shout at me”. And only a spouse would realise it was pointless to continue because when the wife is learning to drive. – You can still be right and still wrong!
Tanya jubilant after her first ever Porsche drive (Carrera S)
The event will forever be etched in my memory because when I brought up the over-revving engine her immediate response was.
“Whats that?!”
It made me think. And on the way home I learned that some car sounds which we grow up with are taken for granted. Think back to when you first heard, or rather felt, the sudden jolt that’s so synominous of the car stall. If you’re like me it was probably in your parent’s car when you were a youngster. At the time, your parents probably made a joke of the occasion and through the ensueing banter between them you learned what happened and how it happened. But what if your family never had a car? Your mother was a single parent without any relatives or friends who owned a car to share a lift with. And the same went for your friends and peers right through school and university. None of them had a car because public transport was so cheap and frequent that owning a car was made redundant.
Then you arrive in a country like the UK and find that a car of your own is an essential tool to get to work and for your leisure.
The following weekend we drove to one corner of a huge local car park, pointed the car up along the diagonal and I simply said “Floor it!” Over the next hour we could have damaged done untold damage to the greabox and transmission. But through it all, Tanya did learn and experience everything she needed to know about stalling and over-revving which she reckons helped her to pass her driving test at the next attempt.
Since learning to drive Tanya has become something of a petrol head. Top photo shows her in the Radical SR3 sports car – 1500 cc: 252 bhp. 158ft/lbs, 9,500 rpm in a car weighing just 500kgs! (0-60mph in around 3 secs) – Way t’go girl!
