To: E. W. Carpenter, MD (Patient),
Northern Michigan Hospital,
Petoskey, Michigan

Dear Ernie:

There’s something ironic about a thoracic specialist suffering from congestive heart failure. In some convoluted way it reminds me of the shoemaker’s children who have no shoes. You were kind enough to drive 400 miles with me to inspect the restoration of my Fangio Chevy back when I had prostate cancer in 1998, so I figured I should go on record as a concerned fellow geezer.

We did the California Mille last month. The California event is patterned on Italy’s Mille Miglia Storica, which commemorates the greatest over-the-road race in history, a thousand miles from Brescia to Rome and back to Brescia. The original was discontinued in 1957 when the Marquis de Portago blew a tire on his Ferrari at warp speed and killed himself, his co-driver Eddie Nelson, and a passel of spectators. Thus, the cutoff for car eligibility is 1957.

I called Martin Swig, the organizer, and told him that we wanted to participate but we had no suitable car. In 2003 when I had a similar sob story, he loaned me his own beautiful 1957 Alfa Romeo 1900SS coupe. This year he said, “Call the Audi people. They’re our major sponsor this year and they’re bringing a whole fleet of cars out.” I dutifully called Audi’s North American headquarters, and, as Martin predicted, they very graciously agreed to provide me with wheels.

Then I experienced an epiphany. For several years I’ve wanted to drive a truly fast car over the California Mille roads in the mountains north of San Francisco, and do a video of the experience. Inspired partially by Claude Lelouch’s Rendezvous and partially by a promotional film made for the Alpine Rally about fifty years ago, I dreamed of tearing along some of the best winding roads in the country, sort of soliloquizing as I went. The Audi people warmed to the idea and provided an RS4 for me to drive, and an S4 cabriolet to be used as our camera car. I would plan my itinerary so as not to be a bother to the other participants, and we would do a lot of early morning stuff, in keeping with my belief that God does not charge us for hours spent driving before breakfast.

I believe that the California Mille is the best event of its kind in the United States. I actually prefer it to Italy’s Mille Miglia Storica. The Italian event seems to breed a lot of angst, and there’s always some heavy-handed officiating by local guys who grew up wanting to be cops. There are also a lot of Mickey Mouse special sections, which are much more like old-fashioned gymkhana events than history’s greatest over-the-road race. When Mike Dale and I did the Italian event in 1998, he complained bitterly whenever our beautiful green Jaguar C-Type was forced to perform some parlor-trick special section. “This is no way to treat a goddam million-dollar racing car!”

My wife and I have run seven of the eighteen California Milles, and I have run two without her. After a lot of experience with bad brakes and failing electrical systems, joy reigned unrestrained as we took to the mountains in the electric blue RS4. It was so fast, so willing, and so comfortable.

I rose at 4:30 each morning and, as I showered, I would think about driving quickly on narrow mountain roads, and weigh the odds that today we might meet an out-of-control timber truck coming from the other direction. But three quarters of a mile down the road all doubts and fears were gone and I was tossing the Audi into corners marked “15 MPH” at thirty-five or forty, running the car at near-peak revs in second and third gears through long series of up- and downhill esses that seemed to go on forever.

The RS4 has no paddles or pushbuttons, just a short lever that clicks up and down through the six-speed manual gearbox as surely as one hand finds the other in the dark. The V-8 power comes on in the lower gears with a great rush, but it’s always on the driver’s terms. The brakes are even more powerful, but in the other direction. We never squealed a tire. Sometimes, with a heavy foot on the brake pedal entering a steep downhill turn, one tire might chirp, but the Quattro system combined with state-of-the-art brakes and tires is just too effective for any unseemly raucousness. I fell in love with the Quattro system on the Sport Quattro coupe in 1984, and came to believe that the world would be instantly better if every car built with the slightest sporting pretension came with Quattro all-wheel drive as standard equipment. There are plenty of cars with all-wheel drive available today, but Quattro still has the corner on magic, as a thousand miles in the RS4 proved.

This year’s California Mille ended at the Sonoma Mission Inn with a good dinner, plenty of wine, and dozens of dedicated car enthusiasts for conversation. I haven’t come down yet. I honestly believe that my week on those roads in that RS4 was the most exhilarating driving experience I’ve had in more than twenty years. Our dinner at the Little River Inn in Mendocino was prepared by a chef named Peg Davis who is highly regarded there, seems to have dozens of friends and contented customers, and who is my daughter, whom I had not seen in twenty years. She had just taken delivery of a new BMW motorcycle and was enjoying life at least as much as I was at that moment.

Ernie, if you’re just laying around there in the hospital with nothing to do, you should gather up your considerable automotive skills and try to repair Charles Eisendrath’s Morgan 4/4 to respectability. I know your heart needs some work, but Charles’ Morgan is in much worse shape than you are.

Your doctor is a quack.

David E.