Night drive in the mountains... part 2

At the meeting point

A couple of weeks ago, Mazen mentioned to me that he was not interested in repeating our night driving experience in the mountains, unless we did it in the daytime. I told him I didn't see when I would be able to free up that much time in the day, and that we'd have to put the idea on hold until next season. However, seeing that I would soon be putting away the Civic for winter, and assuming Mazen would be putting away his GT3, I figured it was worth proposing one more night drive, only a couple of days before the first snow was forecast. He agreed and we met up in Lachute after the kids were in bed. I decided to take the Civic, as it was running well and it would be one of my last chances to use it this year. Also, Mazen had never tried my Civic, and I thought he would be surprised by its performance.

... where Mazen would order a coffee.

This time, the roads were dry and I began to follow Mazen down the mountain road. I realized that I probably should have filled up as the fuel needle seemed to have dropped quickly on my drive north. I searched for nearby gas stations and there were none closer than the ones near Lachute. We drove for a while, and at the pace we were going, the Civic was easily keeping up with the Porsche, even though I was short shifting to save gas. The Civic, despite its stiff suspension (by road car standards), was easily dealing with the bumps in the road. Mazen stopped after hitting a pothole quite hard. We could not see any damage to his front wheel, but he later found out that the inside of the rim had a sizeable dent. After a while, we switched cars and I took the lead in the GT3. Mazen was not keeping up, even though I was driving pretty gently. After a few minutes, I pulled over to switch back to the Civic and chat with Mazen. I asked him why he was not keeping up, and it turned out he felt absolutely no confidence driving the Civic, with all its noises and rattles. It's true that the Civic is the opposite of a Porsche in many ways. I never thought a lightweight front-wheel-drive car with a pretty conventional suspension setup would be intimidating to someone who drives a 500+ horsepower rear-wheel drive car, but I guess this goes to show that you never know who will be confident in which car. We soon found a gas station near Wentworth. After I filled up the Civic, I took Mazen out as a passenger my car. I thought he would be impressed with its acceleration, but he didn't seem to be. I guess he saw the car as a bucket of bolts and not a quick and safe sports car. I realized that in the future, I should probably bring the M3 on these drives, as Mazen was not at all worried about driving it quickly last time. Another advantage of the M3 is that we can actually hear each other talking on our phones during the drive. I was still happy with the experience. Apart fromt the noise, the Civic is not that unpleasant to drive on the street. One winter project will be to try to make the exhaust quieter, but other than that, this might be the year when I put the car away ready to run the following season. 

Although we're in November, this would not be the last outing for the Civic in 2020... to be continued!

Two very different cars with a similar focus.