4/15/17

I usually reserve one Saturday of the month for breakfast at the Spitfire Grill at the Santa Monica Airport.  It is an informal affair, unaffiliated with any organization, and really meant more for catching up with Porsche driving friends than anything else.  This month there was a conflict, and I opted to forego the Spitfire.  Instead, I had breakfast with the PCA LA Region at the Porsche Experience Center in Carson, primarily because it was the inaugural breakfast at the 917 restaurant, which is located on the second floor of the Experience Center.

We met in the parking lot at 8 AM for some informal conversation.  There were some great cars there, including a nice mix of air-cooled and water-cooled Porsches.  There was even one Ferrari.  It was’t a Porsche, but at least it was a California.  After a half an hour of kibitzing, we went inside the Experience Center and upstairs to the 917 restaurant.

I wasn’t sure what to expect in the way of food,  The price, including tax, tip and MotorsportReg fees was $49, which is about 150% more than I spend at the Spitfire.  So I hoped the food would be good.  I was not disappointed.  The quality was great.  The coffee was superb.  The eggs were not powdered.  And the bacon was damn near perfect.  I am not a huge lox guy, but that looked good, too.  The reality, though,  was that the small buffet line just did not justify the price.  On the other hand, the location and view did in spades.

I sat at a table of four.  Two of the other three, Chester and Ted, were friends from the Spitfire, and the third, Tim, was a new acquaintance,  a very nice guy who had an amazing 993 incarnation of the 911.  Our conversation was interesting and for the most part centered around Porsches and work.  The table we picked, like most of them in the restaurant, had an amazing view of the track at the Experience Center.  When we first sat down, the track was empty.  There was a nice assortment of Porsches parked just below us on the tarmac, but no one was near them.

Then we noticed some activity on the track.  Instructors and students were getting into the cars.  The Experience Center has a drivers education program, and we had a birds eye view of the learning process.  Car handling skills are a prerequisite for driving fast on a track, and the Experience Center has some great learning tools at their disposal.  We spent the rest of breakfast trying to predict how good or bad each student would do on the various obstacles.  The cost of the food, and the food itself, became a non-issue.  Just watching the students on the track was lots of fun, and worth the price of admission.

Pretty soon it was time to leave the restaurant and go about our days.  Some of the guys were hanging around the Experience Center to be driven around the track on a Hot Lap with a pro at the wheel and then have a box lunch.  I had not planned to do that activity, but I had some spare time.  Chester, one of my Spitfire cronies and an amazing video editor who has a beautiful 1984 911 Targa, and I decided to head up the road to Porsche of South Bay, as they have a decent Porsche Classics collection.

As I had driven my 1974 911 Targa, our cars looked really good parked near each other.  So we parked just outside one of the showroom windows.  We walked into the showroom.  We could easily see our cars from within it.  We laughed, called them entry level and not ready for prime time, and amused ourselves by just walking around and asking questions, generally wasting the time of those working there.

Soon it was time to head home.  There were a lot of cars on the road.  Traffic was lumpy, and we could not stay together, which would have added to the experience.  But it didn’t matter.  Our Targa tops were off.  The sun was out.  The smiles were plastered to our faces.  And, despite some slight protestations from our left legs, we each motored home in style.