#XK8

I spent a fair amount of time on the Autobahn this summer, including several hundred miles on the unrestricted sections. I can’t say that I went all that fast — I think I saw 260 km/h once, trying to get to a Pizza Hut near the border with Belgium that was about to close. Other than that I rarely went above 200 km/h. The only excuse I have for this is that I’m old and tired and I had a bunch of broken ribs at the time.There’s also the inconvenient fact that the freeways are just as crowded over there as they are here, and the lane discipline hasn’t been so good in recent years due to demographic and educational changes in Germany. Still, once in awhile you can find yourself in those oh-so-stereotypically Deutsch situations of which you dreamed as a child. There was a particularly memorable afternoon where I relaxed in the passenger seat of an E43 wagon and watched my co-driver chase a Swiss-plated Phantom for over an hour at sustained triple-digit speeds. I was working my way through a bag of those Babybel cheese things. Good times.My long-time correspondent and pal Luigi knows all about those kind of good times. He’s been around the world working different gigs. Now he’s considering settling down for a while in der Vaterland and buying a big, thirsty car for big, fast cross-Continental commutes.

Anyone over 30 years of age reminisces about “the one that got away.” The high school sweetheart. The big fish on the lake. The chance to buy AAPL at $3/share. My dad always talked about the E-Type he let slip through his fingers.

My folks lived in New Jersey at the time, and I was yet to be. Dad spotted an E-Type — I’m guessing BRG, but that’s not important right now. It was the ’70s and the Jag was merely a used car, not the revered classic it is today. The quick loss of power on the test drive followed by the flames from the sidedraft carburetors meant my dad walked back through suburban Cherry Hill without making a deal on the sexy English roadster.