German Tourist: The Porsche 911 meets the South's best roads

Finery abounds.

porsche 911
todo: intro slide credit

I almost beat the sun to the North Carolina line. The day's first light is up over the hills as I cross Douglas Lake on I-40, painting the 2014 Carrera's outstretched fenders orange and gold against the gray morning. Just south of Newport, the interstate grabs ahold of the Pigeon River and doesn't let go until both are through the mountains. Roads around here have a habit of sticking close to water. The creeks and streams that tumble down from higher elevations never take the quickest route to where they're going, but eons of quiet cutting through the limestone did the heavy lifting for the civil engineers tasked with getting tarmac through the Blue Ridge.

That's why I'm here. Glance at any map along the Tennessee/North Carolina border, and you're rewarded with a tangle of frantic lines, a snake's nest of two lanes clawing their way through the ridges and valleys. The most famous of those is down south: Route 129, The Dragon. But there are other hollows to haunt, and I intend to find them.

The 911 is content to sling me through the bends and twists of I-40 as I head towards Waynesville. It's always surprising just how good this car is at playing grand tourer. This is as close to a base 911 as I've ever seen, and it's perfectly adept at consuming mile after mile of highway. The cabin is quiet, and the optional sport seats are more comfortable than supportive buckets have any right to be. I could curl up and live the rest of my days in these things.

Zach Bowman

Porsche builds a fine dual-clutch gearbox, but I'm happy with the seven-speed manual in this tester. The clutch is almost too stiff for stop-and-go shenanigans, but the gearing is dead-nuts perfect. Unlike seventh in the Corvette Stingray, top gear in the 911 isn't an over-overdrive. There's still enough pull to handle non-emergency passes without dropping a gear or two. The speed limit is 55 through the mountains on the interstate, but the Porsche doesn't even open its eyes at that speed. The car was built for fast sweepers, and I'm happy to oblige. Still, the double-H pattern takes some getting used to. More than once, I find myself aiming for fourth and winding up in sixth.

I cross into North Carolina and drop off on exit 24, stopping for fuel. Porsche has zealously held onto the quirks of this car's past, which is why I find myself stuffing a fuel nozzle in the front passenger fender.

"Is the motor in the back of that thing?"

Zach Bowman

It's a young guy. He's wrapped up in Carhartt loggers and a fleece. The camouflage ball cap on his head can barely contain the wild wisps of hair jutting out from around the band. He's filling up a two-stroke jug beside his Ram 2500. A log splitter is hooked to the trailer hitch.

"Yeah, that's where they stuck it."

"I bet that thing moves."

I laugh and ask him about Route 209 to Hot Springs.

"The road's clear, but it's crooked as a black snake."

Zach Bowman

He's right. The road skirts the border of the Harmon Den Wildlife Management Area for 18 miles before diving in and getting serious. The Appalachian Trail parallels the road a few ridges to the west, and there's nothing but open forest between the two. Harmon Den is part of the Pisgah National Forest, a 512,000-acre preserve that spans the Blue Ridge and Great Balsam mountains. Route 209 barely dips a toe into that land.

The weather report tells me there's a line of storms hammering my way, but the early morning is cool and clear. Dew paints the fields and trees around me dusky gray, and the 3.4-liter flat six busies itself by sucking down mountain air. A jab of the sport button opens up the optional exhaust. That flat rasp is less around my head than in it, emanating from that gap in the bone between my jaw and skull. I don't mind.

A few years back, someone tried to bill this stretch of road as "The Rattler" in an attempt to cash in on The Dragon's fame. I pass a peeling plywood sign with the name splayed across the top. A grinning reptile sits coiled beneath the text, but within a few miles, it's clear this isn't a 129 clone. The road's abandoned, and as it twists towards Hot Springs, the only other beings I see are a handful of deer and turkey looking on with wary eyes.

Zach Bowman

Porsche may keep scooting the engine in the 911 forward, but the car still offers up its signature polar movement when the road gets technical. It's unlike anything else. Dive in and the car's alive with movement. This isn't some over-sprung track weapon. There's a little nudge of body roll, and the rear seems to rotate around your navel, situating itself at the apex just in time for you to bury the throttle. It's surprising, addictive, and remarkably neutral.

I wind out 209, head east on 70, and pop back off the main road onto 212. The first German families in this area settled here before Tennessee was a state. It was a wilderness, as raw a frontier as there ever had been, but they must have heard the echoes of home, here. Improbable valleys, flat and narrow, are hemmed in by near vertical mountainsides. Green fields sprawl from slope to slope, and old sycamores line the creek banks. If the hills were taller, this could be on the border of Austria.

The 911 doesn't care where we are. It's just happy to run. The trees are just starting to turn, and the first leaves flit out of the canopy to get caught in my wash. Throttle blips are too easy, making matched downshifts as good and sweet as they ever can be. The road courses along creeks with names like Shelton Laurel, Devil Fork and South Indian. I cross the state line for the second time today, and bask in the marvel of so many brilliant abandoned two lanes. The rest of the world is starting its work week, and the 911's licking its chops.

Zach Bowman

My wandering takes me down 19, then onto 197. The road makes the other routes I've travelled look buttoned down by comparison. It's a schizophrenic EKG scrawled up the mountain, where third gear seems both unreachable and irresponsible. It's a second-gear autocross course, just point and shoot from apex to apex. At the top of the mountain, the road turns to gravel without warning, but the 911 is just as happy slinging stone as it is clawing at the tarmac.

Halfway down the other side, it occurs to me that I'm sliding around in a $92,000 sports car, and I dial it back. When the pavement finally returns and I point the nose home, that's what I'm left with. This is a stubbornly brilliant car with an unacceptable price tag. If you want a base 911, the man at the door will ask for $84,300. Optioned up to a comfortable level, like this tester, you're tickling the underside of the big $100k. That's a stack of cash for 350 horsepower, and we're lucky to live in a world flush with truly excellent hardware for much, much less.

Do I fault the people who take home a 911? Not at all, but it's not where my cash, or my heart lands. It may be the perfect machine for dissecting a tangle of two lanes, but the grinning man at the Chevrolet dealer wants nothing more than to sell you a Corvette Z06 for $80,000. That's a problem, Porsche.

READ MORE: Nothing can prepare you for driving a Porsche 918 at Laguna Seca

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