I’m Officially Old.

It was 2200 (10 P.M., for those who don’t keep a 24 hour clock), when the tensioner slipped from my hand and settled next to the crankshaft pulley. Scott asked me if I was confident about getting it done. I said yes, but not tonight.

“Take the Subaru to work. You can finish the Benz when you get home tomorrow”. He offered. I happily agreed and went about getting the bits of the Mercedes set into the garage- two cold air snorkels and a front trim piece for the engine.

Scott’s car is a 2012 Subaru Impreza WRX hatchback, a highly sought after piece of kit, a near 300 horsepower roadable version of Subaru’s rally car. Twenty-five year old me would have loved this car. Fifty-five year old me realizes that this car is no longer what I’m after.

Scott would complain about the clutch whenever he’d drive the Subie to SoCal- I privately dismissed it as the grousing of someone unaccustomed to a clutch after years of automatics. Nope. When I hopped into the car the following morning, I depressed the clutch to deactivate the safety switch that prevents one from starting the car while its in gear.

Clutches come in three grades. Toe, calf, and whole leg. The Subie was a leg and a half. I was suddenly more sympathetic for Scott’s plight, and understood why the car sat unused for a few months. The shifter was very nice, very tight, with a throws that could be made with the merest motion. Fifty-five year old me was in awe. This was the magical shifter I was dreaming about since my Alfetta, over thirty years ago. Acceleration was very modern with the beastie doing 60 on around 5.5 seconds. Giving this thing throttle in any gear was a literal “whoosh” from the turbo and the D.O.T. bumper of the semi ahead of you getting very close, very quickly. Under way the clutch wasn’t so bad, no worse than any of the legions of class 8 trucks that I’d driven in my career. Brakes stopped the car- I wasn’t breaking any records, just on my way to work.

The WRX is fine for short periods- it’s definitely not a car that I’d want to spend any amount of time commuting in, and I’m kinda done with manuals. There, I said it. I’m officially old.