The Gold-Plated Porsche: How I Sank a Small Fortune into a Used Car, and Other Misadventures
Stephan Wilkinson was looking for something to do. So he bought an old, run-down Porsche and over the next two years tore it apart and rebuilt it in a garage behind his house. The project cost him a small fortune, and it started him thinking about many other things.
Quirky, cool, entertaining, and opinionated, The Gold-Plated Porsche captures Wilkinson's inspired digressions on his various other careers and misadventures. As a less-than-inspired Harvard student, he spent more time working on cars than on hitting the books. During various Harvard sabbaticals he sweated out the lowest scut work available to tour the world as a merchant seaman. He built an airplane in his garage and flew it cross-country. He drove an ambulance. There was a short and unproductive association with a certain marijuana smuggler from Newfoundland, and the former Israeli intelligence officer who sought to entice Wilkinson into a lucrative but illicit career as a pilot. Wilkinson's flying skills did lead him, eventually, to become the chief--and only--pilot for Dennis Banks, one of the leaders of the controversial American Indian Movement. For a week or so, anyway. And there's his long and eventful writing career, which included an unfulfilling stint as editor in chief of the prestigious Car and Driver magazine.
As he recounts his own personal history, Wilkinson also waxes eloquent on the history of Porsche, American engineering and culture, status, and his love of flying and of all things mechanical--not to mention the integrity of wedding-dress silk for engine repair.
In The Gold-Plated Porsche, Stephan Wilkinson proves himself as adept at crafting a sentence as he is at rebuilding an exquisitely complicated engine.
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Quirky, cool, entertaining, and opinionated, The Gold-Plated Porsche captures Wilkinson's inspired digressions on his various other careers and misadventures. As a less-than-inspired Harvard student, he spent more time working on cars than on hitting the books. During various Harvard sabbaticals he sweated out the lowest scut work available to tour the world as a merchant seaman. He built an airplane in his garage and flew it cross-country. He drove an ambulance. There was a short and unproductive association with a certain marijuana smuggler from Newfoundland, and the former Israeli intelligence officer who sought to entice Wilkinson into a lucrative but illicit career as a pilot. Wilkinson's flying skills did lead him, eventually, to become the chief--and only--pilot for Dennis Banks, one of the leaders of the controversial American Indian Movement. For a week or so, anyway. And there's his long and eventful writing career, which included an unfulfilling stint as editor in chief of the prestigious Car and Driver magazine.
As he recounts his own personal history, Wilkinson also waxes eloquent on the history of Porsche, American engineering and culture, status, and his love of flying and of all things mechanical--not to mention the integrity of wedding-dress silk for engine repair.
In The Gold-Plated Porsche, Stephan Wilkinson proves himself as adept at crafting a sentence as he is at rebuilding an exquisitely complicated engine.
The Gold-Plated Porsche: How I Sank a Small Fortune into a Used Car, and Other Misadventures
Stephan Wilkinson was looking for something to do. So he bought an old, run-down Porsche and over the next two years tore it apart and rebuilt it in a garage behind his house. The project cost him a small fortune, and it started him thinking about many other things.
Quirky, cool, entertaining, and opinionated, The Gold-Plated Porsche captures Wilkinson's inspired digressions on his various other careers and misadventures. As a less-than-inspired Harvard student, he spent more time working on cars than on hitting the books. During various Harvard sabbaticals he sweated out the lowest scut work available to tour the world as a merchant seaman. He built an airplane in his garage and flew it cross-country. He drove an ambulance. There was a short and unproductive association with a certain marijuana smuggler from Newfoundland, and the former Israeli intelligence officer who sought to entice Wilkinson into a lucrative but illicit career as a pilot. Wilkinson's flying skills did lead him, eventually, to become the chief--and only--pilot for Dennis Banks, one of the leaders of the controversial American Indian Movement. For a week or so, anyway. And there's his long and eventful writing career, which included an unfulfilling stint as editor in chief of the prestigious Car and Driver magazine.
As he recounts his own personal history, Wilkinson also waxes eloquent on the history of Porsche, American engineering and culture, status, and his love of flying and of all things mechanical--not to mention the integrity of wedding-dress silk for engine repair.
In The Gold-Plated Porsche, Stephan Wilkinson proves himself as adept at crafting a sentence as he is at rebuilding an exquisitely complicated engine.
Quirky, cool, entertaining, and opinionated, The Gold-Plated Porsche captures Wilkinson's inspired digressions on his various other careers and misadventures. As a less-than-inspired Harvard student, he spent more time working on cars than on hitting the books. During various Harvard sabbaticals he sweated out the lowest scut work available to tour the world as a merchant seaman. He built an airplane in his garage and flew it cross-country. He drove an ambulance. There was a short and unproductive association with a certain marijuana smuggler from Newfoundland, and the former Israeli intelligence officer who sought to entice Wilkinson into a lucrative but illicit career as a pilot. Wilkinson's flying skills did lead him, eventually, to become the chief--and only--pilot for Dennis Banks, one of the leaders of the controversial American Indian Movement. For a week or so, anyway. And there's his long and eventful writing career, which included an unfulfilling stint as editor in chief of the prestigious Car and Driver magazine.
As he recounts his own personal history, Wilkinson also waxes eloquent on the history of Porsche, American engineering and culture, status, and his love of flying and of all things mechanical--not to mention the integrity of wedding-dress silk for engine repair.
In The Gold-Plated Porsche, Stephan Wilkinson proves himself as adept at crafting a sentence as he is at rebuilding an exquisitely complicated engine.
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The Gold-Plated Porsche: How I Sank a Small Fortune into a Used Car, and Other Misadventures
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The Gold-Plated Porsche: How I Sank a Small Fortune into a Used Car, and Other Misadventures
10.49
In Stock
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781599216782 |
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Publisher: | Globe Pequot Press |
Publication date: | 09/01/2005 |
Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
Format: | eBook |
File size: | 457 KB |
About the Author
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