The Plan: My wife gave me the Porsche Driving Experience for my birthday. If you're not familiar it's a day at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, AL. Predictably it's Porsches on the track, an autocross course, and a skid pad, plus various car control drills. The class I was in takes place in Boxster's, Cayman's and 911's. I could write a novel on that, but since this is a Subaru website I'll try to keep Porsche details to a minimum. Suffice it to say I had a blast. Anyway, I decided right away that I wanted to drive down in my car so I could play on the Tail of the Dragon/Deals Gap, which I've wanted to experience for years. Since I was taking my car I decided to go in the fall when it would be cool, but still solidly summer tire season. I signed up for a class the second week of September last year (2015). I'd told a friend at work about this class years before, and that I wanted to go someday. He happens to own a 2006 911S and said if I ever went I should get in touch and he'd come along. People are busy so I sort of doubted he'd really follow through, but I dutifully called him. He agreed immediately, just tell him when. A few weeks later I signed up and sent a text telling him the date. He got back less then 10 minutes later saying he had signed up too. We decided to meet at his house in Nashville, TN the day before class and caravan down before driving the Tail on our way home. Except, of course, Deals Gap isn't really on the way home for either of us. But whatever. Preparation: My car is a 2008 STI...yes the one that features disintegrating ring lands. I won't say I never think about that, but I can assure you that I take very good care of my vehicle and drive it hard. So far it's been totally reliable. I bought my car with <7,000 miles in 2009 and it had about 40,000 miles on it when I left Minneapolis. So it's not exactly high milage, and I've owned it for a long time. Here's the sum total of my vehicle preparation: 1.) Fall oil change a little earlier then planned...that really could have waited until I got home. 2.) Two way radios with adaptor to charge off the car tossed in the hatch. 3.) Sleeping bag wedged on the floor behind drivers seat. That's it. You guys don't know me, so you'll have to take my word for it that I'm pretty OCD when it comes to mechanical things. I hadn't realized quite how bad until I got ready to take a long road trip and didn't have to do anything to get ready. Porsche Driving Experience: The event is first class all the way, much nicer then I needed. Catered breakfast and lunch, friendly experienced instructors. There were probably around 40 students, but it's hard to say as a few were guests of drivers just there to watch. A show of hands during orientation indicated that over 80% of the attendees had at least one Porsche. The experience levels varied, but were mostly pretty modest. There were several people there with track &/or auto cross time, one guy said he races karts. I only have one previous track day in the STI at Brainerd. We ended up driving the Boxster GTS, Cayman GTS, Panamara GTS, Carrara GTS and the Cayman GT4. My favorite car by FAR was the GT4, I'd love to own one someday. Second favorite was Cayman GTS...and it's worth noting they were the only two with a clutch pedal so that probably had something to do with it. PDK transmission works great, I know it's faster in every way, but personally I just don't like it. All the track time was lead follow with four students changing position behind one instructor. They can talk to their students through the car speakers, but the students can't respond. The track cars all have a slot for a memory stick so you have two cameras recording all of your laps. The skid pad and threshold braking drills were sometimes with an instructor in the car, and other times without. The autocross was run first with an instructor then alone. At the end of the day your group of four is timed and competes with the other groups through the auto cross. One guy in my group made himself carsick and I was elected to drive for him so I got two runs (six laps) in the competition. Our group won and I turned out to be the fastest overall driver that day. Not too bad for a self-taught Subaru driver in a room full of Porsche owners. I got a pen. Last thing is student rides while an instructor hot laps a 911 to demonstrate what a pathetic looser you are. During lunch we saw some rich guy take delivery of his 918. Barber has a pre-production prototype available for owners to use during their all-day check-out so many owners go there for delivery. We watched the new owner first ride in the 918 while an instructor followed a 911 Turbo S pace car. Then the owner followed the 911 while an instructor rode next to him, then the owners hot 25 year-old-looking daughter/wife/girlfriend followed the 911. Finally an instructor drove the 918 on a few hot laps while the owner rode along. On the straights the 918 literally looked like a cruise missile, with no apparent reduction in the rate of acceleration. It was impressive. Two 918 side notes: 1.) The customer car was there too in the pits. It had a hideous paint job that allegedly cost $140,000. Just for paint. It was truly awful. 2.) World wide 918 deliveries were nearly complete when I was there. Once they are the demo 918 at Barber will be dismantled/destroyed since it is a pre-production car and lacks a VIN. I understand but it still seems criminal. Deals Gap: After the track day my buddy and I drove to Chattanooga, TN to spend the night. We got up early the next day and took back roads to Deals Gap. The drive out wasn't too interesting. The route we took to join 129 was somewhat curvy but too highly trafficked to be fun. We did pass a whole herd of S2000's followed by a single NSX that were headed the opposite direction. I'm sure they had a good time. We arrived on the top right where the crappy/iconic motel and dragon statue are, although I think most people come in from the Knoxville, TN side. The speed limit all along the Tail is 30 mph, which everyone completely ignored. I saw LEO's three times that day, and each time they were attending to an accident. Other drivers gave us plenty of lead time to slow down by motioning with their arms as they passed us, which was cool. We ended up making two round trips down and back, then down once more to head home. I've heard the road described as too twisty to really be fun, but I didn't feel that way at all. It's mostly a second gear road, but I did use both first and third a bit. I was very careful to stay in my lane and did not cross the center line at any point. Traffic was heavier then I would've liked, but we were still able to drive pretty fast most of the time. When we frequently caught up with traffic ahead I'd just slow if no one was behind me, or pull over if there was. Once I had some space I'd pull back out and catch them again. People were friendly, we met up with a guy who had a Mazda Speed 3 hatch who followed us on one round trip. I only saw one other turbo charged Subaru out there, so our marque was way under represented. On the last trip down the mountain my friend insisted I drive his car, so we switched. He was certainly getting the short end of the stick, but I enjoyed the drive. When we were in our own cars Steve always hung right with me. When we switched, although I felt slightly slower in the unfamiliar car, I quickly left him behind. I think the 911, with its much higher limits, is just easier to drive fast when it's unfamiliar then the STI is. And of course I'd just spent whole previous day driving 911's. Anyway I ended up chasing a turbo charged S2000 down the mountain. The driver was a little faster then me on the curves but he stayed in sight although it was obvious he could've run away if he wanted. At the bottom I flashed the headlights just as a friendly goodbye, but he pulled over to chat. Turns out he's a local. I mentioned that I appreciated the LEO's having a sense of humor about the ridiculous 30 mph limit, but he said it's normally heavily patrolled, so thats something to keep in mind if you go. Thats it. I hope you enjoyed it. If not flame away if it makes you feel better, but you should appreciate that I really don't care. I told myself ahead of time that I'd post my experience here, so I wanted to follow through. You can probably see from my post count that I'm not a very frequent visitor. Please excuse typos and grammatical errors, it's pretty late.
Sounds like a blast! Did you bring any pictures of the experience back with you? I've always wanted to go since i saw it on Top Gear. The 30mph speed limit hasn't really motivated me to rush out the door tho. You sir have an awesome wife! Thanks for sharing your experience!
I hit the Tail last year the day after Christmas in a Forester XT with snow tires. Sister's house is in Maggie Valley, NC. Got up early and got there just as the morning fog lifted. Came from the NC side the first time and got stuck behind a Outback. On the return back to NC I had it all to myself. It was pretty cool. I have a STI rear sway in it and had stock endlinks. After we got home I looked under the car and those endlinks looked like pretzels.
I was 45 min away from the dragon when I lived down there, its a fun road but you learn the best times to go when it isn't busy otherwise you get stuck behind people in minivans. there were alot of other roads close by that were just as fun with much less traffic. i really miss the roads down there.
The well known ones are cherohola skyway, devils triangle is another group of roads. Pretty much everything around the mountains there were a blast to drive/ride on.
