Page 22 - Motoring World (January 2020)

BEHIND THE SINS

THIS IS HOW WE DO IT

MODEL CITIZEN
MODEL CITIZEN

When I decided to go and explore the world outside of gave me an excellent farewell party, and they also got me a
automotive journalism in 2014, it was quite an emotional slick scale model of my Motoring avatar, the Gallardo. I’ve
moment, and a difficult decision to make. Motoring had preserved it carefully over the years, not having removed
become such an integral part of my life that it was not a it from its packaging; somewhere, I felt that it would be
place of work — it was part of my extended family. Leaving symbolic of an eventual return to the fold — and thus it has
family behind is never easy, but sometimes it has to be turned out to be.
done, to broaden one’s horizons, and so I did. The chaps Gallardo

FOUR-LETTER BIRD

I didn’t mean to spot this particular one. There were scores of
them at IBW this year, a testament to the bike’s popularity.
But there was something about this one… or perhaps it was
because I was sitting on a comfortable sofa sheltered from the
burning sun. Either way, one look at the bike and my mind
was spiralling down Nostalgia Lane. It was the first bike I had
a scale model of. I first rode one 11 years ago and I’m still
surprised I made it out of that week alive. Well, my body was
intact, but my mind was permanently altered by its warp-
speed nature. Many more brief meetings followed over the
years, culminating in one that involved an empty runway and
a drag-spec motor.
That meeting ended with a maxxed-out speedometer and
the sight of those twin clocks behind that screen shows up at
times when I close my eyes. And to think you could even com-
mute on it, as a friend with wind-tunnel-designed biceps regu- that’s what’s taking the folks at Hamamatsu so long with the
larly does. He’s even got the Japanese character for the bike’s new one. Until then, I take solace in the fact that every time I
name tattooed on his left arm. Speed isn’t a problem these forget what speed is, the ’Busa always shows up to remind me.
days, but keeping that friendliness intact is, and I suspect Reventón

22 MOTORING WORLD | JANUARY 2020