(birds chirping)
(engine roars)
- [McKeel Hagerty] So this car was my very first car.
I bought it when I was just 13 years old.
In my family when I was growing up,
my dad prompted us, I and my older sisters,
to pick out a car and to restore it with him in the garage.
But there was this older gentleman
who ran a body shop in town who had two Porsches,
a 1967 Porsche 911S and a 1966 Porsche 912,
sitting in a un-built garage foundation.
Starting from actually the time I was about 11 years old,
we'd start paying visits to this guy
and started negotiating to convince him to sell the car.
And right around Christmas when I was 12 years old,
he called up and said,
"Get ready, you gotta come and get the car."
But it was the middle of winter, so it was many feet of snow
and it was like a blizzard out, it was super cold.
Unfortunately the engine for my car was sitting
over in the corner, and he just,
this old man just kinda walked over,
hey under this pile of snow is the engine to this car.
So the only way we were going to be able to get them out
is we had to rent a crane to lift them out.
(engine roars)
My dad was constantly working on all sorts of projects.
There are pictures of me when I was down to two years old
holding a handful of nuts and bolts
for him to put something back together.
So from my earliest memory,
spending time with dad was spending time in the garage.
(gentle music)
You know this car, this Porsche,
really became some of our closest bonding moments.
It took years for us to put it back together.
From the earliest part of my life,
driving has always meant something sort of close to freedom.
I really connected with this idea
that I could operate this machine and I could make it go
where I wanted it to go, when I wanted it to go,
and that was just a super powerful feeling
that just became, just really wired into me.
I think I've gone through phases
of what driving means though later in my life,
from those early feelings of freedom,
when you start growing up
and life becomes a little bit more complex,
that alone time in a car, especially this car,
for me was a time to completely unplug.
Well this car has been slightly breathed on.
When I had it professionally restored,
I did put bigger pistons in the car
so it's almost running at a 2.8, it is a single plug.
It's so cool, still to me,
of all the cars I've driven, this one just,
it feels like an extension of my body when I drive it.
So the responsiveness of the throttle
in this car is absolutely remarkable,
I mean it's just instant, instant response.
This one has a special place in my automotive rituals.
This is the first car that I take out in the spring,
the first fun car that I take out in the spring,
and it gets the last drive in the fall.
I grew up in northern Michigan, and I still live here.
And the roads I've been driving the car on
are really special to me.
Around every corner there's some house
that a family member or that I remember driving in something
or riding my bike, I've been a big cyclist all my life.
And when I take this car out in the spring
or I take my last drives in it in the fall,
it's these roads that I go to
because they just make me feel like home,
and it feels like the car is just settled in its place,
and I'm certainly settled in my place
when the two of us are out there.
My name is McKeel Hagerty and this is why I drive.