I’ve always loved cars and car racing. Credit my dad. He bought a burgundy 1976 BMW 530i used when I was in middle school. Being a numbers guy, I still remember it was 3.0 liters of displacement and made 176hp. It was a four door and four speed. The engine had a great torque curve.
My Dad worked on the basic maintenance himself, changing the oil and filter, lubing the chassis. He even reset the valve timing with a optical timing gun tool. Like all cars guys and handymen – any excuse to get a tool is taken advantage of -one more tool to the tool collection.
I remember he had it repainted up in NH through a recommendation from someone he worked with – Danny Thomas. It was a high-end paint job that cost more than half of what the car was worth.
As a kid, I was into watching car racing on TV. Mainly Indycar. Probably on ABC wide-world of sports. It was called Champ Car or CART back in those days. The days before the IRL split. Remember the “spin and win” of ex-taxi driver Danny Sullivan at the Indianapolis 500?
As I got older, I got into Formula 1 – the pinnacle of car racing globally. Those were the days of Alan Jones, Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet, Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost. The technology advancements of it. The competitiveness of it. These drivers were like the warriors of the track!
My senior year in high school, my Dad traded in his BMW for a lifelong dream – a new Corvette. It was a black 1986 with 16″ aluminum wheels, C4 with 230hp, aluminum heads, and 330 foot-pounds of torque. I helped him spec it out, shop around for the best deal, and went with him to take delivery from a Chevy dealer in Cambridge, MA. He wanted the automatic (I wanted the stick), and it turned out the auto was faster than the stick in 0-60 acceleration. I thought it was an awesome car. The whole roof was removable, and you could stow it in the back.
In fact, on my first “real date” with Bridgette our freshman year at Lafayette in 1986, I picked her with that ‘Vette from Boston College on fall break and she was staying with a girl friend from high school. What a great night out. Great car for a date! And those memories with Bridgette were special and will last our lifetime. El Capriccio in Waltham and then into Boston proper to the top of the Prudential, where we snuck in and hid behind the long curtains of a closed restaurant.
My bros were into cars too. I remember Kent’s first car that he bought after getting his first a job was a Mazda Miata. It was silver 1st gen with the “R” sports package including fairings, spoilers, limited slip diff and sports suspension. Right around the same time, maybe even inspiring his or my purchase was my first sports car – an arctic silver 1997 Porsche Boxster with the sports suspension. That was the release year of the 914 and 911 inspired Boxster. It shared much of the same parts, suspension, engine design as the 911 that year, the first water cooled Porsches. The Boxster handled like a slot car, was a “real” Porsche in that it had a flat-6 cylinder 2.5l with 201hp, 5 speed manual and weighed less than 2800 pounds.
Did you know God is into cars too? In dreams, vehicles can often represent ministries. Larger multi-person vehicles can represent movements (trains) and churches (buses), even larger or regional churches/ministries/movements (ships). So a car can be a personal ministry. And a race car can be liken to a personal ministry that’s moving quickly with God, “running the race” as Paul speaks about here:
Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us
Hebrews 12:1
Its interesting here Paul refers to it as a race of “endurance.” He was referring to when men run a long distance race for a “prize” – competing to do as well as you can. And importantly to “finish the race” and “fight the good fight. (2 Tim 4:7) Turns out, God had put this desire, this desire, this ability within me to fight, compete, and win. Like any good warrior. Like David. Our God is a mighty warrior! (Isaiah 42:13).
Based on my interest in cars and racing, I had this desire to drive and/or own fast cars. Ultimately, I wanted to take those cars to a race track and see what they could do! And what I could do (skills wise – did I have what it takes?).
I tried to get my Boxster to the track, but the Porsche club, in fact any car club, that let people take their street cars on track had specifically banned the Boxster from the track due safety and liability concerns being a convertible. All the car clubs therefor insisted anyone owning a Boxster install a roll bar before they would them to run on track. Thing was, the rollbar had to be above the roofline of the rag top, so it was completely impractical if you wanted to continue to drive your Boxster on the street.
So, I didn’t want to modify my car, and therefore I never got to try it on track. In 2000, I traded my Porsche in for an BMW E39 M5 – an ode to my Dad’s 530i. That car was an instant classic too and was amazing to drive. Unrestricted, it went 186mph if memory serves. I made a “Cannonball Run” in the middle of the night once from Western Connecticut to Cape Cod in record time.
Then in 2004, Porsche released the first every 996 gen 2 GT3 into the United States. The previous generations of GT3s were only released in Europe. They were too difficult to homologate in the US with all the DOT restrictions. As soon as I found out this was a now possibility, I was like – this is it – and went down to the Fairfield dealer and got on the waiting list. I was excited, because this particular model car was considered a “track car” that you could drive on the street. In fact it was almost identical to the factory racer GT3 that ran at the 24 hours of Le Mans and 24 hours of Daytona (we’ll get back to Daytona in a minute). You could run the car equally on backroads, drive it to the race track, as well as run it on the race track once you got there. This one was good to run on the track as is came from the Porsche factory. Didn’t require a roll bar installation.
I asked around, including the Porsche dealer who could help me “prep” my GT3 for running on the track. The GT3 had an adjustable race-style suspension which was designed to modify the castor, camber and “toe-in” plus the sway bars. From the factory it was set for the street and mild cornering, but to really unlock its potential, I needed to find a “race shop” that knew what they were doing to put a “set-up” on the suspension. That is how I met my good friend, Spensor Cox, the owner of Speedsport Tuning on the post road in Norwalk. I had driven by it many times, often seeing some crazy souped-up rides “Fast and Furious “style parked by the side of the road.
Spenser used to always describe our relationship as, “I teach you how to drive and you teach me about God.” It was a great friendship. One morning we had breakfast with my mentor and great freind Harald. I’ll never forget we led Spenser to pray the sinner’s prayer. He grew up Catholic and knew Jesus, but didn’t really understand his sacrifice and how he wants to know us personally. He grew up with a picture of a distant, even angry God. But he was hungry for more. He knew there was more. Spenser passed away at 57 years old, just 15 years after we met. Life is short. Life is precious.
Spenser became my personal instructor, teaching me how to drive and race on track. I had never been before. In fact, in my desperation to try my GT3 on track, before Spensor started teaching me in the Porsche cub, I found another club that had availability and would let me drive at Lime Rock Park – a legitimate old school race track here in the backcountry of Connecticut. It was the Corvair club! Of all the groups that could have let me drive that first time without prior experience. The Chevy Corvair was always considered the poor man’s Porsche because it was the only rear-engine sports car made in America. It was also deemed by famous consumer protectionist Ralph Nader as “Unsafe at any Speed.” The shop had put a track-suitable suspension tune or “set-up” on by one of their technicians, Kip. I got to the track with my Dad. It was raining slightly. But the car felt terrible. I really wondered if had a made a big mistake trading my M5 to buy it – it was that bad. Not confidence inspiring. Twitchy. Especially through the last corner, a high speed downhill right-hander on to the front stretch. I went off at the left hander and touched the barrier. Aweful.
Well, I gave Spenser the report and he said, come with us to the Porsche Club Watkins Glen trip. So I did, again with my Dad. He drover the car and immediately saw the issue. Right at the track, he did an old school alignment using strings and mechanical tools. It totally transformed the car. Turned out all the instability I was feeling, especially downhill into the fast right-hander on to the front straight was due to a mistake in the alignment. I had toe-out in the rear, which is a big no-no in a rear engine car. It caused the rear end to “hunt” left and right and totally destabilized the car at the critical point of turn-in at entry. A tremendous lesson of car set-up making all the difference.
The spiritual analogy to all this was when God gives you a ministry, it is critical to follow his guide book (the Word) and be led by the Spirit when trying to “run the race”.
So I progressed at the Porsche club in the “Drivers Education” program – a tremendously helpful community of Porsche enthusiasts teaching one another how to drive on track. They have a color-coded classification of skill and experience level knowns as “run groups.”
This is liken spiritually to maturity and what we might call the process of “sanctification” – relearning life based on separating ourselves from evil and a “spirit of this world” which is carnal / sinful practices. Sometimes known as shedding the old man.
You have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.
Ephesians 4:21-24
In my life, God was showing me how to separate and disentangle myself from “Babylon”, which is a spirit of this world. Wall Street embraces the fear and greed associated with Babylon, but I hadn’t yet perceived it. Later what helped me see this was recalling when Jesus was tempted in the desert by the devil
The devil took Jesus up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’ ”
Matthew 4:8-10
See, the devil is always trying to temp us with a little bit of truth twisted into something else. I had always seen God’s blessing as one in the same with being a Wall Street titan or head of some large corporation – in Jesus name. That being successful and wealthy in this way was simply the “blessings” of a loving God. But instead, little by little God was showing me “you don’t want to drive this way” in your life nor your ministry. In fact in the full blown revelation, I now understand this truth:
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God.
2 Corinthians 6:14-16
So this separation, this sanctification is vital to understand. The business practices of this world – especially the essence of capitalism (make capital the number one thing), are not the ways of the Kingdom nor the ways of Jesus our God. Becoming a New Breed requires us to understand the ways of the Kingdom seven days a week, not just on Sundays. The issue isn’t doing business for profit. The issue is how you do your business. Here came the revelation
Gregg, I care more about how you make your money than what you do with it
To run this race of life. To endure well, with God’s help, requires renewing a right Spirit in us. To have clean hands and a pure heart. I had been so classically trained in business the world’s way, I had missed the greater work. The greater purpose. While we want excellence and efficiency in our business practices, the chief responsibility, the chief purpose in Christ is first, last, and always about the people. Helping people. Not making money. God can always bless us with profit as well. But if we make profit #1, we are always willing to compromise on everything else. We even do so without breaking any “laws” of the nations. But if we break the “laws” of God which are supposed to be written on our hearts, what good is profit anyway? We can’t take it with us into eternity, so why value it so in this life?
God cares about business because He loves when people help other people