Winging It

Two of the most exotic sportscars in the world, in one garage in Kerala. We head up to the Wayanad hills to let rip

- Sirish Chandran

“WHERE CAN YOU DRIVE THESE CARS?”

If I had a buck for every time I’ve been asked this question, I’d own one of the two cars here. And at least I have an expressway and two relatively empty hill climbs twenty minutes from where I live. Ashique Thahir lives in Kerala where there are no expressways; not even dual carriageways. Of hills there are plenty, in fact it is only hills, but the roads slicing through them run from one village into another and then another without so much as a pause to sip coconut water. The population density is incredible and the only time the roads are free is when a general strike is being enforced with a zeal the Malayalis reserve for what they call ‘bandhs’.

Yet, where there’s passion, there’s a solution. A solution that starts at 5 in the morning, for that’s when Calicut (or Kozhikode) alternately wakes up to the wail of a V8, the shriek of a V10 or the thunder of a flat-six. Today Calicut is in for a treat, there’s shrieking overlaid by thundering — a complex overlay of sounds that I desperately lack the talent to put into words. It is unholy. It has the devil’s horns imprinted all over it. “You take the GT3,” says Ashique all too aware of my personal bias for Porsche, having warmed up what is a motorsport homologation engine. He contorts into the Performante like a yoga guru and juices the throttle. I assume the windows of his home are made of bulletproof glass, there’s no way normal glass doesn’t shatter with the pitch, fury and intensity of the V10’s death-wail. Mothafuckka.