Auto News 5

Parker Kligerman couldn't have looked more vulnerable. He had just completed a 200-mile race at Michigan International Speedway, driving with brio and making a daring late pass to win. Now he sat before reporters, a microphone in one hand, the other arm wrapped protectively around his ribs. A mop of toffee-colored hair swept over his eyes and ears. The blemishes on his cheeks threatened to outnumber the bristles on his chin. He spoke of returning home to Westport, Connecticut, for his high-school finals before next week's graduation.inline_mediumwraptextright27342706/features/racing/1001_parker_kligermans_big_adventure1001_16_z+parker_kligerman+nASCAR_nationwide_series_dodge_charger.jpgTrue

Yes, this is a wooden car. Forget the jokes. Anyone making more than mere decorative use of wood in an automobile has heard them all. And doesn't care. Wood is a magnificent structural material, "God's own composite," proclaimed the late Frank Costin, the brilliant technologist behind the glorious shapes of early Lotus cars, the Vanwall Formula 1 car, and-significantly-the plywood chassis of the Marcos in which a young Jim Clark won some of his first races.

A rally-racing Cayenne? Porsche factory driver Carles Celma is making a convincing argument for it, a twenty-foot rooster tail of shredded earth spewing from the rear tires as he power-slides down a straightaway. There's a hard, fast left ahead; the Spaniard left-foot brakes and-magically-the SUV transfers its two-and-a-half tons, sliding just short of a precipice that drops 100 feet into a valley. Celma sends the Cayenne bucking through a dry, sandy wash and then aims the vehicle down a narrow dirt track, blurred tree branches slapping hard at the windows.