Muscle cars - eye to eye with the d*** of a dachshound

TheEditor suggested Eye to Eye with the Wiener of a Wiener but gave in when it* was reminded of a political affair in the US, in which Twitter became sort of a digital Wiener mobile.

One of the many all time favorite subjects of the German media are American car modifications, from Coal Rollers to DeLoreans mounted on a chassis so high that a cherry picker is a good way to get into the vehicle, from gussied up Mercedes Benzes to fiery Porsches.

Germans talk a lot about cars. They make quite a few, too. And they brought the world the diesel engine, that indispensable workhorse of industrial power. 

Talking about cars, however, fulfills a role beyond male phantasies of wealth and velocity.
Car talk in the K-Lands is very much one of the few neutral social areas for, mostly, males, where they can meet across boundaries of work hierarchy and fill the silence that is so hard for average human males to accept.

In the category of vehicle modification, the more practical ones are generally those involving elevating the vehicle. German "sports" packages for everyday rides go the other way: the lower, the better.
Hugging the road, I believe, they call it.

Yet, every time one of those mods comes to within an eighth of an inch of our rear bumper on the autobahn, we pull over calmly and break into a huge smile. A smile, not a grin.

If the low rider driver sees the smile, he will consider it a friendly smile. 

What he does not know is the indelible memory of a ride in an original Porsche 911 through the land and through the towns.

When the driver pulled into a parking space at the curb, a dachshound was just lifting a hind leg at the parking meter, a yard or so away.

The height of the curb combined with the road hugging of the car was an in our face experience of  the joys of German sports cars.

Eye to eye with the wiener of a wiener.

That's where the smile comes from that we extend to every road hugger.

It is also the reason why later models of Porsche and other famous low riders have been elevated a couple of inches from the ground clearance of the liberated 1960s and 1970.

*  TheEditor insists on robust gender neutral forms of address, hence the it.