Last weekend, my wife and I took a few hours to take a scenic drive through some Ozark twisties. It’s a fun route I’ve done a few times on my motorcycle, and I was interested to see what it was like in the Polaris Slingshot.
The drive began with a quick trip into town to hit the car wash. I need photos for my paid review(s), and since I’d brought it home while the dirt road was still wet, it was filthy. Also, thanks to the horde of kittens that lives here, there’s no stopping muddy paws from getting all over everything, so a wash before any photo shoot is a necessity. Fortunately, the Slingshot is small, and it only takes $2 worth of car wash time and a towel to do the trick (everyone should know where their towel is).
Our cruise began down Route 74 toward Kingston. This is a fun cruise of mostly wide and moderate sweeping turns, few of which I even had to slow down for.
I’m building more and more confidence in the Slingshot’s cornering ability. It may only have one back tire, but it’s a 305 mm width used on many high-end sports and muscle cars, and there isn’t a lot of weight for it to carry. The low 5.4-inch ride height helps stability as well, and also makes it feel like I’m driving the Mach 8 out of Mario Kart. (The Tri-Speeder, modeled after a Morgan Three-Wheeler, is a more accurate analogy, but it’s one of the slower options I’ve tried. I feel far more confident than that in the Slingshot.) While it’s a little bit too easy to light up the back wheel under hard acceleration, even with traction control fully enabled (oops), as long as I drive through corners properly, there’s plenty of traction, even at medium-high speeds.
We paused in the center of Kingston to take a few photos as I slowly cruised around the town square. I want photos to show some of the small towns you’ll find in the Ozarks, and this was a great example, with just about no traffic to hold up during my slow laps around the pavilion in the middle of town.
We continued down Route 21, where the fast open sweepers continued with occasional tighter sections. It’s been a while since I’ve driven a ¿car? in a performance-oriented manner, simply because I haven’t had a car since selling my manual Mazda 6 when I first started van life. But it all came back to me–brake before the turn, heel-toe downshift a gear or two, ease off the brake while steering into the corner, then accelerate as the road straightens out. It feels good to get it right, and the Slingshot delivers that full satisfaction. Since there’s so little to it compared to modern sports cars, even the Mazda Miata, it’s a raw, unfiltered experience, one that an enthusiast like me would truly enjoy. Even modern sports cars dull it down quite a bit with all their driver aids and electric power steering that provides even less feedback than a Logitech racing sim wheel.
We turned down Route 16, through Arbaugh and Pettigrew, stopping for a few more photos along the way. After experimenting a bit, aside from the dirt road we live on, I’ve been driving exclusively in Slingshot mode. It’s named after the vehicle itself, rather than the usual “Sport” mode, because that’s the mode you should always drive it in unless you have a specific need for Comfort mode. The dirt road is a good reason for its lighter steering and slower throttle response. But otherwise, it’s Slingshot mode for me.
I made no new discoveries from then on, and just continued enjoying the drive and linking one turn into the next into the next. I took a wrong turn that cut our drive shorter than I’d planned, but neither of us cared. We were having fun, which was what this journey was all about–much like a motorcycle ride.
I should point out that our helmets and Cardo communicators made the journey much more pleasant. We didn’t have to shout at each other, or ride in silence because the wind and engine noise were too loud. We just carried on a pleasant conversation the whole way, just like we do on our motorcycles. If you happen to drive a Slingshot regularly, I highly recommend a Cardo or Sena helmet intercom, or one of their less expensive no-name competitors.
During these conversations along the way, we decided to cook up hot dogs on the grill for the family when we got home, so we stopped at Walmart to pick up a few things. Cargo space is almost non-existent in the Slingshot, but it does have an enormous glove compartment, plus a storage area behind each seat just big enough to stash a full-face helmet into. I don’t think I could do a week’s worth of grocery shopping with a passenger on board, since I’d have to use the passenger seat for cargo, but there was plenty of storage space for a small shopping run like this.
I had a lot of work Monday, and the rest of this week has been quite rainy, so I haven’t gotten the Slingshot out since the weekend. I do have plans for an even longer loop out through Jasper and Route 123, and what they call the Arkansas Dragon. I’ve done it on my V-Strom with my friend Glen of Tenere Across the USA, and I’m looking forward to trying some more technical twists and turns than this route gave me.
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