Driving the spectacular $106,000 Porsche 718 Spyder rearranged my consciousness

The Porsche 718 Spyder is a high-speed vision quest.Matthew DeBord/Insider

• I drove the glorious 2020 Porsche 718 Spyder, a high-performance convertible two-seater that goes for a well-optioned $105,780.
• The Spyder has a new 414-horsepower flat-six engine that's devoid of turbochargers and, in my car, mated to a crisp six-speed manual transmission.
• The Spyder traces it lineage to the open-air racers of the 1950s.
• It isn't a practical car, but it is the best Porsche money can buy — and, for me, a ticket to happiness.

"The colors tremble and vibrate."

That's a line from the title poem in Frederick Seidel's 1998 collection "Going Fast," a work crammed with references to the motorcycles Seidel loves.

Speed is a combination of reality and perception — we understand it as it's happening — and on a motorbike, you'd better be processing what's going on and doing it with all available gray matter and muscle memory.

The colors don't tremble or vibrate quite as much in a car. In many cars, they're positively immobile. But as I'm not riding these days, I take what I can get from four-wheelers.

A few weeks ago, Porsche lent me a 718 Spyder, model year 2020. Over a week's time, I didn't just reacquaint myself with the trembling and the vibrating. I found some new colors.