Perky Piper picks a peck of purring perks

Although Jim looks like he was built for comfort, when one mentions engines, jets, speed, horsepower, or even Mach 1, the pupils in his cobalt blue eyes contract. His pulse rate increases. A pensive smile crosses his lips and there's a wicked twinkle in his Irish-German eyes.

The trouble with Piper, 55, a mechanical engineer and inventor, is he is infatuated with anything that whirs, purrs and whines. If you can stuff your body into it and be propelled at exhilarating speeds from one point to another, wrap it up. He'll take it home That can mean anything from a jet plane (he was a Marine fighter pilot) to Ferraris, of which he owns three.

In 1965, Piper, was one of the first, if not the first, in the South Bay to install solar panels on the roof of his home on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Since then, he has accumulated nine patents on various energy conserving solar-related hardware

Two years before he installed those initial solar panels, he purchased a 1954 250 GT Berlineta Ferrari for $3,750. Six children later, he has just about com pletely renovated the car which he claims is now worth more than $100,000.

Since he is the only person I know who drives a Ferrari, and since beautiful, powerful automobiles, especially the kind that Tom Selleck drives in his TV series, are way down on my priority list, out of curiosity I asked for a ride the other day.

We jumped into his $80,000 '77 Ferrari-red GTB, the one with the 4.4 liter V-12 Ferrari engine, and leapt away from a side street near his company, Catalyst Thermal Energy Systems Corp., . onto a busy Irvine street, leaving traffic far behind.

As the wind blew a shrill whistle outside the windows, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible, I shouted, "How fast is this thing goin'?" Piper was too busy flying his Ferrari to reply... It appeared that as both hands gripped the steering wheel, a third manipulated the gearshift. The crazy, elated expression on his face indicated that we were about to break the sonic barrier. Instead, we took a corner easily and came to a smooth stop.

"Well?" he asked, smiling like a guy who's celebrating the birth of triplets, "what do you think?" The time trials only took a few seconds. But for me it was an exhilarating eternity. Over the years I've met several well-known professional race drivers, including Bobby Unser and Craig Breedlove. The one thing they have in common is a cockeyed, devil-may-care attitude which is reflected in their eyes. Though Piper has never raced on a track, he has that same aura about him, "Sure beats any of the rides at Disneyland, but I'd still take my Honda," I replied, then added: "Could this car be entered in a real race?"

"It can probably beat a lot of race cars," said Piper. "It's an extremely unusual automobile. It's tractable when you drive it through traffic. It'll get about 16 miles to a gallon on the highway. It doesn't heat up. You can use it to go grocery shopping. The plugs don't foul while you're driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Yet, it is capable of blinding speeds."

"Are you supposed to drive like this on California streets?" I asked.

"Only when I'm giving you a demonstration of speed," he said, mischievously twinkling the cobalt blues.

"Are you one of those guys who travels in life's fast lane? I mean, you seem to be obsessed with speed and adventure. In your office, you have Ferrari pillows on the couch, Ferrari posters, pictures, even a toy Ferrari."

"When I was a kid," explained Piper, "my heroes weren't the same as most kids. Superman for me was race drivers like Troy Ruttman, Manuel Ayulo and midget racer Ed Haddad. I'd take guys like Chuck Yeager and Bill Bridgeman, the first pilots who flew faster than the speed of sound, over Clark Gable or Errol Flynn any day. I've always been more impressed by people who accomplish real things in life rather than fantasy.

"I appreciate power and quality performance in a machine. I respect speed. I haven't had a ticket in 20 years." he continued.

When Piper was 3, recalled his mother, Mary, "we bought him a cute little cream-colored peddle car and hid it behind the Christmas tree. It was the first thing Jim pulled out. He put his little hands on his knees and said, 'Oh, and wed wheels, too!' From that time on, he remained fascinated by machines.

"Jim was always an adventurer. If he wasn't on the roof, he was down in the sewer. I don't know where he got his mechanical aptitude. When the car wouldn't start, his dad would kick the tires. That's how mechanical-minded he was," she laughed.

Recently, Jim took his 82-year-old mother for a spin in his Ferrari. As they headed down the street, she snapped at her only son, "You're breaking the speed limit. Slow down!"

"But mom," he argued, "all the cars are passing us!"

"I don't care about those idiots. Just do what your mother says!" she ordered.

So Jim Piper, the man with high octane spirit, slowly drove his white haired mother home. When asked if she enjoyed driving her son's Ferrari, she replied:

"We didn't drive, we flew. Contraptions like that, who needs them?"