19-Year-Old’s Sports Car Is Quite a Delivery Vehicle : Jobs: Val Stiefel turns some heads when he drives by in his red Porsche topped with its lighted Pizza Hut sign.
When Val Stiefel delivers pizzas, he not only gets there fast, he looks fast getting there.
Stiefel, 19, cruises on his rounds in a 1986 fire-red Porsche 944.
“I’ve gotten my share of comments,” said the Laguna Hills teen, who got the hot wheels from his mother two years ago when she bought a new car. “They say things like, ‘You only see things like this down here’ ” in Orange County.
One customer even took his picture next to the aerodynamically sleek machine topped with its lighted Pizza Hut sign.
“I’d just dropped off his pizza and was heading back to the car when he came running out with his camera,” Stiefel said.
A business administration major at USC, Stiefel said he took the delivery job a month ago simply because he needs spending money for his sophomore year this fall.
“This is the only job I’ve got. I don’t have my degree yet,” he said. “But when I do, I’ll buy a couple more.”
Yet, he’s found out the hard way that driving around with a pizza delivery sign on a fire-red sports car turns a police officer’s head about as fast as taking a turn at 110 m.p.h.
“I don’t speed, obviously,” he said. “But I’ve gotten a ticket already for running a stop sign. It kind of draws attention.”
He tried the line about the pizza getting cold. Didn’t work.
“I tried to use that as an excuse, that it was my last pizza, but he didn’t buy it.” The excuse that is, not the pizza.
Frankly, Stiefel said, a Porsche 944 is not the most efficient delivery vehicle on the road. There’s not much storage space and there’s the risk of saturating the upholstery with the scent of pepperoni.
“One time I had to put 35 pizzas in the back,” he said. “I was driving with all the windows down.”
At times the hassles get so bad he thinks about just selling it: “Maybe get something a little less conspicuous.”
But when reminded that he’ll be heading back to school in a couple of months, he reconsidered.
