Porsche Market Letter | Excellence
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I just had what could be considered the perfect three days
for anyone who really loves cars and driving them. Sunday I drove up to Reno to
meet the new 911 Turbo. For the drive up I chose Ebbetts Pass. I have not been
through the Ebbetts Pass since 1962 when I bought my first Porsche 356. That
year I made a project of driving back and fourth through most of the Sierra
passes. These are really great roads for people who love cars and love driving.
The roads are marvelous and if you are reasonably judicious about selecting
your time of driving through them the traffic is not too bad. It is also nice
to have a driving instrument like the new Boxster S. I drove up Sunday
afternoon and met with the Porsche gang at the Reno Hilton.
Sunday evening the Porsche folks took us to the National
Automobile Museum in Reno. This is a great collection, which was started with a
seed gift of 100 cars from the Holiday Inn, who purchased the Harrahs casinos
and got his collection of over 2000 cars thrown in for good measure. The museum
was originally supposed to have gotten 250 cars from the Holiday Inn, but after
the Holiday Inn started auctioning the cars of they found out that old cars
were worth money, lots of money. And once they found out just how much old cars
were worth they got less generous with the cars. Holiday Inn sold a 1931
Bugatti Royal out of the collection for $6.5 million the most any car had sold
for up until that time. They never did give the Museum all of the cars that
they promised them, but the museum has augmented that first 100 cars with cars
donated and loaned to the museum by other car enthusiast that wish to see the
museum succeed.
I ran into our old friend Walter Minato at the Museum. He is
one of the Museum’s volunteers and he acted as the technical authority for our
tour through the collection. We had a very nice meal catered for the group right
in the museum.
Monday morning at about 7:45 we went to the Reno PCNA
Service Training Center for breakfast and a technical presentation on the new
Turbo. They didn’t answer all of my questions, but at least I knew more than
before. Fortunately I hung around the hospitality suite Monday evening while
the factory engineers were still there and they were willing to answer all of
my questions. It all started when I asked the project leader what I should tell
people who asked me why the brakes squeaked on some of the new cars and not
others, the answer was that they don’t squeak. That sounds like the German way
to me. The good news was that they were willing to answer the other questions
that I couldn’t get anyone else to answer. My big question for them was how the
VarioCam Plus worked, the printed information that I have seen so far was not
that helpful and the subject was not covered in depth in the introduction
presentation.
Basically the way the VarioCam Plus works is that there are
two different sized camshaft lobes on the intake camshafts and a magic
hydraulic intake cam followers. The small cam lobe has a lift of 3 mm and a
very mild profile. The second, larger cam lobe has 10 mm of lift with a more
aggressive profile. At lower rpms and lower performance levels the engine
operates on the three mm lift cam. This optimizes both emissions and performance
at low load and low rpms. Then as you pick up the pace the helical drive
mechanism on the front of the camshaft advances the cam by 15 degrees extending
the duration and improving the engine’s performance. When you really stick your
foot into the throttle the cam followers switch over to the 10 mm cam profiles
for peak torque and power.
The DME engine management system determines when these
changes happen depending on a variety of inputs including the drivers torque
and power requirements, the throttle position, temperatures, loads gear
selection and what not. All of these inputs are compared with the control maps
and then the system determines which operating configuration is best for the
given operating conditions. It is possible to run as fast as 100 m.p.h. on the
smaller 3 mm cam under light load conditions. But when you stick your foot into
it the engine switches to the larger more aggressive 10 mm cams and you GO! You
can actually feel the transition from the 3 mm to the 10 mm cams if you drive along
at light throttle in the 3000 rpm range and gently tip your foot into the
throttle. You will feel a slight bump when this transition happens. It is very
subtle, but I noticed the bump and felt that I must have something to do with
the VarioCam Plus operation. I asked the engineer about this and he said, yes
that was when the system made the transition for the 3 mm cam to the 10 mm cam.
As I said it was very subtle and probably most people wouldn’t notice it unless
they looked for it. I stumbled onto the bump and went back and looked for it
and found that it was repeatable. Both the cam timing and the cam lift are
controlled by the engine oil pressure. Remember this is a dual overhead cam
engine with one intake and one exhaust cam for each bank of cylinders. The
intake cam timing altered with respect to the exhaust cam by directing the oil
pressure to one side or the other of the helical camshaft adjuster. When the
pressure is on the outside the cam is retarded and when the pressure is
diverted to the inside the cam is advanced relative to the exhaust cam
increasing the valve timing overlap. The cam timing is actually advanced by 15
degrees or 30 crankshaft degrees by this mechanism.
Each intake cam has three lobes for each valve, the little 3
mm bump straddled by two 10 mm bumps. The intake cam follower is actually two
cam followers in one. The operation of the cam follower is also hydraulically
controlled by the engine‘s oil pressure. The two portions of the cam follower
are interlocked hydraulically by means of a pin which is actuated by an
electrohydraulic solenoid valve. The cam follower has an extension that goes up
and rides on the little bump, as conditions change first the intake cam is
advanced 15 degrees relative to the exhaust cam, which increases the duration
and enhances performance. Next the cam follower is changed so that the center
extension drops down and the outer edges of the follower rides on the two 10 mm
cam lobes. This transition is in addition to the advance that was already cranked
in by the helical cam advance mechanism so now you have both the additional
advance and the 7 mm higher lift of the 10 mm cam profiles. This is very
fascinating technology resulting in incredible performance over the whole rpm
range.
We started the ride and drive portion of the introduction at
9:30 Monday morning heading out of Reno towards the south and Carson City.
There were four new Turbos for the ride and drive portion of the intro and
eight journalists, so we paired up and my partner was Allan Caldwell, Tech
Editor for the Porsche Club‘s Panorama magazine. Allan and I are old pals so
this was a fun association for us both. Allan and I drew the new Tiptronic
version of the new 996 Turbo for the first half of the ride and drive. I drove
first and we drove for three or four miles on the town streets before I had a
chance to stick my boot in it. When we finally turned onto the 395 highway on
ramp heading south I went for it and we saw 100 M.P.H. plus for the first time
of the day. And that was before we were at the end of the on ramp. We still had
plenty of time to slow and merge with traffic when we hit the freeway… brakes
are good too.
We turned off of 395 onto 431, the Mt. Rose Highway to Lake
Tahoe, the idea being to show the journalist from other parts of the country
some great roads and a good look at some of the beautiful sights around Reno.
Bob Carlson, a native Californian, who is very familiar with the Reno area
having been assigned there for several years with PCNA before moving to Atlanta
a couple of years ago laid out the route. The route returned to 395 via Highway
50 and we continued south.
Our next detour, right after returning to 395, was off onto
Jacks Valley Road to Genoa which was about six miles to the West. Genoa is the
"Oldest settlement in Nevada--Established 1851." We had a rest stop
in the "Genoa Saloon", which is the oldest bar in Nevada. After our
rest and a drink we switched drivers and drove south along the foot hills and
over to Woodfords and Markleeville on the California side of the boarder to set
us up for highway 89 through the Monitor Pass, which took us back to 395 again.
This was a pass I had never been through before. The pass is very lightly
traveled and great fun to drive. All of this was over on the California side.
Even though this was a Monday and these roads are fairly
lightly traveled they are mostly all two-lane roads so we had many
opportunities to pass. The new Turbo is a wonderful car for passing, I have
never driven a car with so much passing power. With the 415 hp and the
virtually flat torque curve of 413 lb of torque from about 2500 rpm to almost
5000 rpm, with it peak torque of 415 lb ft. at 6000 rpm it is very willing to
pass at almost any speed. We found that we could pass in very short spaces,
spaces that would probably not consider a passing opportunity in lesser cars,
we also found that these passing maneuvers usually resulted in a terminal speed
of 100 m.p.h. or greater. One time on the second day of driving while we were passing
one of those three trailer trucks that are so common over in Nevada we actually
saw 142 M.P.H. before slowing back to our normal brisk cruising speed.
After Monitor pass we headed south again. Through Topaz,
Coleville and Walker on our way to Bridgeport for our lunch stop. After lunch
we traded some of the other journalist for one of the a six-speed cars and
headed back across to Highway 182 and 388 which are also some wonderful driving
roads on the Nevada side. This took us up to Wellington where we turned onto
208 and headed back for 395 where we turned north for Carson City. At Carson
City we switched drivers and Allan drove over through Virginia City. We saw all
of the skid marks were they hold the Virginia City hill climb. We cruised the
main in Virginia City and then headed back for the hotel in Reno so we could
rush to get ready for dinner. A wonderful driving experience for us both and in
all about 280 mile of mostly great Porsche roads. If you really enjoy driving
you owe it to yourself to get over to the Sierras and drive some of these
roads.
We liked both the Tiptronic S and the Six-Speed and didn’t
feel put upon having been "stuck" with the Tiptronic. The new
Tiptronic for the Turbo has 250 shift maps, so it adapts quickly to your
driving style and for the given conditions. This new Tiptronic is amazing in
addition to all of the maps this magic transmission actually has two reverse
gears one has a ratio oaf 3.16 and the other 1.93. The transmission hardware
actually comes from Daimler-Chrysler. Porsche adopted the twin reverse function
from them to improve steep driveway climbing performance when the engine is
cold. They do not want the drivers to get into the turbo boost phase by
depressing the gas pedal too far with a long gear ratio when the engine is cold
so they select the lower gear for this condition. The driver actually has no
influence over which reverse gear ration is chosen it is selected by the
computer.
The one thing that I don’t like about the Tiptronic is the
silly little buttons on the steering wheel. When you are really driving fast
they are damn near impossible to find. If they were going to do something like
that they should go with the paddles like Ferrari has. I will have an
opportunity to spend more time with the Tiptronic in July when I have the Tip
car for most of a week. I will take the time to learn more about the
capabilities of this transmission, it is hard to learn very much about cars
that are as complex as these new Turbos are in one of these short ride and drive
sessions. The cars are getting to be so complex that they should probably mail
an owners manual to the journalist a week or so before one of these intros so
we can bone up on the features of the cars.
We really did like the new Turbos and the only things that
we found to complain about was the warts on the front bumper and the digital
dash display. I found that I could not read the dash display with my Polaroid
sunglasses on and since we needed the odometer reading to run the route this
was a problem. The Turbo dash uses a dot matrix display instead of the segment
display used in the 996 and Boxster .The route was laid out like a rally with
the instructions based on the mileage traveled. After the lunch stop the sun
was somewhat in our eyes so I had decided to wear my sunglasses. I actually had
to take them off to read the odometer, after a few miles of this I gave up and
went back to my regular glasses and squinted. One other minor point is that
they have moved the digital speedometer over into the analog speedometer. I
have grown accustomed to it being centered on the steering wheel in the
tachometer from the Boxsters and other 996s that I have been driving and found
it more awkward to look over to the left at the speedometer. If you would have
asked me before the first time that I drove a Boxster or 996 if I would like
and use the digital speedometer I would have told you no, because I usually
hate digital instrumentation of any kind, particularly wrist watches and
clocks, but I have grown fond and dependant on them.
Aside form the warts that they have put on the front bumpers
to comply with the bumper laws I really like the modern aggressive look of this
Turbo. I have never liked the bulbous look of the earlier Turbos. This car was
designed to have huge wheels and tires (8x18" with 225/40 tires up front
and 11/18" with 295/30 tires in the rear) that fit within the standard
body work so it does not have that awkward look of a car with added on huge
fender flares. The car is 2.6 inches wider in the rear than the standard 996
model, but it isn’t objectionable. It has the aggressive, stylish looks
designed in and doesn’t take on the overly fat look of its predecessors. Also
the ride of this car is really pretty good even with the extremely low profile
tires. In contrast recently rode in a 993 Turbo Look with sport suspension and
18 inch wheels and the ride was unbearable.
It is distinctive looking with its huge front radiator
openings, the three radiators themselves have 50% more surface areas than the
standard 996. The leading edge of the rear fenders have the very functional air
inlets for the Turbo intercoolers. Again the appearance is an integral design
and doesn’t have that added on look of the old Turbo flares had. The air from
the intercoolers exits below the rear bumper through 959ish louvers. The new
trick xenon headlights look cool but we never got to drive the cars in the dark
so I don’t have a clue how effective they are. Another thing that the have
changed on this version of the Turbo is he rear wing. Apparently the Europeans
object to the looks of rear wings so Porsche has made every effort to minimize
the presence of the wing. They have also done this with all of their normally
aspirated cars having them fold completely out of sight when the cars are at
rest. Though not completely out of site the Turbo wing is much smaller than
previous versions on the Turbo, partially because they have moved the
intercoolers into the rear fenders so that they didn’t have to make room for
the intercooler under the rear engine lid and wing. The Turbo rear wing is also
able to be more subtle because it also extends at speed like the normally
aspirated 996 and Boxster do. All of this fits into the more subtle design of
the new Porsches. The new Turbo is by no means subtle, it is still a very
aggressive looking car, but it is not overstated like the earlier Turbos were.
Monday night’s dinner was out at the Bowers Mansion which
was built in 1864 by Alison and Sandy Bowers who had earned their fortune from
silver in the Comstock Lode. Their claim produced riches they could not have
imagined. They built their mansion half way between Reno and Carson City in
Washoe Valley. They built a great stone mansion and furnished it with
furnishings that they purchased on a ten month trip to Europe. Their mansion
was completed in 1884 for about $200,000 including their European furnishings.
Besides another great meal the highlight of the evening was that Samuel Clemens
joined us for dinner. It was uncanny, this guy really looked and sounded like
Mark Twain. Apparently he makes a living by impersonating Mark Twain, he was a
fascinating guy. He set at our table of five during dinner and was a
fascinating fellow. He popped in and out of character and really knew his
history when it came to Twain. The significance of him being there is Mark
Twain really got his start writing for the newspaper of Virginia City where the
Comstock Silver mother load was mined. It was an evening of good food, good
company and good entertainment.
The second day of the event, Tuesday, was out on the Black
Rock Dry Lake which has been the site of the Burning Man hoo ha for the past
ten years and the World Land Speed Record that broke the sound barrier at
763.035 mph in 1997. At 8:00 Am we left the Reno Hilton for a trip of a little
more than 110 miles out to Gerlach and the Black Rock Dry Lake. This dry lake
bed is huge, so we could see why it had been chosen as the sight for attempts
at the land speed record. I am not sure what the appeal is for the Burning Man
whackos, but there were 28,000 of them there last year. Driving out to the lake
and back was another fun high speed tour, but Bob Carlson warned us that the
week before someone had been stopped for speeding on one of the Indian
reservations out there for 3 miles over the speed limit and fined $500 cash. I
guess that gambling casinos aren’t viable options for them in Nevada so they
have to be more creative to make a living out there. Bob went on to say that
one of his guys had been stopped twice on his way out there that very morning
and talked himself out of a ticket both time. I asked him what the good news
was, he replied that the road was very straight and you could see for miles. As
it turned out even with us religiously abiding by the very restrictive speed limits
on the reservations we still made it out to the lakebed at an average speed of
75 - 80 M.P.H. from the hotel.
Their idea was to have us each establish our own personal
high speed driving record. I am sure that conceptually they expected us all to
be able to blast through this event at speeds approaching 200 m.p.h. They
brought two of the early production cars over for the speed runs, one was
chassis number 0011 and the other was 0020, so they were very early cars. They
said that the modifications were limited to safety modifications. Both cars had
a pair of racing seats, a roll cage and five-point seat belts. They were both
Euro spec cars so they were 20 mm lower than the US version, but they told us
that otherwise they were stock. They actually looked very much like the four
cars that we had been driving around for two days except for the Euro lighting
differences.
Unfortunately the dry lake bed surface was not very good for
this sort of activity this year and the cars became very unstable at speeds
much above 180 m.p.h. The Porsche troops had gone out to check the sight out on
Sunday before the event started and became very concerned about the safety
aspect of their planed event. Bob Carlson and one of the factory engineers got
the cars greatly out of shape at speed above an indicated 190 M.P.H., so they
became concerned and decided to control the event. Hurley Haywood showed up
late Sunday evening so they waited until he got a chance to check out the site
before making their decision of what to do. While we were out on our ride and
drive on Monday Hurley was out at the Black Rock Lake bed deciding what would
be safe for all when each of the four waves made the full speed runs at the dry
lake surface.
Hurley said that to him it felt like driving in the rain
when you got up to the higher speeds. As a result they regrouped and created a
speed run on the dry lake that allowed them to control the top speed so that
they could save us from ourselves. Since Hurley rode with all of us they were
trying to save him as well. I think that it was really that they didn’t want to
have to call our wives, girlfriends and what not and tell them that they had
killed us off. The original plan was to have a course that was four miles long
and just leave the speed up to each driver's discretion.
As it ended up the speed run was still a lot of fun, but not
as much fun as it would have been if we had been turned loose. What they did
was shorten the course that we were to run on to three miles total. We were
told to run the first mile at about 100-125 M.P.H. and then accelerate through
the second mile and maintain that speed through the third mile and see how fast
we went. Our speeds were measured through the third mile and given an average
speed through the mile as well as a speed trap at the end of the measured mile.
So as you can see it was a controlled top speed run, it really depended on how
early on in the run you really got into it for serious. This was pretty obvious
to some and they were the ones who went the fastest.
They had a course laid out that was about fifty feet wide
that was marked by a string of orange pylons on each side. We each got one
practice run to the side of the real course at a speed limited to a speed of
about 150 mph. Because there had been so much traffic up and back on that side
of the course there were a lot of ruts on that side. I don’t know about the
other side I never went over there. As a result of the ruts on what we used as
a practice course it was actually pretty scary. We all dutifully did what we
were told on the practice course for fear that they would not let us take our
official run on the real course if we misbehaved. Because of this you really
didn’t know what to expect on your real run. Between this really unstable
surface for the practice run and all of their concern based on their running
before we got our turns they created a high level lot of anxiety in all of us.
It turned out that the real course was smoother than our
practice course had been and it was a lot more comfortable to run and a lot of
fun. About half way through the first mile on the real course Hurley told me to
get on it, and it dawned on me that there was actually a way to control our top
speed through the run. The guy who ran after me was clever enough to figure this
out by himself and took off right from the beginning on a tear. Sure enough, he
beat me by a mile or two per hour.
USAC (United States Auto Club) actually did the timing and
gave us a great-framed Certificate of Performance for our run. My run was 177.165
mph or 285.120 km/h through the speed trap at the end. As I said I was not
fastest, one of the other guys went a mile or two per hour faster. Since after
our group ran the word was out on how to go faster and since it is really a
rather subjective thing I am sure that by the time the other three waves made
their runs that others were also faster. My average speed through the measured
mile was 173. 871 so it is obvious that I could have been faster if I was
allowed or clever enough to get into the throttle earlier in the run.
I would have liked a second timed run because after my first
run I was comfortable with the whole process and no longer nervous. One of the
other journalists did get a second timed run because they had missed his time
on his real run. At the time he did not seem to share my enthusiasm for the
second run idea, he turned a rather ashen color when they told him he would
have to run again. However, after his second run he thought it was a great
thing and also felt more comfortable with the whole thing.
There were only four of the new Turbos in the press fleet so
there were only four for the ride and drive portion of the event. The number of
cars was what limited the press numbers to eight for each wave and there were
to be four waves so by the time they are done 32 members of the press will have
had a crack at the rather arbitrary high speed run. I was hoping to break my
own personal existing speed record which was 300 Km in one of Ruf’s cars on the
autobahn a few years ago, which translates to 186 mph, but it was not to be. I
had a great time, but no new personal speed record.
I left Reno at about 4:00 PM Tuesday afternoon and came home
through Kit Carson Pass. I got lost once and stopped at our family ranch in
Linden, CA for awhile and arrived home at about 9:00 in the evening. The trip
up and the trip back plus getting lost a couple of times put almost exactly 650
miles on the Boxster S. I still love all versions of the Boxster and
particularly the Boxster S that I drove up to Reno in. However, after driving
around for two days in the Turbo I really missed the extra performance of the
Turbo. You had to think more about what you were doing when you thought about
passing, because the difference in passing distance is very noticeable. I think
that my biggest impression of the new Turbo is the stunning acceleration at any
speed. The car is wonderful, if it were in the budget I would order one today.
Porsche wheels are commonly known as among the finest car Porsche wheels in the world. This car manufacturer is almost associated to top quality in cars, that has been resulted by several years of great experience within the car industry. In 2009 Porsche saw it fit to make a number of comprehensive modifications towards the 997 lineup, most of these modifications included several little styling modifications.
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