OK, I'll Shut Up After This (911)

[Ron Horowitz <RonHorowitz@domain.elided>]

Hello, Rick,

>that you just "tap" a 911 on entering a corner to spin it out...any car
>during set up phase or entry into a corner will mass transfer forward onto
>the front wheels (or more clearly the loaded outside front wheel) lighting
>up the back of the car making it easy to "help around".

However, with the mass of the engine etc. at the back, and with the
relatively poor geometry of the semi-trailing arm rear suspension, the 911
"formula" adds up to much less stability under braking than the
front-engine rear-drive formula. A GTV6, for instance, has a relatively
high "dumbell effect," meaning a much higher force (a bang instead of a
tap) would be required to get the car spinning. A car with a center of mass
substantially forward, such as maybe a Mustang or something like that,
would be even more difficult to spin out, since the rear has even less say
about the trajectory of the rest of the car. Mitigating circumstances
aside, a 911 under heavy braking has a tremendous force vector coming from
the rear, aft of the center of braking force. Like balancing a broom in the
air instead of hanging it from a hook, the instability is self evident.

>By the way if such
>an incident was not reported to the tower by the corner workers for later
>discussion I'd want to know why, rubbin-aint racin.

Of course not. Be that as it may, it was an observation made by a friend
used merely to illustrate a point, i.e., that the 911 "formula" is a recipe
for instability. The comment was not meant as a suggestion for sportsman
like behavior. Of course, neither is blocking a faster car to be considered
sportman like behavior.

> harder to
>drive, to get up on the "knife edge", but had more performance potential.

You are correct that all things being equal, a 911 is both more difficult
to drive and faster than a comparable front-engine, rear-drive vehicle.
This is due primarily to the higher power to weight ratio and to superior
weight transfer under acceleration and breaking. Porsche wasn't an idiot,
just kind of hard headed, and the pros and cons couldn't have been lost on
him the way they seem to be on many of us!

In the main, my point isn't that 911's aren't fast. They are. My point is
that they are miserable, unpleasant things to drive, which is sometimes a
matter of taste, but often, an utter lack thereof. To me, anyway,
acceleration and braking aren't fun like sweet handling, but the "dragster
and parachute" approach is the faster way around a track. Call it silly
banter if you want, or the free exchange of ideas. A 911 does what it does
and feels the way it does for physical reasons that have little to do with
personal opinions, likes or dislikes. Discussing the disadvantages
objectively or otherwise can be taken as an insult, but that's up to you.

I should mention that my father drove 911's for around 20 years, one of my
brothers and one of my cousins worked as mechanics in Porsche 911 repair
shops, and my other brother drives a 911 Targa everyday, autocrossing it
periodically. I've driven around a half dozen or so 911's, and I still
can't stand them. I hear the new rear-engine Porsches are actually pretty
nice, BTW, but then, there's a hell of a lot of engineering between the new
ones and the old 911....

--
to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided