Re: GTV6 vs 911

[Carscribe@domain.elided]

<<If it were up to me and I was setting up a car for my wife to drive I would purchase a GTV-6, Install a 3.0 liter motor, have the interior redone in leather, Install some 16 x 7 Rims with 50 series tires, Lower
the supension slightly and stiffen it.  Lighten the transmission gears and give it a good paint job.>>

Glenn--
A note on the 16X7 wheels you're considering fitting. In the course of writing the GTV-6 Project Car series at European Car magazine, we spent many days at a southern California tire shop and at Kinesis Wheels fitting and trying many different wheel and tire combinations on our slighty lowered GTV-6. After much grief and a number of skinned knuckles, we found the the GTV-6 to be very sensitive to wheel and tire size in the front. Wider wheels, or larger diameter wheels, and a number of different tire sizes would rub the rear mounts of the front airdam in jounce when turning at a minimum and in jounce when going straight in the worst case. Not a big deal on most cars, but on the GTV-6 it ripped off the airdam (!) a number of times on whatever side it rubbed, damaging the airdam progressively more each time. The airdams are very hard to find now, and ran about $300 when we finally found one. 

This turned out to be a serious issue, and again after much trial fitments found that the only wheel/tire size combination that did not rub in the entire use regimen were wheels that were 15X7, 35 or 32 offset, fitted with 205/50/15 tires. We did not try 45 series tires or lower, as anything less than 225 in a 45 doesn't make much sense and is a poor compromise in several ways. 

For the record the car was lowered appx. 2 inches from stock ride height in the front and 1 1/2 in the rear. 

The article outlining this effort should still be up at GTV6.org, though after recently reading it, I found it a little short on meat and potatoes and a bit long on adjectives. Sorry.

Hope this helps,
Paul Mitchell

BTW-- Not only Porsches roll over. If this was a new Carrera that went over, it's certainly driver error and not design deficiency. I used to get the project GTV-6 on two wheels consistently at the track, always due to pushing too hard. And for genuinely foul handling, try a first series stock RX-7.

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