Porsche: Carrera GT News
09-29-2003, 07:01 AM
#44
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So, love it, or hate it, reaction from most here. Naturally. I think, that's what Porsche intended with this car.
I'm also not particularly fond of the exterior, design similarities of other Porsche cars. But what Porsche did here was to create a car which, other, future Porsche cars, would attract design clues from.
ALready, from spy photos of the next 911 offering, we can clearly see that it borrowed from the GT. Same with the next Boxster.
Finally, it looks like it takes a half a million dollar car, for Porsche to pay attention to the interior. That tells you how low in their priorities it is.
I'm also not particularly fond of the exterior, design similarities of other Porsche cars. But what Porsche did here was to create a car which, other, future Porsche cars, would attract design clues from.
ALready, from spy photos of the next 911 offering, we can clearly see that it borrowed from the GT. Same with the next Boxster.
Finally, it looks like it takes a half a million dollar car, for Porsche to pay attention to the interior. That tells you how low in their priorities it is.
09-29-2003, 11:32 AM
#45
Cost Drivers!!!!
Originally posted by Red Nj-s
The more i look at it, the more I realize how much it is lacking in exoticness.
It looks like Toyota could make it, and pop a 4 cyl in it. GM's concept car (sunfire or something) is more stunning than this.
It is unidentifiable as a Porsche, and it is not stunning/fast enough to be worth the cost.
I just don't get it.
The more i look at it, the more I realize how much it is lacking in exoticness.
It looks like Toyota could make it, and pop a 4 cyl in it. GM's concept car (sunfire or something) is more stunning than this.
It is unidentifiable as a Porsche, and it is not stunning/fast enough to be worth the cost.
I just don't get it.
Another worthwhile post........
09-29-2003, 12:30 PM
#46
The sizzle in the Steak
Originally posted by Zapata
Another worthwhile post........
Another worthwhile post........
10-06-2003, 06:10 PM
#47
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Journalist managed to blow up the V10 in a Porsche Carrera GT
A German journalist was left red-faced after destroying the V10 engine in Porsche's £300,000 Carrera GT on a test drive.
Apparently, he changed down from fifth gear and selected second rather than fourth while on the autobahn and doing a three-figure speed. An insider at the car maker commented: "It was a bit of a mess. And you can imagine how much these titanium engines cost."
Apparently, he changed down from fifth gear and selected second rather than fourth while on the autobahn and doing a three-figure speed. An insider at the car maker commented: "It was a bit of a mess. And you can imagine how much these titanium engines cost."
10-07-2003, 12:36 AM
#51
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Re: Journalist managed to blow up the V10 in a Porsche Carrera GT
Originally posted by gavriil
<snip> An insider at the car maker commented: "It was a bit of a mess. And you can imagine how much these titanium engines cost."
<snip> An insider at the car maker commented: "It was a bit of a mess. And you can imagine how much these titanium engines cost."
10-07-2003, 04:51 PM
#54
Safety Car
What grade of titanium is this motor? Also, what is nominal operating temp? Shit guys...just go and make one out of 304/316 stainless while you are at it 
While I have not messed with EVERY grade of the stuff, I have messed with Grade 2, Grade 5(aka 6AL-4V), and Grade 12, these materials do NOT do well when heated, average, they warp 0.025~0.050 at LEAST, not good in a car. Very wear resistant...but if they have any steel parts meeting Ti parts...that is gonna wear fast.
And damn, really why? Just make it an aluminum block and go with cast iron cylinder sleeves. At least it doesn't cost $$$.
We buy sheets of it, a 36x36x1/2 sheet runs about $2~3k depending on market conditions. I have even nad to buy it as high as $4500...
[/machine shop rant]
While I have not messed with EVERY grade of the stuff, I have messed with Grade 2, Grade 5(aka 6AL-4V), and Grade 12, these materials do NOT do well when heated, average, they warp 0.025~0.050 at LEAST, not good in a car. Very wear resistant...but if they have any steel parts meeting Ti parts...that is gonna wear fast.
And damn, really why? Just make it an aluminum block and go with cast iron cylinder sleeves. At least it doesn't cost $$$.
We buy sheets of it, a 36x36x1/2 sheet runs about $2~3k depending on market conditions. I have even nad to buy it as high as $4500...
[/machine shop rant]
10-20-2003, 06:54 AM
#55
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Racing's Loss Is Our Gain: The Carrera GT is like a GT1 ALMS car with nicer seats and a nav system
By MARK VAUGHN
“¡AYE CHIHUAHUA!”
Granted, those are not appropriately Teutonic words for someone driving a Porsche, but those were the exact words we blurted out on first flooring the Porsche Carrera GT’s throttle. Other words followed, among them, “Oh man,” “Geez Louise” and “Yow.”
Why such strong language? Because driving the Carrera GT is as close as most of us will ever get to being behind the wheel of a car that won at Le Mans. In fact, the Carrera GT is basically an updated version of the Porsche GT1 that finished first at Le Mans in 1998.
Though Porsche has no plans to race this street car, the Carrera GT’s spec sheet reads like an endurance winner. It has a full carbon fiber chassis (a first), inboard-mounted pushrod suspension, ceramic brakes, ceramic clutch, 605-hp, 435-lb-ft V10 and a fluidly smooth aerodynamic body that sucks it closer and closer to the ground the faster it goes. And it’s not the product of one egomaniacal rich guy with a couple of engineers and some spackle, either; it represents thousands of hours of work by hundreds of engineers with the full resources of Porsche Motorsport and the Weissach R&D center behind them.
PORSCHE CARRERA GT
ON SALE: December
BASE PRICE: $440,000
POWERTRAIN: 5.7-liter, 605-hp, 435-lb-ft V10; rwd, six-speed manual
CURB WEIGHT: 3043 pounds
0-60 MPH: 3.9 seconds (mfr.)
All of this adds up to one of, if not the best, supercars ever made. Top speed is listed at 205 mph but we saw 208 (more on that later). Zero to 62 mph comes up in 3.9 seconds, 0 to 100 in less than seven and 0 to 125 in less than 10.
All for less than a half million bucks. Sure we’d have to sell the house, close out the retirement account and send the kids to a community college to hit the $440,000 MSRP, but we all have to make sacrifices now and then. The kids would understand, and they might get rides in it.
Let’s back up a little. As we said, the reason the Carrera GT is so good is because it traces its roots back to Le Mans. At the end of the 1998 season Porsche had to choose between building a supercar for the street and building a new race car that would compete at Le Mans in 2000. For a while Porsche engineers worked on both. As late as November 1999 Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking was saying yes, we’re going racing.
A month later he changed his “ja” to a “nein” and the rest is history. While that would normally be cause for grief and gnashing of teeth among the Porsche faithful, the bright side of the no-racing decision was this Carrera GT street car. And what a car it is. While innumerable manufacturers have claimed they offer “race cars for the street,” few have come as close to doing it as Porsche has here.
Let’s start with the chassis. Like almost everything else on board, the chassis concept is shared with that ’98 GT1 racer. It’s made from carbon fiber-reinforced plastic, or CFP in Porsche-speak. Porsche had one of the chassis on display at the Frankfurt motor show and man, what a shape. Porsche designers even made sure that the weaves of the carbon fiber line up on the production cars, not for structural reasons but for aesthetics. It exuded strength just sitting on the stand. The Porsche script on the doorsills is nicely surrounded in parallel by carbon fiber grain, the same way a world-class cabinetmaker makes sure grain on wood veneer lines up. Such symmetry is evidenced throughout the cabin.
By baking and bonding the carbon fiber pieces together, the whole chassis becomes one strong unit. Everything else—engine, suspension, bodywork—is then bolted, glued or squeegeed on. One of the few concessions to metal on the chassis is some steel tubing added to join the A-pillar to the rest of the structure, a section needed because the two CFP pieces could not be interwoven there as they were on the rest of the chassis.
All that carbon fiber means the entire monocoque weighs just 220 pounds. How strong is it? Rather than quote torsional rigidity numbers, Porsche says that even without a roof the GT is stiffer than a Porsche 911 RSR racer with a full cage.
The roof panels stow under the front hatch; the rear decklid is perforated to let out 605 hp of engine heat.
Then there’s the engine. It, too, was designed for La Sarthe. It started as a 5.5-liter four-valve 68-degree V10 for the track, but was bored out to 5.7 liters and given a few other adjustments for street use. It has dry sump lubrication, VarioCam camshaft adjustment, a compression ratio of 12.5:1 and an 8400-rpm redline. Altogether the engine weighs just 472 pounds. Where’s that Hunaudieres?
On the back end of that engine is Porsche’s (or anyone’s) first ceramic clutch. Its compact size of 6.65 inches across means the engine to which it’s attached can sit lower to the ground, which in turn lowers the car’s overall center of gravity. The ceramic clutch is also lighter and is designed to last the life of the car—longer than a standard clutch and much, much longer than a carbon fiber clutch.
Of course, it behaves like a racing clutch, meaning it fully engages in what feels like about a millimeter of clutch travel. That’s good if you’re racing, but awkward if you’re taking a test drive. It is also one of the things that give the engine such a racy character. Rev it, and it spins up to speed very quickly. Get off the gas and the engine stops—there’s no bop-bop-bop that a powerplant with a heavy flywheel would exhibit.
Behind the clutch is a transverse six-speed manual gearbox. “What?” you ask.
“A manual, even in this world where Ferrari Enzos and Mercedes SLRs have those fancy paddle shifters like the F1 cars? What’s going on?”
“Given the time available during development, the quality, we felt, would not be appropriate,” said Herbert Ampferer, head of Porsche Motorsport. “At the time, we felt these semi-automatic transmissions were not good enough.”
The manual is good, if a little vague in the middle of the double-H pattern. It needs stronger springs to convey better feel. One “journalist” the week before us tried to go from fifth gear to fourth and went instead from fifth to second. That might have been because the shifter was vague or it might have been because he was a moron. The engine to which his transmission was attached recorded a top speed of 14,500 rpm before blowing to pieces. So be careful.
The shift knob is easy to reach, but vague; and those are 14.96-inch vented ceramic discs inside the five-spoke rims with Michelin Pilot Sport 2 tires, 265/35ZR-19 front, 335/30ZR-20 rear.
Holding all that off the pavement is the first Porsche suspension in what seems like forever that is not based on struts. Porsche calls it “double track control arm pushrod axles front and rear.” The upper and lower arms are bolted onto the chassis, so no pesky bushings here to interfere with road feel. This does not make for as harsh a ride as you might think, even on bad, formerly East German roads. The pushrods from the control arms attach to the chassis-mounted coil springs just like a real race car.
The carbon fiber bodywork is race car-like, too. It spent long hours in the wind tunnel. It had to—with a car that goes more than 200 mph, one of the biggest dangers is flight.
To help combat that, the rear wing pops up at 75 mph. At speed it increases downforce by as much as 30 percent, or 800 pounds of squash on the rear wheels. A sculpted undertray further eases airflow and helps maintain the car’s 30/70 front/rear downforce balance, Porsche says.
And finally, even the seats are carbon fiber. At 22.7 pounds each, they are half the weight of 911 seats. All that CFP leads to a curb weight of just 3043 pounds and a superb power-to-weight ratio of 5.03:1.
All right already, enough with the numbers. What was it like to drive the dang thing? Well, it was promising. Our actual drive time was a little restricted. Just before we got to Gross Dölln in the Brandenburg forest north of Berlin where the GTs waited, several other members of the worldwide press had driven the cars. And the guy who blew the engine wasn’t the only idiot. Another guy flew through a small town with a posted speed limit of 50 km/h going 200 km/h. The Polizei let Porsche know about that one. A third guy (a Frenchman) ran out of talent at 150 km/h on a curve in the rain and stuffed his half-million-dollar GT into a lamppost.
So, by the time we came to Gross Dölln the Porsche press office was in full-paranoid clampdown panic mode. All journalists were evil, talent-less, teenage speed demons bent on destroying our remaining five cars—or so they thought. Thus our drive on public roads was restricted to an escorted slog behind a Porsche Cayenne that would have made even a Cadillac convoy press intro from the ’80s seem wild and reckless. It was the luck of the draw whether you got an escort driver in front of you who was fast and fun or one who was concerned about not messing up his Porsche pension. Ours was the latter; other drivers got better.
By strategically hanging back on our six-mile autobahn section (six miles!?!), we could make short, fiery speed runs. The fastest we got behind the wheel was 170 mph and at that speed the car was as stable as most cars are at 60 mph on a good interstate. There was no wander from the rack-and-pinion steering and the level of feedback through the wheel was perfect. The Porsche Ceramic Composite brakes stopped the car just fine, though their squeaky nature at parking lot speeds can be as annoying on this Porsche as on the GT3.
Tromping on the throttle, we noticed the engine power really came on at about 4000 rpm, though the pull was certainly good from 3000 on up. From a standing start, once we got the hang of using the racing clutch, the car just wailed. We have no reason to doubt Porsche’s acceleration figures. They’re probably conservative.
After lunch, Porsche did trust us to drive through a slalom course, weaving between traffic cones for about a minute. We learned a little about how the GT felt under cornering loads and when pushed to the limit. Give it a little too much throttle and the rear end would come out so smoothly and evenly that it almost seemed like we’d swung a lever on the dash indicating exactly how much oversteer we wanted.
Lift off the gas and the rear tucked back in line. Stable as the former deutsche mark in the former West. Oh, for a road course, a tank of gas and no adult supervision!
Former World Rally champion and Pikes Peak winner Walter Rohrl, whom Porsche points to as the main test-and-development driver for the car, gave everyone top-speed runs at the Michelin Driving Center, located on an old Soviet air base in the Brandenburg forest. First he took us in a straight line, hitting our 208-mph speed mentioned earlier in just more than two kilometers of concrete. Again, the car was as stable as a rock. Even from the passenger seat, we couldn’t feel the GT wander.
Rohrl also gave us a demo run on an improvised road course set up through taxiways on the old air base. We got two laps in the passenger seat, one with traction control and one without. Not surprisingly, TC helped keep the car in line. Porsche Stability Management, touted by Porsche just a few years ago as the savior of the 911, is not even an option on this car.
“We have many customers who don’t want any kind of electronic control at all,” said Ampferer. “And, as stable as the GT is, there is simply no need for it.”
The French guy over by the lamppost might beg to differ, once they remove the steering wheel from his teeth. Or maybe not. Even PSM can’t save you if you’re truly intent on going off. And the GT really was stable enough with just traction control. Or so we felt in our short stint behind the wheel.
So what did we learn? The GT rivals the Enzo and SLR for the title of world’s best supercar. And maybe as world’s most elusive for a test drive. Porsche Cars North America plans to sell between 500 and 750 of the total production of 1500 Carrera GTs through 2005, when production ends. Of that, Porsche says dealers have sent in 500 orders. The first cars should be here by the end of the year, so start booking track time now.
By MARK VAUGHN
“¡AYE CHIHUAHUA!”
Granted, those are not appropriately Teutonic words for someone driving a Porsche, but those were the exact words we blurted out on first flooring the Porsche Carrera GT’s throttle. Other words followed, among them, “Oh man,” “Geez Louise” and “Yow.”
Why such strong language? Because driving the Carrera GT is as close as most of us will ever get to being behind the wheel of a car that won at Le Mans. In fact, the Carrera GT is basically an updated version of the Porsche GT1 that finished first at Le Mans in 1998.
Though Porsche has no plans to race this street car, the Carrera GT’s spec sheet reads like an endurance winner. It has a full carbon fiber chassis (a first), inboard-mounted pushrod suspension, ceramic brakes, ceramic clutch, 605-hp, 435-lb-ft V10 and a fluidly smooth aerodynamic body that sucks it closer and closer to the ground the faster it goes. And it’s not the product of one egomaniacal rich guy with a couple of engineers and some spackle, either; it represents thousands of hours of work by hundreds of engineers with the full resources of Porsche Motorsport and the Weissach R&D center behind them.
PORSCHE CARRERA GT
ON SALE: December
BASE PRICE: $440,000
POWERTRAIN: 5.7-liter, 605-hp, 435-lb-ft V10; rwd, six-speed manual
CURB WEIGHT: 3043 pounds
0-60 MPH: 3.9 seconds (mfr.)
All of this adds up to one of, if not the best, supercars ever made. Top speed is listed at 205 mph but we saw 208 (more on that later). Zero to 62 mph comes up in 3.9 seconds, 0 to 100 in less than seven and 0 to 125 in less than 10.
All for less than a half million bucks. Sure we’d have to sell the house, close out the retirement account and send the kids to a community college to hit the $440,000 MSRP, but we all have to make sacrifices now and then. The kids would understand, and they might get rides in it.
Let’s back up a little. As we said, the reason the Carrera GT is so good is because it traces its roots back to Le Mans. At the end of the 1998 season Porsche had to choose between building a supercar for the street and building a new race car that would compete at Le Mans in 2000. For a while Porsche engineers worked on both. As late as November 1999 Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking was saying yes, we’re going racing.
A month later he changed his “ja” to a “nein” and the rest is history. While that would normally be cause for grief and gnashing of teeth among the Porsche faithful, the bright side of the no-racing decision was this Carrera GT street car. And what a car it is. While innumerable manufacturers have claimed they offer “race cars for the street,” few have come as close to doing it as Porsche has here.
Let’s start with the chassis. Like almost everything else on board, the chassis concept is shared with that ’98 GT1 racer. It’s made from carbon fiber-reinforced plastic, or CFP in Porsche-speak. Porsche had one of the chassis on display at the Frankfurt motor show and man, what a shape. Porsche designers even made sure that the weaves of the carbon fiber line up on the production cars, not for structural reasons but for aesthetics. It exuded strength just sitting on the stand. The Porsche script on the doorsills is nicely surrounded in parallel by carbon fiber grain, the same way a world-class cabinetmaker makes sure grain on wood veneer lines up. Such symmetry is evidenced throughout the cabin.
By baking and bonding the carbon fiber pieces together, the whole chassis becomes one strong unit. Everything else—engine, suspension, bodywork—is then bolted, glued or squeegeed on. One of the few concessions to metal on the chassis is some steel tubing added to join the A-pillar to the rest of the structure, a section needed because the two CFP pieces could not be interwoven there as they were on the rest of the chassis.
All that carbon fiber means the entire monocoque weighs just 220 pounds. How strong is it? Rather than quote torsional rigidity numbers, Porsche says that even without a roof the GT is stiffer than a Porsche 911 RSR racer with a full cage.
The roof panels stow under the front hatch; the rear decklid is perforated to let out 605 hp of engine heat.
Then there’s the engine. It, too, was designed for La Sarthe. It started as a 5.5-liter four-valve 68-degree V10 for the track, but was bored out to 5.7 liters and given a few other adjustments for street use. It has dry sump lubrication, VarioCam camshaft adjustment, a compression ratio of 12.5:1 and an 8400-rpm redline. Altogether the engine weighs just 472 pounds. Where’s that Hunaudieres?
On the back end of that engine is Porsche’s (or anyone’s) first ceramic clutch. Its compact size of 6.65 inches across means the engine to which it’s attached can sit lower to the ground, which in turn lowers the car’s overall center of gravity. The ceramic clutch is also lighter and is designed to last the life of the car—longer than a standard clutch and much, much longer than a carbon fiber clutch.
Of course, it behaves like a racing clutch, meaning it fully engages in what feels like about a millimeter of clutch travel. That’s good if you’re racing, but awkward if you’re taking a test drive. It is also one of the things that give the engine such a racy character. Rev it, and it spins up to speed very quickly. Get off the gas and the engine stops—there’s no bop-bop-bop that a powerplant with a heavy flywheel would exhibit.
Behind the clutch is a transverse six-speed manual gearbox. “What?” you ask.
“A manual, even in this world where Ferrari Enzos and Mercedes SLRs have those fancy paddle shifters like the F1 cars? What’s going on?”
“Given the time available during development, the quality, we felt, would not be appropriate,” said Herbert Ampferer, head of Porsche Motorsport. “At the time, we felt these semi-automatic transmissions were not good enough.”
The manual is good, if a little vague in the middle of the double-H pattern. It needs stronger springs to convey better feel. One “journalist” the week before us tried to go from fifth gear to fourth and went instead from fifth to second. That might have been because the shifter was vague or it might have been because he was a moron. The engine to which his transmission was attached recorded a top speed of 14,500 rpm before blowing to pieces. So be careful.
The shift knob is easy to reach, but vague; and those are 14.96-inch vented ceramic discs inside the five-spoke rims with Michelin Pilot Sport 2 tires, 265/35ZR-19 front, 335/30ZR-20 rear.
Holding all that off the pavement is the first Porsche suspension in what seems like forever that is not based on struts. Porsche calls it “double track control arm pushrod axles front and rear.” The upper and lower arms are bolted onto the chassis, so no pesky bushings here to interfere with road feel. This does not make for as harsh a ride as you might think, even on bad, formerly East German roads. The pushrods from the control arms attach to the chassis-mounted coil springs just like a real race car.
The carbon fiber bodywork is race car-like, too. It spent long hours in the wind tunnel. It had to—with a car that goes more than 200 mph, one of the biggest dangers is flight.
To help combat that, the rear wing pops up at 75 mph. At speed it increases downforce by as much as 30 percent, or 800 pounds of squash on the rear wheels. A sculpted undertray further eases airflow and helps maintain the car’s 30/70 front/rear downforce balance, Porsche says.
And finally, even the seats are carbon fiber. At 22.7 pounds each, they are half the weight of 911 seats. All that CFP leads to a curb weight of just 3043 pounds and a superb power-to-weight ratio of 5.03:1.
All right already, enough with the numbers. What was it like to drive the dang thing? Well, it was promising. Our actual drive time was a little restricted. Just before we got to Gross Dölln in the Brandenburg forest north of Berlin where the GTs waited, several other members of the worldwide press had driven the cars. And the guy who blew the engine wasn’t the only idiot. Another guy flew through a small town with a posted speed limit of 50 km/h going 200 km/h. The Polizei let Porsche know about that one. A third guy (a Frenchman) ran out of talent at 150 km/h on a curve in the rain and stuffed his half-million-dollar GT into a lamppost.
So, by the time we came to Gross Dölln the Porsche press office was in full-paranoid clampdown panic mode. All journalists were evil, talent-less, teenage speed demons bent on destroying our remaining five cars—or so they thought. Thus our drive on public roads was restricted to an escorted slog behind a Porsche Cayenne that would have made even a Cadillac convoy press intro from the ’80s seem wild and reckless. It was the luck of the draw whether you got an escort driver in front of you who was fast and fun or one who was concerned about not messing up his Porsche pension. Ours was the latter; other drivers got better.
By strategically hanging back on our six-mile autobahn section (six miles!?!), we could make short, fiery speed runs. The fastest we got behind the wheel was 170 mph and at that speed the car was as stable as most cars are at 60 mph on a good interstate. There was no wander from the rack-and-pinion steering and the level of feedback through the wheel was perfect. The Porsche Ceramic Composite brakes stopped the car just fine, though their squeaky nature at parking lot speeds can be as annoying on this Porsche as on the GT3.
Tromping on the throttle, we noticed the engine power really came on at about 4000 rpm, though the pull was certainly good from 3000 on up. From a standing start, once we got the hang of using the racing clutch, the car just wailed. We have no reason to doubt Porsche’s acceleration figures. They’re probably conservative.
After lunch, Porsche did trust us to drive through a slalom course, weaving between traffic cones for about a minute. We learned a little about how the GT felt under cornering loads and when pushed to the limit. Give it a little too much throttle and the rear end would come out so smoothly and evenly that it almost seemed like we’d swung a lever on the dash indicating exactly how much oversteer we wanted.
Lift off the gas and the rear tucked back in line. Stable as the former deutsche mark in the former West. Oh, for a road course, a tank of gas and no adult supervision!
Former World Rally champion and Pikes Peak winner Walter Rohrl, whom Porsche points to as the main test-and-development driver for the car, gave everyone top-speed runs at the Michelin Driving Center, located on an old Soviet air base in the Brandenburg forest. First he took us in a straight line, hitting our 208-mph speed mentioned earlier in just more than two kilometers of concrete. Again, the car was as stable as a rock. Even from the passenger seat, we couldn’t feel the GT wander.
Rohrl also gave us a demo run on an improvised road course set up through taxiways on the old air base. We got two laps in the passenger seat, one with traction control and one without. Not surprisingly, TC helped keep the car in line. Porsche Stability Management, touted by Porsche just a few years ago as the savior of the 911, is not even an option on this car.
“We have many customers who don’t want any kind of electronic control at all,” said Ampferer. “And, as stable as the GT is, there is simply no need for it.”
The French guy over by the lamppost might beg to differ, once they remove the steering wheel from his teeth. Or maybe not. Even PSM can’t save you if you’re truly intent on going off. And the GT really was stable enough with just traction control. Or so we felt in our short stint behind the wheel.
So what did we learn? The GT rivals the Enzo and SLR for the title of world’s best supercar. And maybe as world’s most elusive for a test drive. Porsche Cars North America plans to sell between 500 and 750 of the total production of 1500 Carrera GTs through 2005, when production ends. Of that, Porsche says dealers have sent in 500 orders. The first cars should be here by the end of the year, so start booking track time now.
10-24-2003, 01:47 PM
#57
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the car is sweet. It almost looks like an SL model with a porchse twist. Amazing craftmanship on the interior but i'm only worried of one thing.
they are using a push rod spring loaded design as a main component to the 6 speed. i'm sure they are on top of this, but i'm thinking of alot of popped boxes.
amazing car....
they are using a push rod spring loaded design as a main component to the 6 speed. i'm sure they are on top of this, but i'm thinking of alot of popped boxes.
amazing car....
11-19-2003, 06:32 PM
#60
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Porsche Carrera GT
Why everything else amounts to toothbrushes and coffee machines.
BY DANIEL PUND
December 2003
It's not the $440,000 Carrera GT's absurdly fast top speed that awes you—we were aboard yet had no fear as Porsche's test driver clocked 208 mph (with a tailwind) on a Soviet-era military runway in the former East Germany.
It's not this Ferrari Enzo fighter's equally absurd accelerative force, either: Porsche modestly claims a 0-to-62-mph time of 3.9 seconds, but it's probably more like 3.5 seconds.
It's not even the otherworldly strength of the gigantic ceramic brakes that made the greatest impression on us, although they are strong enough at full clamp to lift the passenger fully away from his leather-covered, carbon-Kevlar seat and hard against the locked seatbelt.
No question—all these feats are stratospherically impressive. But they are just extensions of what you've felt before in a common automobile. These figures don't reveal the character of the Carrera GT any more than one's familiarity with hops, barley, and water explains how they can make you drunk.
Porsche says it will build 1500 of these supercars over the next three years. The Carrera GT, which began life as a proposal for a Le Mans race car, is nothing if not uncommon. In truth, it's not even a car, really. It's not like those things we put in comparison tests and rate the ergonomics and measure the gas mileage of—all those conveyances that operate in the vast gray center of the performance spectrum. The 604-hp Carrera GT is different. It's all vibrancy and immediacy.
It was actually turning off the ignition after our brief initial drive that first amazed us. The millisecond the ignition circuit is broken, there is . . . nothing. Normally, when you key the ignition off, the crankshaft makes a few extra lazy rotations as the mass of the moving parts takes a half-beat to submit to friction and come to a complete rest. It's a universal experience we take for granted.
But in the GT, the crankshaft stops with a new suddenness—immediately, now, before your brain even considers the causal relationship between turning the key and the engine coming to rest. It's as if the crankshaft had seized within a quarter-rotation after the last spark plug fired. There is no mass at all to speak of in the drivetrain. Take, for example, the lightweight ceramic clutch (measuring a mere 6.7 inches in diameter) and the 10 titanium connecting rods in this 68-degree V-10. They weigh, by regular commodity-car standards, essentially nothing. After a romp in the GT, whatever you drive will feel as if it were powered by a huge diesel—the kind we imagine powering ocean liners—with 10-foot-long iron connecting rods.
This works, of course, in reverse, too. Unlike the brawny powerplant of, say, a Lamborghini Murciélago or Dodge Viper, which pummels physics into submission, the Porsche's race-bred V-10 seems to skirt physics entirely. It always feels unrestrained. Here again we can thank low rotational mass. The best production-car engines in the world accumulate revs in a satisfyingly smooth sweep. So quick to rev is the 5.7-liter Porsche engine that you scarcely are aware that it's putting forth any effort at all. A stab of the wide, floor-mounted gas pedal and—Brip!—you're at the 8000-rpm power peak. Watch the in-car footage of an F1 car going up through the gears with its brief, staccato blasts through the revs, then slow the footage down by about half, and you get the idea.
This audiovisual trick will also roughly approximate the sound the GT makes. It's similar in timbre to an F1 motor but brawnier because of its greater displacement. Its note is a register lower because it runs fewer revs, and of course, it won't pierce your eardrums—there's a muffler. There is no time to adjust your mind-set between the docility of idle and the full-on, screaming fury of redline. Holy crap! Not even the standard traction-control system can keep up.
The downside to this is that you will stall the car from a standstill. Everyone who sat in the driver's seat did. Well, you'll either stall it, or your big dumb right foot will call for far too many revs, spin the rear tires furiously, and a second later get shut down by traction control. This display of skill and precision doesn't impress the assembled Porsche personnel as much as you might imagine. Your best bet is to gingerly ease out the clutch pedal and keep your foot off the hair-trigger throttle. As the clutch hooks up, the idle automatically rises to about 1800 rpm, and you inch away—slowly, but with your dignity intact.
Once under way, you'll notice, perhaps for the first time in your life if you're of the male persuasion, that you have breasts. You may prefer to think of them as "pectorals at rest." Whatever, they're there, and they're moving violently in sympathy to each road dip and hillock. Meanwhile, nothing else in the car is moving. The Carrera GT is topless (with two removable carbon-fiber roof panels), yet there is no movement, no creak, no nothing going on in the carbon-fiber structure. The suspension—unequal-length control arms all around with race-car-style, pushrod-activated coil-overs mounted to the structure—will yield very little to a lowly road undulation, and because the structure will not bend even to the degree that stiff steel or aluminum cars will, all the movement is transferred to your unrestrained body bits. Unlike that of many super sports cars, or even mere sports cars, though, the Carrera GT's ride is not harsh. It doesn't feel nervous or skittish on imperfect roads. And unlike other fat-tired sports cars (the Porsche wears 265/35ZR-19 Michelins up front and 335/30ZR-20s in back), the GT doesn't suffer from bump steer. Truck troughs and crowned roads are beneath its consideration.
Curiously, the Carrera's handling character is determined to an unusual degree by the powertrain as well. When designing a thing as spectacularly impractical as the GT, engineers can obsessively focus on achieving a low—nearly subterranean—center of gravity. The GT's crankshaft spins just 3.9 inches above its carbon-fiber floor. This is made possible by the engine's dry-sump oiling system and that small-diameter clutch. The six-speed transmission actually sits lower in the car than the differential. Only a fool, or a select few automotive writers, would explore the handling limits of this thing on public roads. We chose instead to gather what we could about the GT's at-the-limit behavior on a slalom course. Still, the concrete surface we tried this on had about the same coefficient of friction as 80-grit sandpaper, so turn-in was shockingly immediate and the GT constantly suggested rotating around its engine—but it never spun out. There is zero body roll (possibly you may have expected that). The Carrera GT offers no electronic stability-control system because, as Porsche explains, "the driving behavior is very good, and there is, therefore, no need for it." Theoretically, this is true. Unfortunately, at issue is the driving behavior of the pilot. For instance, we'd bet that the French reporter who ran a GT into an unmoving roadside object at considerable speed might have found ESP quite helpful.
Neither does the Carrera GT have a robotized clutch-pedal-less shifting system, like that in the Ferrari Enzo. Mounted high on the tall center console is a traditional dogleg shifter. Porsche contends that none of the paddle-shifting systems currently on the market is good enough for its baby. And we agree. Besides, matching your own revs on downshifts and smoothing upshifts with a judicious left foot are ultimately more involving than Ferrari's system. The one advantage of such systems, though, is they will not allow the driver to overrev the motor as one writer did with an ill-advised fifth-to-second downshift, lunching the hyperexpensive motor in one brief, but eternally regrettable, error.
There are other downsides to driving a GT1 racer on public roads, such as scuffing, as we did, the carbon-fiber bottom on a routine bump. You'll also want to be aware that the hind end of your GT is 75.6 inches wide (a fraction of an inch narrower than a Lincoln Aviator). Place it carefully.
But these are such plebeian concerns. We have been to the top of the mountain, and we're ruined for such trivialities.
PORSCHE CARRERA GT
Vehicle type: mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 2-passenger, 2-door Targa
Estimated base price: $440,000
Engine type: DOHC 40-valve V-10, aluminum block and heads, port fuel injection
Displacement: 350 cu in, 5733cc
Power (SAE net): 604 bhp @ 8000 rpm
Torque (SAE net): 435 lb-ft @ 5750 rpm
Transmission: 6-speed manual
Wheelbase: 107.5 in
Length/width/height: 181.6/75.6/45.9 in
Curb weight: 3050 lb
Manufacturer's performance ratings:
Zero to 62 mph: 3.9 sec
Zero to 124 mph: 9.9 sec
Top speed (drag limited): 205 mph
Projected fuel economy:
European urban cycle 8 mpg
extra-urban cycle 20 mpg
combined cycle 13 mpg
Source: www.CarandDriver.com
Why everything else amounts to toothbrushes and coffee machines.
BY DANIEL PUND
December 2003
It's not the $440,000 Carrera GT's absurdly fast top speed that awes you—we were aboard yet had no fear as Porsche's test driver clocked 208 mph (with a tailwind) on a Soviet-era military runway in the former East Germany.
It's not this Ferrari Enzo fighter's equally absurd accelerative force, either: Porsche modestly claims a 0-to-62-mph time of 3.9 seconds, but it's probably more like 3.5 seconds.
It's not even the otherworldly strength of the gigantic ceramic brakes that made the greatest impression on us, although they are strong enough at full clamp to lift the passenger fully away from his leather-covered, carbon-Kevlar seat and hard against the locked seatbelt.
No question—all these feats are stratospherically impressive. But they are just extensions of what you've felt before in a common automobile. These figures don't reveal the character of the Carrera GT any more than one's familiarity with hops, barley, and water explains how they can make you drunk.
Porsche says it will build 1500 of these supercars over the next three years. The Carrera GT, which began life as a proposal for a Le Mans race car, is nothing if not uncommon. In truth, it's not even a car, really. It's not like those things we put in comparison tests and rate the ergonomics and measure the gas mileage of—all those conveyances that operate in the vast gray center of the performance spectrum. The 604-hp Carrera GT is different. It's all vibrancy and immediacy.
It was actually turning off the ignition after our brief initial drive that first amazed us. The millisecond the ignition circuit is broken, there is . . . nothing. Normally, when you key the ignition off, the crankshaft makes a few extra lazy rotations as the mass of the moving parts takes a half-beat to submit to friction and come to a complete rest. It's a universal experience we take for granted.
But in the GT, the crankshaft stops with a new suddenness—immediately, now, before your brain even considers the causal relationship between turning the key and the engine coming to rest. It's as if the crankshaft had seized within a quarter-rotation after the last spark plug fired. There is no mass at all to speak of in the drivetrain. Take, for example, the lightweight ceramic clutch (measuring a mere 6.7 inches in diameter) and the 10 titanium connecting rods in this 68-degree V-10. They weigh, by regular commodity-car standards, essentially nothing. After a romp in the GT, whatever you drive will feel as if it were powered by a huge diesel—the kind we imagine powering ocean liners—with 10-foot-long iron connecting rods.
This works, of course, in reverse, too. Unlike the brawny powerplant of, say, a Lamborghini Murciélago or Dodge Viper, which pummels physics into submission, the Porsche's race-bred V-10 seems to skirt physics entirely. It always feels unrestrained. Here again we can thank low rotational mass. The best production-car engines in the world accumulate revs in a satisfyingly smooth sweep. So quick to rev is the 5.7-liter Porsche engine that you scarcely are aware that it's putting forth any effort at all. A stab of the wide, floor-mounted gas pedal and—Brip!—you're at the 8000-rpm power peak. Watch the in-car footage of an F1 car going up through the gears with its brief, staccato blasts through the revs, then slow the footage down by about half, and you get the idea.
This audiovisual trick will also roughly approximate the sound the GT makes. It's similar in timbre to an F1 motor but brawnier because of its greater displacement. Its note is a register lower because it runs fewer revs, and of course, it won't pierce your eardrums—there's a muffler. There is no time to adjust your mind-set between the docility of idle and the full-on, screaming fury of redline. Holy crap! Not even the standard traction-control system can keep up.
The downside to this is that you will stall the car from a standstill. Everyone who sat in the driver's seat did. Well, you'll either stall it, or your big dumb right foot will call for far too many revs, spin the rear tires furiously, and a second later get shut down by traction control. This display of skill and precision doesn't impress the assembled Porsche personnel as much as you might imagine. Your best bet is to gingerly ease out the clutch pedal and keep your foot off the hair-trigger throttle. As the clutch hooks up, the idle automatically rises to about 1800 rpm, and you inch away—slowly, but with your dignity intact.
Once under way, you'll notice, perhaps for the first time in your life if you're of the male persuasion, that you have breasts. You may prefer to think of them as "pectorals at rest." Whatever, they're there, and they're moving violently in sympathy to each road dip and hillock. Meanwhile, nothing else in the car is moving. The Carrera GT is topless (with two removable carbon-fiber roof panels), yet there is no movement, no creak, no nothing going on in the carbon-fiber structure. The suspension—unequal-length control arms all around with race-car-style, pushrod-activated coil-overs mounted to the structure—will yield very little to a lowly road undulation, and because the structure will not bend even to the degree that stiff steel or aluminum cars will, all the movement is transferred to your unrestrained body bits. Unlike that of many super sports cars, or even mere sports cars, though, the Carrera GT's ride is not harsh. It doesn't feel nervous or skittish on imperfect roads. And unlike other fat-tired sports cars (the Porsche wears 265/35ZR-19 Michelins up front and 335/30ZR-20s in back), the GT doesn't suffer from bump steer. Truck troughs and crowned roads are beneath its consideration.
Curiously, the Carrera's handling character is determined to an unusual degree by the powertrain as well. When designing a thing as spectacularly impractical as the GT, engineers can obsessively focus on achieving a low—nearly subterranean—center of gravity. The GT's crankshaft spins just 3.9 inches above its carbon-fiber floor. This is made possible by the engine's dry-sump oiling system and that small-diameter clutch. The six-speed transmission actually sits lower in the car than the differential. Only a fool, or a select few automotive writers, would explore the handling limits of this thing on public roads. We chose instead to gather what we could about the GT's at-the-limit behavior on a slalom course. Still, the concrete surface we tried this on had about the same coefficient of friction as 80-grit sandpaper, so turn-in was shockingly immediate and the GT constantly suggested rotating around its engine—but it never spun out. There is zero body roll (possibly you may have expected that). The Carrera GT offers no electronic stability-control system because, as Porsche explains, "the driving behavior is very good, and there is, therefore, no need for it." Theoretically, this is true. Unfortunately, at issue is the driving behavior of the pilot. For instance, we'd bet that the French reporter who ran a GT into an unmoving roadside object at considerable speed might have found ESP quite helpful.
Neither does the Carrera GT have a robotized clutch-pedal-less shifting system, like that in the Ferrari Enzo. Mounted high on the tall center console is a traditional dogleg shifter. Porsche contends that none of the paddle-shifting systems currently on the market is good enough for its baby. And we agree. Besides, matching your own revs on downshifts and smoothing upshifts with a judicious left foot are ultimately more involving than Ferrari's system. The one advantage of such systems, though, is they will not allow the driver to overrev the motor as one writer did with an ill-advised fifth-to-second downshift, lunching the hyperexpensive motor in one brief, but eternally regrettable, error.
There are other downsides to driving a GT1 racer on public roads, such as scuffing, as we did, the carbon-fiber bottom on a routine bump. You'll also want to be aware that the hind end of your GT is 75.6 inches wide (a fraction of an inch narrower than a Lincoln Aviator). Place it carefully.
But these are such plebeian concerns. We have been to the top of the mountain, and we're ruined for such trivialities.
PORSCHE CARRERA GT
Vehicle type: mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 2-passenger, 2-door Targa
Estimated base price: $440,000
Engine type: DOHC 40-valve V-10, aluminum block and heads, port fuel injection
Displacement: 350 cu in, 5733cc
Power (SAE net): 604 bhp @ 8000 rpm
Torque (SAE net): 435 lb-ft @ 5750 rpm
Transmission: 6-speed manual
Wheelbase: 107.5 in
Length/width/height: 181.6/75.6/45.9 in
Curb weight: 3050 lb
Manufacturer's performance ratings:
Zero to 62 mph: 3.9 sec
Zero to 124 mph: 9.9 sec
Top speed (drag limited): 205 mph
Projected fuel economy:
European urban cycle 8 mpg
extra-urban cycle 20 mpg
combined cycle 13 mpg
Source: www.CarandDriver.com
01-12-2004, 09:52 AM
#64
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Porsche suprised as Carrera GT sells out through May 2005
Porsche suprised as Carrera GT sells out through May 2005
By DIANA T. KURYLKO | Automotive News
Even Porsche is surprised at the strong demand for its 650-hp supercar, the $440,000 Carrera GT. Porsche has sold 1,000 of the limited edition cars, and production is sold out through May 2005.
The company committed to a run of only 1,500 Carrera GTs, about half of which are expected to be sold to U.S. customers. Production will end in May 2006.
Dealers began taking orders in January 2003. The first vehicle was delivered in Europe late last year. The first U.S. customer will take delivery this month.
Porsche decided to build the car after enthusiastic reaction to a prototype shown in fall 2000. The company found 3,000 prospects on the Internet and at auto shows and dealer events, says Hans Riedel, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Porsche AG.
"The biggest problem with doing a luxury sports car is that nobody knows the real potential out there," Riedel says. "Maybach is in the same category. You are talking to the top in wealth, to the collectors - to someone who wants the ultimate performance."
The prototypefirst was shown at the Louvre art museum in Paris in fall 2000. The production version debuted at the 2003 Geneva show.
The ultra lightweight Carrera GT reaches 100 mph in seven seconds and has a top speed of 205 mph.
"This is a Ferrari competitor," Riedel says.
It has a 5.7-liter, V-10 engine, a monocoque chassis and engine and transmission mounts made of carbon-reinforced plastic.
The car is built at Porsche's plant in Leipzig, Germany.
Riedel says production approval was given when Porsche management became convinced that the Carrera GT would make a profit - not just serve as an image car.
"This represents a large percentage of our (revenue)," he says. "But it was very costly to develop from the ground up and with expensive technologies. There was a clear target from the beginning that we had to make money with this car. At the price and with these numbers, we will make money with this car."
Source: Autoweek
By DIANA T. KURYLKO | Automotive News
Even Porsche is surprised at the strong demand for its 650-hp supercar, the $440,000 Carrera GT. Porsche has sold 1,000 of the limited edition cars, and production is sold out through May 2005.
The company committed to a run of only 1,500 Carrera GTs, about half of which are expected to be sold to U.S. customers. Production will end in May 2006.
Dealers began taking orders in January 2003. The first vehicle was delivered in Europe late last year. The first U.S. customer will take delivery this month.
Porsche decided to build the car after enthusiastic reaction to a prototype shown in fall 2000. The company found 3,000 prospects on the Internet and at auto shows and dealer events, says Hans Riedel, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Porsche AG.
"The biggest problem with doing a luxury sports car is that nobody knows the real potential out there," Riedel says. "Maybach is in the same category. You are talking to the top in wealth, to the collectors - to someone who wants the ultimate performance."
The prototypefirst was shown at the Louvre art museum in Paris in fall 2000. The production version debuted at the 2003 Geneva show.
The ultra lightweight Carrera GT reaches 100 mph in seven seconds and has a top speed of 205 mph.
"This is a Ferrari competitor," Riedel says.
It has a 5.7-liter, V-10 engine, a monocoque chassis and engine and transmission mounts made of carbon-reinforced plastic.
The car is built at Porsche's plant in Leipzig, Germany.
Riedel says production approval was given when Porsche management became convinced that the Carrera GT would make a profit - not just serve as an image car.
"This represents a large percentage of our (revenue)," he says. "But it was very costly to develop from the ground up and with expensive technologies. There was a clear target from the beginning that we had to make money with this car. At the price and with these numbers, we will make money with this car."
Source: Autoweek
01-19-2004, 06:02 PM
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Originally posted by gdubb
If i hit the lotto I will get one
If i hit the lotto I will get one
=)
01-19-2004, 06:03 PM
#72
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Originally posted by chungkopi
i'll definitely take this over SLR
i'll definitely take this over SLR
The SLR is only 350k and has 620+ hp too. SC'd V8... Lots of room for improvement.
But then again, I would need to start selling drugs (on the side) to afford to own it... read, own....
04-12-2004, 09:17 AM
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Aye, Carrera! The First Full Test of Porsche's
Carrera GT Supercar - - By MIKE DUFF - - Source: Autoweek
2004 PORSCHE CARRERA GT
ON SALE: Now
PRICE: $440,000
POWERTRAIN: Mid-engine, 5.7-liter/350-cid dohc V10;
605 hp @ 8000 rpm, 435 lb-ft @ 5750 rpm; six-speed manual
CURB WEIGHT: 3043 pounds
TRACK TEST DATA: SEE BELOW
THE FIRST HURDLE is the language barrier. Not the one between technical German and English—any part of the Carrera GT experience that does not translate can be communicated through a combination of hand gestures and low, appreciative whistling.
No, the problem comes with the growing realization that “supercar” isn’t going to be a strong enough word for us here, as there is a magnitude of difference between this
über Porsche and other more, well, ordinary supercars. The Carrera GT could eat any production Lamborghini for breakfast, spend the morning snacking on Aston Martins and then lunch on Ferraris. What we need here is new nomenclature, something understated, yet snappy. How about hyper-ultimate megacar?
The 605-hp V10 was intended for Le Mans, and it takes a purposeful driver—and controls—to keep it under firm control.
Which leads to question No. 1: How hyper, ultimate and mega is the Carrera GT? That’s what we’re here to find out, at the grandly titled Adria International Raceway, approximately 50 miles from Venice in Italy. As the first U.S. magazine to run and publish a full test of the $440,000 roadster, our mission is to gather as full a set of performance figures as the track here will allow. There is not enough space to mount a challenge on Porsche’s claimed 205-mph top speed, but we should be in a position to confirm, deny or possibly even better the company’s claim to a 3.7-second 0-to-62-mph (100 km/h) time.
First up, some acquaintance-making. Seen in the otherwise empty, concrete surrounds of the Adria pit lane, the two Carrera GTs on hand both look low, mean, hungry and gleaming with a slightly predatory malevolence. The front end comes across as scaled-up stock Porsche on first acquaintance, but look harder and you see some real hard man-menace in the slant and set of the headlights’ gaze. First choice: red or silver. The Italian magazine that we are sharing the day with does not mind, so we opt for the silver car. It is definitely the GT’s color (half of the production will be finished in it). And the silver car here also does without the no-cost optional a/c and stereo that most will ship with; every bit of weight saved should translate as performance gained when it comes to getting figures. Best of all, our decoding of the VIN suggests it is the first U.S.-spec car: If you see a red car in other magazines, know that it is European specification. There is no significant difference that we’ve been made aware of, but the car we tested was definitely meant for America. Far cry from Porsche’s 959, eh?
Before we start, let’s look at just what we’re going to start. The rear clamshell hood opens on an immaculately presented engine bay, every pipe clipped just so, suspension wishbones and rocker-operated springs and dampers polished to a near-concours shine.
Overlapping gauges resemble those on lesser Porsches, but check that redline.
(The car has not been specially prepared, engineering project leader Michael Hölscher tells us; this is how they all leave the factory.) The bay is dominated by a sturdy-looking carbon fiber yoke to which the engine and suspension are bolted and which is then attached to the chassis tub.
It is in the heart of this, surrounded by its webbed protection, that the star of the show sits, the 5.7-liter, quad-cam 40-valve V10.
Lots of road cars claim racing provenance for their engines; this is very much the real deal. The 68-degree banked motor was originally designed to power Porsche’s proposed LMP2000 Le Mans racer by ex-Formula One engine man Herbert Ampferer. To the dismay of the engineers at Porsche’s Weissach R&D facility, the LMP2000 project was pulled in November ’99 to concentrate engineering resources on the Cayenne, and instead of racing the engine Porsche chose to base the Carrera GT around it. Amazingly, it has made the transition to a production block largely unchanged. Quieter chain-driven cams have replaced the original gear-driven ones, bringing Porsche’s Variocam inlet timing adjustment with them. The engine now has to exhale through catalysts and has been slightly detuned for road use, but not by that much. The racer was reportedly set to make 680 hp at 10,000 rpm; the Carrera GT manages 605 hp at 8000 rpm, in conjunction with 435 lb-ft of torque. In a car weighing just 3043 pounds unladen, that is still more than plenty.
OUR FIRST BIT of driving is onto the local roads surrounding the circuit and into a couple of the neighboring towns for photography. It is also a good opportunity to conduct a quick poll on what the Italians make of this strange, silvery beast in their midst. The engine starts via a simple turn of the ignition key rather than through the sort of F-16 switch-and-button start procedure favored by some rivals. And apart from the towering center stack, complete with the wooden-handled gear change selector that defines the cabin, the design and finish are modest and restrained. Steering wheel and instruments are similar to those found in the current-generation 996, although the speedometer is calibrated to 225 mph. It takes awhile to realize the cabin is actually trimmed in unpainted carbon fiber, weave pattern clearly visible, set off by a few well-chosen leather panels and big, industrial-looking, floor-hinged alloy pedals.
When it’s time to dance, the driver works these three structured pedals.
For slow-speed use the tiny twin-plate ceramic clutch requires some acclimatization, but the gearshift is a real joy to use, sliding cleanly between the gates, despite cable operation and the distance between the selector and the transmission behind the engine. Dial up 2000 rpm, let the clutch out very gently and we’re moving, heading out of the gates of Adria in nearly a half-million dollars worth of the finest German performance engineering.
On local streets the Carrera becomes effortless again. It is a big, wide car—and sitting low in the cockpit within the slightly too intimate embrace of the bucket seats (one-inch-wider ones are optional), it is relatively hard to accurately place the car’s front corners on the road. But otherwise this might as well be a Boxster or a stock 911 in terms of the demands it makes on the driver: going, stopping and steering like it is no big deal, engine happy to rumble along at low revs in high gears. It is so good at convincing you this is nothing special that it comes as a fresh surprise to see each face as it turns toward you, breaks into a grin, gives a thumbs-up or even shouts encouragement.
“Ferrari?” asks an old man at an intersection. No, not a Ferrari. He looks surpris-ed, maybe slightly offended that such an interloper could be traveling through his part of the world, but then he smiles broadly and his shoulders rise into an easily translated shrug: “Heck, it’s still pretty great.”
THE GT HANDLES local roads and local adulation, but it is not where we need to be for the proper dynamic interrogation. Before long we’re heading back in through the gatehouse at Adria and onto pit lane. The thick mist that covered the area early in the morning has gone, burned off by the rising sun. Track conditions are perfect: 66 degrees, clear skies, absolutely no wind.
Within the first couple of corners it is clear the GT is genuinely great, immediately at home in this environment. And the lack of scariness apparent on the road stays good on the track: It is benign, friendly and profoundly unsnappy, certainly on the generally slowish corners that make up Adria. The limits of adhesion are high, thanks to the road-roller profile of the vast Michelin tires. But the steering is as communicative as a Bud-fueled best buddy and throttle response is perfectly proportional. Within a short space of time—so short you should be amazed—it is possible to push the car hard, work the powerful ceramic brakes deep into the corners, trimming the line with the throttle. Scale up the sensation of driving a go-kart and you’ve got it, especially the instinctive sensation of weight transfer, helping the car to turn and grip and find its traction.
It makes car guys wince to suction-cup gear onto this paint, but tester Pete Albrecht takes precautions for the sake of both car and equipment.
The issue of traction being where the traction control comes in. Traction control systems tend to bring out the machismo in most drivers. (“There’s no way a machine can do the job better than me!”) But with the Carrera GT, even one-time test pilot (and rally megastar) Walter Röhrl advised drivers to keep the electronic safeguards in place during even the hardest driving. With good reason, too. Unless you are Röhrl, you will almost certainly travel considerably quicker if you leave it activated and invest trust. Traction control off and the car gets skittish, sliding suddenly at the limit of
adhesion, power overwhelming the tires’ high lateral limits all the way up to seriously high speeds. But left on, traction manage- ment is a friendly system, engineered to stay in the background for as long as possible, intervening only as adhesion is lost, reining in the engine’s efforts with sensitivity and then feeding power back in smoothly and progressively as the grip returns.
As you might imagine, it is fast too. Adjective-stretching fast. Adria’s longer straights are torn up, reeled in, devoured and expelled. Before you have time to realize what’s happening, you’re already facing the next corner, braking mark long since miss-ed. Which is why it is fortunate the car’s ceramic stoppers grab as hungrily and tirelessly as they do, helping the tires to shed the vast amounts of energy they have just helped you to pile on. It is a magical, slightly surreal experience: so much speed, so little fear. You could scare yourself senseless going far slower in other, lesser supercars.
The only question remains that of how fast. It is time to turn the car over to contributing editor Pete Albrecht and his case full of timing gear to find out. It is just possible to make a quarter-mile strip out of the start/finish straight at Adria, but it leaves precious little space to stop before meeting the hungry-looking barriers that surround the outside of the first corner. Spectacular though the experience is from inside the GT’s cockpit, it is just about equally exciting viewed from outside, as the car nudges forward until the Correvit test computer’s arm espies the reflective strip that marks the start of the run. The car pauses, the engine revs rise, Albrecht blends in the clutch and—bang!—launch, accompanied by an angry chirp of tires
and a whiff of burning rubber. Then the Carrera GT becomes a rapidly diminishing shape heading down the straight, throwing angry, pure race car noise at the concrete stands and pit buildings. First, second, third and just a brief hint of fourth gear—until, in what seems an impossibly short space of time, the run is over, distance emphasized by the one-second delay between seeing the brake lights go on and hearing the engine note die.
Trackside observers wonder that anything can hang on for the ride, so clearly dramatic is the Carrera GT’s performance.
Several runs later and we’ve got our answers, a best 0-to-60-mph of the day of 3.5 seconds, just inside Porsche’s official figure. The 0-to-100-mph figure of 7.06 seconds is just outside Porsche’s claimed 6.9 seconds for the almost-equivalent 0-to-160-km/h drag. But the quarter-mile time of 11.35 seconds, pulling a terminal of 129.5 mph, is astonishing. Remember, this thing wears license plates and passes emissions tests. The most gloriously unlikely statistic only comes later, with the full digest of the Correvit’s number-crunched statistics. The GT has the capacity to do 0 to 100 mph
and then back to rest again in just 11.6 seconds, in a distance of just 882 feet—considerably less than the length of the deck of an aircraft carrier. It is not quite as fast as a McLaren F1, 0.7 second shy to 100 mph, short by the same margin to 120 mph. But is there anything else out there that comes even close? Let’s hope Ferrari will lend us an Enzo, and Mercedes an SLR McLaren to help us find out.
Sure, by any rational standard $440,000 is a ridiculous amount to even think about paying for a car, even two or three cars. But after one day in the company of the Porsche Carrera GT, it really does begin to look dangerously like a bargain.
2004 PORSCHE CARRERA GT
ON SALE: Now
PRICE: $440,000
SPECIFICATIONS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHASSIS: Carbon fiber monocoque; rwd, two-seat roadster
POWERTRAIN: Mid-engine, 5.7-liter/350-cid dohc V10;
605 hp @ 8000 rpm, 435 lb-ft @ 5750 rpm; six-speed manual
COMPRESSION RATIO: 12.0:1
WHEELBASE, TRACK FRONT/REAR: 107.5, 63.5/62.5 inches
LENGTH/WIDTH/HEIGHT: 181.6/75.6/45.9 inches
CURB WEIGHT: 3043 pounds
SUSPENSION, FRONT AND REAR: Independent, dual control arms, coilover shocks, antiroll bar
BRAKES: 14.96-inch ceramic-composite vented discs with
six-piston calipers, front and rear; ABS
WHEELS AND TIRES: Forged magnesium wheels with
center bolt; 265/35ZR-19 front, 335/30ZR-20 rear;
Michelin Pilot Sport Radial X
FUEL CAPACITY: 24.3 gallons
CARGO: 2.7 cubic feet (front trunk)
PERFORMANCE AS TESTED *
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0-60 MPH: 3.5 sec
0-100 KM/H (62.1 MPH): 3.63 sec
0-100 MPH: 7.06 sec
0-QUARTER-MILE: 11.35 sec @ 129.5 mph
0-100 MPH-0: 11.6 sec, 882 ft
20-40 MPH (FIRST GEAR): 1.1 sec
40-60 MPH (SECOND GEAR): 1.3 sec
60-80 MPH (SECOND GEAR): 1.4 sec
60 MPH-0: 104 ft
LATERAL ACCELERATION (50-M SKIDPAD): 0.95 g
TOP SPEED: 205 mph (mfr)
* Track testing performed by Pete Albrecht
Carrera GT Supercar - - By MIKE DUFF - - Source: Autoweek
2004 PORSCHE CARRERA GT
ON SALE: Now
PRICE: $440,000
POWERTRAIN: Mid-engine, 5.7-liter/350-cid dohc V10;
605 hp @ 8000 rpm, 435 lb-ft @ 5750 rpm; six-speed manual
CURB WEIGHT: 3043 pounds
TRACK TEST DATA: SEE BELOW
THE FIRST HURDLE is the language barrier. Not the one between technical German and English—any part of the Carrera GT experience that does not translate can be communicated through a combination of hand gestures and low, appreciative whistling.
No, the problem comes with the growing realization that “supercar” isn’t going to be a strong enough word for us here, as there is a magnitude of difference between this
über Porsche and other more, well, ordinary supercars. The Carrera GT could eat any production Lamborghini for breakfast, spend the morning snacking on Aston Martins and then lunch on Ferraris. What we need here is new nomenclature, something understated, yet snappy. How about hyper-ultimate megacar?
The 605-hp V10 was intended for Le Mans, and it takes a purposeful driver—and controls—to keep it under firm control.
Which leads to question No. 1: How hyper, ultimate and mega is the Carrera GT? That’s what we’re here to find out, at the grandly titled Adria International Raceway, approximately 50 miles from Venice in Italy. As the first U.S. magazine to run and publish a full test of the $440,000 roadster, our mission is to gather as full a set of performance figures as the track here will allow. There is not enough space to mount a challenge on Porsche’s claimed 205-mph top speed, but we should be in a position to confirm, deny or possibly even better the company’s claim to a 3.7-second 0-to-62-mph (100 km/h) time.
First up, some acquaintance-making. Seen in the otherwise empty, concrete surrounds of the Adria pit lane, the two Carrera GTs on hand both look low, mean, hungry and gleaming with a slightly predatory malevolence. The front end comes across as scaled-up stock Porsche on first acquaintance, but look harder and you see some real hard man-menace in the slant and set of the headlights’ gaze. First choice: red or silver. The Italian magazine that we are sharing the day with does not mind, so we opt for the silver car. It is definitely the GT’s color (half of the production will be finished in it). And the silver car here also does without the no-cost optional a/c and stereo that most will ship with; every bit of weight saved should translate as performance gained when it comes to getting figures. Best of all, our decoding of the VIN suggests it is the first U.S.-spec car: If you see a red car in other magazines, know that it is European specification. There is no significant difference that we’ve been made aware of, but the car we tested was definitely meant for America. Far cry from Porsche’s 959, eh?
Before we start, let’s look at just what we’re going to start. The rear clamshell hood opens on an immaculately presented engine bay, every pipe clipped just so, suspension wishbones and rocker-operated springs and dampers polished to a near-concours shine.
Overlapping gauges resemble those on lesser Porsches, but check that redline.
(The car has not been specially prepared, engineering project leader Michael Hölscher tells us; this is how they all leave the factory.) The bay is dominated by a sturdy-looking carbon fiber yoke to which the engine and suspension are bolted and which is then attached to the chassis tub.
It is in the heart of this, surrounded by its webbed protection, that the star of the show sits, the 5.7-liter, quad-cam 40-valve V10.
Lots of road cars claim racing provenance for their engines; this is very much the real deal. The 68-degree banked motor was originally designed to power Porsche’s proposed LMP2000 Le Mans racer by ex-Formula One engine man Herbert Ampferer. To the dismay of the engineers at Porsche’s Weissach R&D facility, the LMP2000 project was pulled in November ’99 to concentrate engineering resources on the Cayenne, and instead of racing the engine Porsche chose to base the Carrera GT around it. Amazingly, it has made the transition to a production block largely unchanged. Quieter chain-driven cams have replaced the original gear-driven ones, bringing Porsche’s Variocam inlet timing adjustment with them. The engine now has to exhale through catalysts and has been slightly detuned for road use, but not by that much. The racer was reportedly set to make 680 hp at 10,000 rpm; the Carrera GT manages 605 hp at 8000 rpm, in conjunction with 435 lb-ft of torque. In a car weighing just 3043 pounds unladen, that is still more than plenty.
OUR FIRST BIT of driving is onto the local roads surrounding the circuit and into a couple of the neighboring towns for photography. It is also a good opportunity to conduct a quick poll on what the Italians make of this strange, silvery beast in their midst. The engine starts via a simple turn of the ignition key rather than through the sort of F-16 switch-and-button start procedure favored by some rivals. And apart from the towering center stack, complete with the wooden-handled gear change selector that defines the cabin, the design and finish are modest and restrained. Steering wheel and instruments are similar to those found in the current-generation 996, although the speedometer is calibrated to 225 mph. It takes awhile to realize the cabin is actually trimmed in unpainted carbon fiber, weave pattern clearly visible, set off by a few well-chosen leather panels and big, industrial-looking, floor-hinged alloy pedals.
When it’s time to dance, the driver works these three structured pedals.
For slow-speed use the tiny twin-plate ceramic clutch requires some acclimatization, but the gearshift is a real joy to use, sliding cleanly between the gates, despite cable operation and the distance between the selector and the transmission behind the engine. Dial up 2000 rpm, let the clutch out very gently and we’re moving, heading out of the gates of Adria in nearly a half-million dollars worth of the finest German performance engineering.
On local streets the Carrera becomes effortless again. It is a big, wide car—and sitting low in the cockpit within the slightly too intimate embrace of the bucket seats (one-inch-wider ones are optional), it is relatively hard to accurately place the car’s front corners on the road. But otherwise this might as well be a Boxster or a stock 911 in terms of the demands it makes on the driver: going, stopping and steering like it is no big deal, engine happy to rumble along at low revs in high gears. It is so good at convincing you this is nothing special that it comes as a fresh surprise to see each face as it turns toward you, breaks into a grin, gives a thumbs-up or even shouts encouragement.
“Ferrari?” asks an old man at an intersection. No, not a Ferrari. He looks surpris-ed, maybe slightly offended that such an interloper could be traveling through his part of the world, but then he smiles broadly and his shoulders rise into an easily translated shrug: “Heck, it’s still pretty great.”
THE GT HANDLES local roads and local adulation, but it is not where we need to be for the proper dynamic interrogation. Before long we’re heading back in through the gatehouse at Adria and onto pit lane. The thick mist that covered the area early in the morning has gone, burned off by the rising sun. Track conditions are perfect: 66 degrees, clear skies, absolutely no wind.
Within the first couple of corners it is clear the GT is genuinely great, immediately at home in this environment. And the lack of scariness apparent on the road stays good on the track: It is benign, friendly and profoundly unsnappy, certainly on the generally slowish corners that make up Adria. The limits of adhesion are high, thanks to the road-roller profile of the vast Michelin tires. But the steering is as communicative as a Bud-fueled best buddy and throttle response is perfectly proportional. Within a short space of time—so short you should be amazed—it is possible to push the car hard, work the powerful ceramic brakes deep into the corners, trimming the line with the throttle. Scale up the sensation of driving a go-kart and you’ve got it, especially the instinctive sensation of weight transfer, helping the car to turn and grip and find its traction.
It makes car guys wince to suction-cup gear onto this paint, but tester Pete Albrecht takes precautions for the sake of both car and equipment.
The issue of traction being where the traction control comes in. Traction control systems tend to bring out the machismo in most drivers. (“There’s no way a machine can do the job better than me!”) But with the Carrera GT, even one-time test pilot (and rally megastar) Walter Röhrl advised drivers to keep the electronic safeguards in place during even the hardest driving. With good reason, too. Unless you are Röhrl, you will almost certainly travel considerably quicker if you leave it activated and invest trust. Traction control off and the car gets skittish, sliding suddenly at the limit of
adhesion, power overwhelming the tires’ high lateral limits all the way up to seriously high speeds. But left on, traction manage- ment is a friendly system, engineered to stay in the background for as long as possible, intervening only as adhesion is lost, reining in the engine’s efforts with sensitivity and then feeding power back in smoothly and progressively as the grip returns.
As you might imagine, it is fast too. Adjective-stretching fast. Adria’s longer straights are torn up, reeled in, devoured and expelled. Before you have time to realize what’s happening, you’re already facing the next corner, braking mark long since miss-ed. Which is why it is fortunate the car’s ceramic stoppers grab as hungrily and tirelessly as they do, helping the tires to shed the vast amounts of energy they have just helped you to pile on. It is a magical, slightly surreal experience: so much speed, so little fear. You could scare yourself senseless going far slower in other, lesser supercars.
The only question remains that of how fast. It is time to turn the car over to contributing editor Pete Albrecht and his case full of timing gear to find out. It is just possible to make a quarter-mile strip out of the start/finish straight at Adria, but it leaves precious little space to stop before meeting the hungry-looking barriers that surround the outside of the first corner. Spectacular though the experience is from inside the GT’s cockpit, it is just about equally exciting viewed from outside, as the car nudges forward until the Correvit test computer’s arm espies the reflective strip that marks the start of the run. The car pauses, the engine revs rise, Albrecht blends in the clutch and—bang!—launch, accompanied by an angry chirp of tires
and a whiff of burning rubber. Then the Carrera GT becomes a rapidly diminishing shape heading down the straight, throwing angry, pure race car noise at the concrete stands and pit buildings. First, second, third and just a brief hint of fourth gear—until, in what seems an impossibly short space of time, the run is over, distance emphasized by the one-second delay between seeing the brake lights go on and hearing the engine note die.
Trackside observers wonder that anything can hang on for the ride, so clearly dramatic is the Carrera GT’s performance.
Several runs later and we’ve got our answers, a best 0-to-60-mph of the day of 3.5 seconds, just inside Porsche’s official figure. The 0-to-100-mph figure of 7.06 seconds is just outside Porsche’s claimed 6.9 seconds for the almost-equivalent 0-to-160-km/h drag. But the quarter-mile time of 11.35 seconds, pulling a terminal of 129.5 mph, is astonishing. Remember, this thing wears license plates and passes emissions tests. The most gloriously unlikely statistic only comes later, with the full digest of the Correvit’s number-crunched statistics. The GT has the capacity to do 0 to 100 mph
and then back to rest again in just 11.6 seconds, in a distance of just 882 feet—considerably less than the length of the deck of an aircraft carrier. It is not quite as fast as a McLaren F1, 0.7 second shy to 100 mph, short by the same margin to 120 mph. But is there anything else out there that comes even close? Let’s hope Ferrari will lend us an Enzo, and Mercedes an SLR McLaren to help us find out.
Sure, by any rational standard $440,000 is a ridiculous amount to even think about paying for a car, even two or three cars. But after one day in the company of the Porsche Carrera GT, it really does begin to look dangerously like a bargain.
2004 PORSCHE CARRERA GT
ON SALE: Now
PRICE: $440,000
SPECIFICATIONS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHASSIS: Carbon fiber monocoque; rwd, two-seat roadster
POWERTRAIN: Mid-engine, 5.7-liter/350-cid dohc V10;
605 hp @ 8000 rpm, 435 lb-ft @ 5750 rpm; six-speed manual
COMPRESSION RATIO: 12.0:1
WHEELBASE, TRACK FRONT/REAR: 107.5, 63.5/62.5 inches
LENGTH/WIDTH/HEIGHT: 181.6/75.6/45.9 inches
CURB WEIGHT: 3043 pounds
SUSPENSION, FRONT AND REAR: Independent, dual control arms, coilover shocks, antiroll bar
BRAKES: 14.96-inch ceramic-composite vented discs with
six-piston calipers, front and rear; ABS
WHEELS AND TIRES: Forged magnesium wheels with
center bolt; 265/35ZR-19 front, 335/30ZR-20 rear;
Michelin Pilot Sport Radial X
FUEL CAPACITY: 24.3 gallons
CARGO: 2.7 cubic feet (front trunk)
PERFORMANCE AS TESTED *
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0-60 MPH: 3.5 sec
0-100 KM/H (62.1 MPH): 3.63 sec
0-100 MPH: 7.06 sec
0-QUARTER-MILE: 11.35 sec @ 129.5 mph
0-100 MPH-0: 11.6 sec, 882 ft
20-40 MPH (FIRST GEAR): 1.1 sec
40-60 MPH (SECOND GEAR): 1.3 sec
60-80 MPH (SECOND GEAR): 1.4 sec
60 MPH-0: 104 ft
LATERAL ACCELERATION (50-M SKIDPAD): 0.95 g
TOP SPEED: 205 mph (mfr)
* Track testing performed by Pete Albrecht
04-13-2004, 09:41 AM
#76
Floyd Mayweather Jr.
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Originally posted by gavriil
11.3 at 130 mph is some seriously quick and fast outcome. This thing surely makes 600+ HP.
11.3 at 130 mph is some seriously quick and fast outcome. This thing surely makes 600+ HP.
04-13-2004, 06:06 PM
#77
Senior Moderator
no its not...... I've seen the Enzo doing as quick as 11.1 @ 136 (in the mags, that is 
).
).
04-14-2004, 09:47 AM
#78
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Originally posted by srika
no its not...... I've seen the Enzo doing as quick as 11.1 @ 136 (in the mags, that is ).
no its not...... I've seen the Enzo doing as quick as 11.1 @ 136 (in the mags, that is
).
04-14-2004, 09:48 AM
#79
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I am thinking of 2 future offerings as an answer to the Enzo and the Carrera GT:
1. Blue Devil Corvette (2700 pounds 725HP)
2. Ford GT SVT (2900 pounds 700 HP with a new SC pulley
)
1. Blue Devil Corvette (2700 pounds 725HP)
2. Ford GT SVT (2900 pounds 700 HP with a new SC pulley
)
04-14-2004, 09:48 AM
#80
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that car really is busted. the rear is way too long. and im def not feeling the "04 civic" shifter. for the money, id much ratehr get a murc, ferrari, hell, just ab anything in the same price range.
