4 replies to this topic

[andrei041]

No comment ... e dementiala masinutza asta. Imi place ca o lanseaza ptr fabricatia de serie.
Insa tot am si eu o nelamurire : e comoda pozitia in care iti sta mana ptr a schimba vitezele? Mie nu mi se pare ... va anunt cum este dupa ce il conduc

[andrei041]

Da, cu BMW si Mb alea e o chestie. Insa nu cred ca ei se refera la masinile noi cand se orienteaza spre diesel. Pe cand deja GT-ul este o masina sport, pe care nu ti-o cumperi ca n-ai masina ... ci o cumperi pentru placerea ta, si placerile costa. Unele mai mult, altele mai putin ... asta e.

[mike.omega]

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.

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.

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 D�lln 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 D�lln 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.

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.)

[mike.omega]

Rezare Carrera GT inca nu se comercializeaza deci cam greu de vazut pe strazi, in special in ro

Sigur ai vazut asa ceva???

[EvilOne]

Speram ca se va repeta si showdown-ul care a avut loc la Fiorano acum ceva ani intre 959 si F40. Acum insa F60 nu mai este pur si dur, a cistigat ceva kg si enorm de multa tehnologie. Porsche, pare ca a facut un pas (nu stiu unde). A lasat TURBO la o parte si merge pe cartea aspirata, cilindree mare. Poate asa intelege si CBR ca la nivelul asta o risnita nu are prea mult succes. Asa cum a patit F50. Citat de la Koenig "Both these megabucks supercars are powered by the finest naturally aspirated V12 engines money can buy. Sharp throttle response, loads of horsepower are there for the asking, but where the Big Mac has 6.0 litres to give it seemingly limitless torque, the heavier Ferrari has to make do with a mere 4.7 litres"

Totusi ce e cu gluma asta, 0-100 3,9 sec? Poate plecind in a 2 a. Eu banuiesc un 3,5 sau un 3,4 cu cutia corect etajata.

Sint increzator in victoria lui Enzo. Ca si acum citiva ani.