| ABS again. Everything is as advertised. Hard loads in every
direction. I did not select the Sport settings, but the car has
analyzed its activity and made that happen. I came out early
enough to have a few hours before the traffic begins. Our
mountains and desert remain crosshatched by little-used two
lane roads. Vasquez Canyon is one of the roughest recently
paved two lanes in southern California. There are no potholes
and no patches, just what appears to be bad preparation
and corners that look like primitive planning. Senses
are sharpened. Perceptions quicken. Peripheral vision is fantastic.
Porsche’s new 911 was created from the driver’s seat.
Great exercise — exorcise. The clutch and the latest, shortstick
gear change would be hard to beat. The heel/toe twostep
is only easy under hard braking when the pedals finally
align — perfect, serious entertainment set-up — a little
tougher in the villages with lighter braking.
The Carrera tracks with precision while the suspension is
working hard. The high-speed damping (initial impact control)
is about as good as it gets. The tires never lose contact
and the car is never unsettled. There is no way for me to
judge the additional 10 millimeters of track, the new hollow
components in the front, and tubular a-arms in the rear that
have reduced unsprung weight, or pickup point relocations
for a revision of geometery at both ends. There is no hint of
Porsche’s off-throttle corner terrors from another age —
mostly gone for a couple of generations now, but still in
wide-eyed memory. In search of the new chassis limits, I get
to the rev limiter only a couple of times and the ABS for
several little burps.
Right onto Bouquet Canyon; by contrast, some of the
best pavement in the area, twenty miles of perfect surface,
big sweepers with long sections of tree tunnels. Fast.
Porsche country. It is dark and the headlights are right at my
limits. The low beam cutoff step is exactly on the side of the
pavement when the road is straight, but in and out of little
valleys and cross canyons, the high beams are required.
They reach clear into the trees and you can see corners in all
directions — up, down and sideways, even half way around
switchbacks, with enough warning to make it right. Out of
the canyon and onto the desert floor, the low beams only
reach about 100 meters clearly, but over the ton (motorcycle-
guy terminology for 100 mph) that is not enough. If this
were my car I would want another degree of up-angle to
give me another 50 meters or so. I think they are powerful
enough to reach.
What a brilliant entertainment facility. This traditional
911 instrument cluster would be hard to replace. The tach is
always in sight and high enough to be in your vision all the
time. The new-tech electronic stack that cascades down to
the center of the dash is daunting at first glance, but all the
radio info (when you are leaving station zones pretty regularly)
is available on two rolling buttons on either side of the
new optional steering wheel — actually, a simple steering
wheel is standard equipment — really. Should you want to
lower the temperature, the climate control at the bottom of
the stack is also logical and two-rolling-buttons simple. I put
thousands of miles on a Carrera a year ago January. I mentioned
then how much I liked the seats and the Carrera S
only underscored their effectiveness. This car has the electric
seat with only a few critical power adjustments and the
optional leather. My local dealer assures me leather is standard
equipment. Well, Porsche gets $4,825 for the leather in
this car. I’m not sure of the difference, but I don’t think I
would need that.
Typical Porsche. The increased 200 cc of displacement
and 30 horsepower are nearly the only specs on a long data
panel that have changed from the last Carrera, but the pages
of incremental upgrades just go on and on. What you are
paying for is a fundamentally different kind of sports car
that is better at communicating and responding than even its
most recent sibling. They tell us that with Porsche Active
Suspension Management (PASM) you can be five seconds
faster on the old Nürburgring north circuit...right. Only the
big kids would be able to get two lap times of that fourteenmile
mountain road close enough to have five seconds even
be a factor. The cool thing is that if you don’t even touch the
PASM button the system will be accumulating data from all
over the car — suspension, steering, engine, accelerometers
for fore-and-aft and side loading — and will soon discover
that the driver is out for some fun. It will begin to incrementally
tighten, firm-up, and reprogram all the important functions
so that as you reach your talent limits it will already be
there, prepared to make you a hero. |
