The Porsche Museum has a special Rennsport exhibition running until March 17, 2014, celebrating “60 Years of Super Sports Cars”.
Porsche Museum Rennsport Exhibition
Some rare birds can be seen in the exhibition, including this beautiful 550: the first Spyder ever bought by a private individual. I don’t know the chassis number, but the colour scheme is perfect for a privately owned car. I’ll try to get a few more details.
Also in the show is Herbert von Karajan’s unique lightweight RS-bodied 911 Turbo: a factory special for the famous German conductor, which featured on the cover of his Famous Overtures album, recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic. Porsche 911 Turbo is classic rock ‘n’ roll!
The Porsche Museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, 9.00 to 18.00. Entry is €8 for adults and UK readers can fly to Stuttgart return from £120 (Flybe out of Birmingham for a January weekend: Friday-Sunday).
I’ve been following the US class action lawsuit brought against Porsche Cars North America, for intermediate shaft (IMS) defects in the engine of the Porsche Boxster and 911 (996/997) from the 2001 to 2005 model years. According to Internet wisdom, the defective single-row bearing at the centre of this class action lawsuit has an estimated failure rate of somewhere between 8 and 10 per cent.
After months of online back-and-forth over whether this suit had settled, the lawyers involved have put out a press release announcing that the suit has been settled in favour of the plaintiffs. From the release: “Porsche owners and lessees may be reimbursed up to 100% of their out-of-pocket costs, depending upon the mileage on the vehicle at the time of repair. The reimbursement includes all out-of-pocket engine damage and replacement costs, up to ten years from the vehicle first being placed in service, regardless of whether such damage or loss occurs before or after the notice of this settlement. The Porsche owners and lessees are also entitled up to two hundred dollars in expenses for mileage and towing.”
“This settlement represents a wonderful result on behalf of current and former Porsche owners and lessees who have had to pay out-of-pocket costs related to repairing or replacing an engine which sustained damage as a result of a defective IMS,” said Class Counsel, Stephen Harris. But is it really all that wonderful?
It’s certainly not wonderful if your car falls outside the prescribed chassis numbers but still has an IMS issue. It’s also not wonderful if your Porsche was fitted with the double-row IMS bearing, which has a much lower failure rate (estimated by the Internet to be circa 1%), but your Porsche 911 or Boxster’s residual value was tarred with the bad IMS brush. It’s definitely not wonderful if you bought an IMS-affected lemon and suffered emotional trauma and financial hardship in sorting out the problem.
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The Australian Formula 1 pilot Mark Webber has signed a contract with Porsche that extends over several years. From the 2014 season he will compete in Porsche’s new LMP1 sports prototype at the Le Mans 24 Hours and in the sports car World Endurance Championship WEC. The 36-year-old Australian has already raced at Le Mans twice. In 1998 he finished runner-up in the FIA GT Championship at the wheel of a sports prototype. Over the course of his Formula 1 career from 2002 until today, Webber has achieved 36 podium places, nine race victories and has started from pole position eleven times.
“It’s an honour for me to join Porsche at its return to the top category in Le Mans and in the sports car World Endurance Championship and be part of the team. Porsche has written racing history as a manufacturer and stands for outstanding technology and performance at the highest level,” says Mark Webber. “I’m very much looking forward to this new challenge after my time in Formula 1. Porsche will undoubtedly set itself very high goals. I can hardly wait to pilot one of the fastest sports cars in the world.”
“I’m very pleased to have secured Mark Webber for our LMP1 project as one of the best and most successful Formula 1 pilots of our time,” says Wolfgang Hatz, Board Member for Research and Development at Porsche AG. “Mark is without doubt one of the world’s best race drivers, he has experience at the Le Mans 24 hour race and on top of that he’s been a Porsche enthusiast for many years.”
“I learned to appreciate Mark’s qualities when we were both involved in Formula 1,” says Fritz Enzinger, Head of LMP1. “He is one of the best pilots I could imagine for our team. I’m absolutely delighted that we have such an experienced and fast regular driver onboard from 2014.”
Competing in the new LMP1 car alongside Mark Webber are the two long-standing Porsche works drivers Timo Bernhard (Germany) and Romain Dumas (France) as well as the ex-Formula 1 test driver Neel Jani (Switzerland). Bernhard and Dumas already joined forces in 2010 to bring home overall victory from the Le Mans 24 hour race. In the years 2007 and 2008, they secured the American Le Mans Series title at the wheel of the RS Spyder LMP2 sports prototype. Neel Jani has contested the LMP1 class since 2010.
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The Porsche 991 RSR came good today, winning the GTE-Pro class at the 2013 Le Mans 24-Hours.
The victory came at Aston’s expense, when the number 97 car was held up by a pit lane red light in the final safety car period. 2013 had twelve safety cars: most safety car periods ever.
Aston and Porsche had been neck-and-neck up to that point, and Dumbreck, Turner and Stefan Mucke drove their hearts out, so to be robbed of their chance by something so petty was horrible. But, that’s racing.
Aston’s loss was Porsche’s gain and the Manthey/Porsche AG 991 RSRs took first and second in GTE-Pro. When the safety cars pulled in and Aston’s bad luck was fully revealed, 97 stood no chance of catching the Porsches. The pace settled into a groove to the flag, with only Sebastian Buemi’s move to unlap his P2 Toyota worth mentioning in the last fifteen minutes.
This result bodes well for 2014 and Porsche’s return to LMP. It was good work to run reliably and keep the 911 out of trouble but, were it not for that safety car break, things might not have worked out so well for Stuttgart.
Nevertheless, a win is a win and we should be delighted that the racing 911 is right back on form. On to the next one!
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Chris Harris videos continue to evolve and entertain. His latest production (apparently filmed on his own) is this one below on the new Porsche 991 GT3: a world exclusive drive of a development car, somewhere in the hills of southern Europe.
Talking to GT3 owners, some are still cross at the technical upsets: PDK-only, electric power steering and a non-Mezger engine. But many more like this fastest, revviest, most-button Porsche, and covet new-spec trinkets like the centre-lock matt silver wheels and that racecar front airdam.
What most are not liking is the financial pain to take to get it. As a good friend and GT3 owner said the other night: “I paid £70k for my first GT3, £80 for my second one and the latest is getting on for £100,000. Porsche are quoting £30k plus my low-mile Gen 2 GT3 RS to get into a new one, rising to £40k when I add some spec.”
The problem is not the lack of forty grand. It’s the airiness of Stuttgart thinking and pricing, the value (and trust) lost in what is still a satisfying machine to drive and the emerging sense that Porsche will keep jacking up the price, every time there’s a new model. You can’t pin all those price hikes on inflation.
Over on Apple’s product treadmill, owners are increasingly fed up with the latest dangling shiny bit mocking their spend on the last upgrade. An iPhone 5 upgrade costs a small fortune, only to find Apple shoving a must-have ‘S’ upgrade out six months later, costing contract holders similar daft sums to upgrade.
Apple has tackled upgrade apathy with some brains, retaining the camera and overall operating system from 4S to 5, so the upgrade was just to have a bigger phone and slightly faster processor. For people who use their iPhone mainly as camera and web device, a change made little sense, so the faithful can wait for the 5S and a step up in camera technology, and let the fashionistas take the 5 to iron out all the bugs.
In contrast, Porsche’s move from 997 to 991 GT3 threw out all the old stuff and went straight to GT3 5S: a big change in spec with a whacking hike in price. Before today, looking at this car on paper begged the question, “is all this new tech really that great?” Masterful demonstration of the tech at work dismisses any notion that this isn’t an improvement.
The facts and the feedback make this a no-brainer. The video rips the numbers to perfection and Harris is Porsche’s best salesman. There is no reason to avoid this car when he shows you what it can do.
With no access to the car and none of this talent behind the wheel, I must talk philosophy. As Harris puts it, a car with this ability, in this shape and making this noise should be the last bastion of a manual gearbox. But with the GT3 now so well engineered, the downside to a manual would be cockpit confusion when really pressing on: the driver becomes a log jam in the flow of speed from chassis to tarmac, and that is not what GT3 is all about.
Will Porsche build a GT3 5S-S with a manual transmission? Not in the short term. We’re now talking about Porsche past – manual transmission as ultimate go-faster bit is history. As Porsche sees things, if you want a manual box, you’re hankering for old technology in an older car, so just buy an old car.
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Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
Recently appointed Production and Logistics Director, Dr. Oliver Blume confirmed that over 30,000 applications had been received for the 1,000 vacancies remaining after 400 engineers were sourced.
Leipzig is in the midst of a €500 million growth spurt to gear up for Macan production, which starts in Saxony at the end of this year. The recent closure of a nearby Opel plant has helped Porsche find skilled labour, including all of the staff for its all new paint shop, but 31,000 disappointed applicants does not spell great news for the state of German automotive manufacturing.
Porsche recently anounced profits back to pre-Volkswagen levels, at circa £5.6 million PER DAY. Macan’s inevitable success means party time is coming to Leipzig, so hopefully some of those disappointed can be turned around in the long run.
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