The 911 design seems to work pretty well for those who know how to drive it…I’m not so sure it’s a matter of being a flaw so much as it is that the 911’s design requires the driver to know how to drive it which is, frankly, different than the way you drive a front engine/rear drive car with a more balanced weight distribution.

 

A design that results in worse weight distribution (than either a front- or rear-mid-engine design) and higher polar moment (on its 4WD applications) is an inherently flawed design from an engineering standpoint.

There's no dancing around it, and no explaining away the band-aids necessary to make it work.

The question is: why did Porsche do this, when they already had the inherently superior layout of the Boxster and Cayman? Consensus amongst the rags is they didn't want to upset the drivers who had already learned to accomodate this design flaw--the ones who had not yet gone backwards off a cliff, that is.

 

Off a cliff...good one.

Anyway, assuming your theory is correct (and given what I know of most Porsche owners it may well be) who should Porsche design the 911 Turbo for? After all they don't need to design it for people who will never buy it anyway.

 

I have to say, the man makes a good point.

Me personally, I always preferred the way the 924/944/944T/928 drove vs the 911. Unfortunately, the 911 faithful considered these cars an abomination.

 

You're changing the subject. The subject was the Porsche being inherently flawed from an engineering standpoint.

That said:

If they're serious about the car being their (semi) attainable performance flagship, then they should design it to be the best performance car it can be, without regard to historic layouts or other baggage.

But I guess they're not serious.

 

Explain this reasoning, please.

Perfect chassis neutrality - getting the most out of each end of the car - is going to result in a vehicle that seems "spooky", because a mistake carries a good chance of bringing around the rear of the car. This is well-known to anyone who has increased the rear spring/roll rate in order to reduce built-in understeer; GM was simply kind enough to save us the trouble by doing this right at the factory. Oh, yea, and let's not forget the power-to-weight ratio, and the fact that sticky tires often have rather sudden breakaway characteristics.

Add all this up, add in the fact that the limits of this car are encountered at extremely high speeds, and the fact that the Z06 is "spooky" at its limits is a bit of an obviously statement.

 

The problem is this - the lack of weight on the front wheels causes understeer when driving too fast into a corner. What's the solution for plowing? Lift the throttle, of course - that's almost instinctive. That's when the car goes off-course *** end first. Adding power in this situation would just make the understeer worse, so the situation primarily boils down to the driver deciding which end of the car will leave the road first. The solution to the problem is to enter a corner slow enough to maintain an appropriate margin of safety, which isn't exactly a hot ticket to fast lap times.

The air-cooled crowd must hate it when an Impala SS is faster around an autocross course, but such is physics.

 

What I'm saying is that it seems to be implied that the Z06 doesn't seem as solid as the regular vette, that could be how I'm reading into it, ergo the "I'm willing to bet" part that the aluminum frame on the Z06 may not be quite as stiff as its steel counterpart and IMO might be contributing to that "spooky" feeling. Did GM ever indicate how stiff the frame is, especially in comparison to the regular vette's frame? Did they actually increase or maintain the same stiffness with the aluminum frame, I'd like to know? It seems odd to me that the chassis wasn't set up with a hint of understeer (maybe GM felt that the electronic stabilty controls were more than enough to counter any problems that might occur?) and as for perfect chassis neutrality, the same article which used the term spooky also said the car was prone to oversteer ( power to weight ratio or just plain power I'd be inclined to think), No mention of uncommunicative tires, which like not having a bit of understeer also seems odd. Big fat tires which give little or no warning when they are ready to give up are kinda rare in normal driving circles, most high performance tires intended for the street are designed to howl a bit as they apporach the limit so that drivers don't inadvertantly cross over the limit and send the bat signal to any lawyer within sighting distance. All in all, IMO the Z06 may have been a slightly better car if it had the regular frame underpinning it, even at the cost of some weight savings. That said, the Z06 is what it is, and there certainly is no point in reinventing the wheel.

 

Maybe F-bodies should have been made with rear engine?? I can't remember the last time I've seen a Porsche at the drag strip (with their high-traction setup) so since they don't use what they've got for something it would be good at (rear engine = drag racing) and we all agree that a rear weight bias is a BAD THING for high-speed cornering, then what's so great about these Porsches again, and why do people buy them?!?

 

Porsche owners don't go to drag strips, but their cars are actually pretty good at it in spite of that.

I was merely pointing out that the rear engine layout does have some advantages over the front and mid engine layouts. I didn't say that every car should have a rear engine.

Besides, am I the only one that thinks the Corvair was a neat car?
Their engines sound great!

 

I think most of the vices of the 911's handling that you guys are bringing up have been largely eradicated in the last 10-15 years. You rarely read articles complaining about porsche handling. You used to all the time.

While the layout may be "flawed" it's helped a lot through technology, and besides, it's part of their heritage.

 

I'd pay real money to see your Impala beat a 911 around a road course on film.

That'd just ROCK!

Little old Porsche winding it's way around the turns...
And then this leviathan appears in the background, charging hard...
And then that levithan up and PASSES the Porsche...

Priceless.

 

The core problem there is not the chassis, it's the tires.

Few people beyond writers for magazines are EVER going to run a Z06 around a track on the runflats. It's senseless both monetarily and from a performance standpoint... Magazines do it because they want to test stock machinery to get a valid objective comparison.

People who actually race them are going to swap tires.

It's not an excuse - the car is still an unholy terror around a road course, no qualifications whatsoever, and comparos SHOULD be done stock vs. stock. BUT, understand clearly that were you to own one, you'd swap the tires and that behavior would change considerably.

The only mags that allow tire swaps for comparos are usually motorcycle magazines, where street tires are simply not appropriate for track comparisons. In that case, they generally swap to the same tires from the same manufacturer for all the bikes.

 

1) The 911 is an impressive performer when properly equipped. They're damned expensive, and the value equation isn't there, but some of them are still wicked fast.

2) The LARGEST reason people buy them? Status.

If you want to win races at the $45,000-$100,000 price point, there's only one choice (two if you count the Viper). If you're into a given car for different reasons, then the field opens up.

 

You mean they have small penises