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VKSF said:
common theme: no one seems to be "competent" enough to use this marvelous clutch....and these are long-time P buyers who have been through numerous GT2/3, etc.....
Just because someone owns or has owned numerous GT2/GT3's in the past doesn't mean they drive/drove that particular car every single day in order to keep their clutch skills up to date.
I, myself, drive two almost identical cars with completely different OEM clutches on a daily basis and if I drive both cars on the same day or if I don't drive either one for as little as one week, I feel ashamed and incompetant when I don't execute a 1-2 or 2-3 shift perfectly without the slightest jerk or completely misjudge the amount of revs needed for a 3-2 or 2-1 double clutch downshift. As a result, I extend the drive until I have rectified my mistakes and redeemed myself. Then, I feel very good until I realize it's time to end the drive even though I don't want to. This is my experience with easy, docile daily drivers.
Absolutely no one is going to be competent to drive a Carrera GT, the street version of a beastly Le Mans race car, stall-free on the first, second, or third day. Walter Rohrl and Roland Kussmaul themselves stalled the car many times on the track and street at first. If they had to drive the car for the first time on the hills of San Francisco or Cincinnati in traffic, I'm sure they would have stalled it. But being hard-working individuals, the more they drove it, the more concentration and effort and practice they put in, the smoother and more confident they became with the CGT. If you don't believe me, read this:
From Amazon.com, I bought the CGT book written by Elmar Brummer/Jutta Deiss/Reiner Schloz. On page 94, one paragraph describes how the test drivers and project engineers had a clutch learning curve as well:
The new ceramic clutch is surprisingly light in action, considering the power [and longevity]
it has to handle, though its initial response is rather difficult to get used to. Don't put your money where your left foot is -- it takes a modicum of practice before smooth drive-offs are possible every time. Nor should you weep tears of shame if you stall the engine once or twice. Porsche's own GT drivers have been known to set off by leaps and bounds as well. Roland Kussmaul, the Carrera GT project's technical manager, has many test kilometers behind him, and is therefore entitled to comment: "The clutch is more tolerant than people think, and you quickly get used to it.
From a psychological point of view, the CGT makes all of its new, inexperienced drivers feel ashamed and rejected. A new, inexperienced CGT driver is defined as one who has less than 365 days and 20,000 miles of seat time. Humans don't like being rejected especially when they are not prepared for it or when they have difficulty dealing with it. I have been driving manual cars since the age of 11, and if I spent $500k and didn't know beforehand that the CGT stalls at the drop of a hat unless a specific technique is used, I would be shocked and disappointed. In one hour of drivng the CGT, I've would have been made to look like a fool. If my ego couldn't take this kind of rejection, and I refused to listen to people who said that if I work hard at it I will eventually learn the proper technique, I would be trading that CGT for another more forgiving supercar a.s.a.p.
When asked about the difficulty of getting used to the clutch, Jay Leno lends some perspective:
I have a number of W.O. Bentleys and that is a hard car to shift. You grind gears. I called the guy I bought the first one from and he says, "You'll get the hang of it," and he was right. You just feel a great amount of satisfaction from learning and performing the mechanical process of shifting.
For those who are not familiar with BBC's Top Gear program, you'll be surprised to learn that Jeremy Clarkson exaggerates on a few rare occasions
However, on this particular T.V. test-drive, his description is "dead on balls" accurate ("It's an industry term").
When he says,
Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah! You NEED to be awake to drive this fast!
It really isn't an easy car to control. The clutch is BRUTAL. The power is SAVAGE. And the handling, you really are on a KNIFE EDGE. BUT! If you put in the effort, boy, oh boy, do you get the rewards.
Brutal. Savage. Knife Edge. Effort = Reward. Isn't this a supercar that true car enthusiasts have been dreaming about? I sure have. If it isn't, something is wrong with me and the project leaders at Porsche who brought the Carrera GT to life.
How many people are willing and able to buy a toy like this and then put in the required, daily effort to reap the rewards from a street-legal race car? Those 1000 customers who ordered the CGT sight unseen because they wanted the best, the most expensive, and the most extreme supercar Porsche had to offer. Did they really think Porsche would instead deliver a $500k wimp of a car to be driven to the country club, golf course, dinner with the significant other, grocery shopping, poseur cruises, and leisurely Sunday drives? If so, they should have made the check out to McLaren-Mercedes or Ford.