Rossi:
reginos:
RC:
nberry:

There is one safety device Porsche should have installed on the car and we all know what that is.

PSM (or better known as ESP) wasn't a "common" feature in sports cars by the time the CGT was presented, so why should they (Porsche) have installed it?

Nowadays, it would be much more difficult to put a car without ESP on the market, simply because a lawsuit would be waiting to happen. They (lawyers) could always argue that ESP is a "common" feature on similar products.

PSM was introduced on the 996 Carrera 4 in MY1999 and became an option across the range as from MY2000. I had ordered my 986S with PSM.

IMO the CGT that was produced as from 2004 should have it as standard in view of the availability of technology, the price of the car and the huge engine power. And this irrespective of the famous accident.

However, ESP/ASR/PSM or whatever acronym became a legal requirement very much later in 2011.


Exactly. For a manufacturer like Porsche it would have been no problem at all to equip the Carrera GT with ESP, at least as an option. I guess it was simply out of marketing reasons why they didn't offer it. Just if they wanted to show their customers "look, this is a CGT, this is a real hardcore sportscar without flappy paddel gearbox and without unnecessary electronic gizmos". This was totally wrong. IMO the biggest flaw of the the CGT is the missing ESP.

 

That could be part of the reason but I'm not so sure that is all the reason behind it, the 996 of the time had PSM but it was not yet compatible with a rear differential, that is why the early 996 Carrera2's  you could option either PSM or rear diff but not both, and in the C4's the PSM was standard so you could not get the rear diff at all.

That made for less sporty handling dynamics since those PSM Carreras has open diffs and a ABD (Automatic Brake Differential) inlcuded in the PSM system, a crude electronic substitute of a real mecahnical diff that used ABS to correct slip and was not very sporty.

This was probably not a solution fit for a supercar like the Carrera GT, in fact even the GT3/GT2's of the time did not have PSM either for the same reason.

It was only till the 996 Carrera Coupe 40th anniversary edition in 2003 that for the first time Porsche managed to marry a rear differential with PSM although a less agressive rear differential setup at that, still probably not accepatble for a Carrera GT that was already presented that same year.

It wasn't until the 997 model that GT3/GT2's got a PSM/Rear diff that was fit for their sportive character.

I personally think that that was more the problem with PSM and the Carrera GT, and that it would have probably been developed with it if had it been developed a couple of years later than it did.


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