Quote:
JimFlat6 said:
A rather upset customer swears off Porsches...or least till the next one.

The factory even sent a instructor around to teach him how to drive it.

Was he having "rolling senior moments"?



Senior moment? More like "WET" from another thread (Wealth, Ego, Throttle).

I talked to a Car and Driver editor after he had just returned from the press introduction and testing of the Carrera GT some years ago. He told me a story about overhearing Don Sherman (former C and D editor-in-chief and now tech ed of Automobile - no shrinking violet, the car tester from Hell) having an exploratory conversation about the Carrera GT clutch.

The assembled press corps had been doing acceleration testing all day. It was an experimental procedure that entailed a lot of either "smoke 'em, buck, or stall" launches until each magazines' test drivers got an optimum technique sorted out. Not every test driver was prepared for the low-rotary-momentum engine characteristics and many had to puzzle out a successful launch method. The clutch took the brunt of the sorting.

There were lots and lots of 6,000 rpm and side-step-the-clutch launches going on all day. The abuse the CGT clutches were absorbing was amazing to behold. As the test day was wrapping up, Don decided to chat up the Porsche support technicians about how they might try to recover from the day's abuse to be ready for more of the same the following morning. He asked one mechanic, "Are you going to replace the clutches before the next group tries the cars?" The Porsche tech looked up from his work and said, "No. ... Why do you ask?"

My editor friend concluded from his eye-witness observations that the CGT clutch was "very robust" in his experienced view.

The CGT clutch is not particularly fragile at all. Some owners are merely not up to those tasks of driving that nearly everyone on Rennteam takes for granted. Pity!