RE: Twitchy Porsches

[Scott Fisher <sfisher71@domain.elided>]

--- Henry Kim <henry.kim@domain.elided> wrote:
> As a current 911 owner 

You mean you actually KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT?

Geez, who let Henry in? :-)

> I've never had a problem driving my 911 in
> the wet unless I enter the corner too fast or get
> over-exuberant with the throttle exiting the 
> corner.  That is, trailing throttle oversteer
> is only a problem if you go into the corner too
> quickly, get nervous and lift off.  

Someone on the 356 Digest last fall asked what to do
if he was following an SUV (there, now we can kill
this thread, I've brought in SUVs) in a corner and the
SUV braked, how could he keep from spinning since he'd
always heard you should never brake in the corner in a
356?  He had somehow missed the point about the
traling-throttle oversteer only being at-the-limit
behavior -- something that many others here seem to be
missing.

Henry's point, in case nobody has gotten it, is:

> If I enter the corner at a reasonable speed, I can
> lift off the throttle and nothing happens.

The key phrase there is "reasonable speed."  The
end-swapping antics that everyone seems to be blindly
parrotting here happen only, if they happen at all, at
the ragged edge of grip, something you should only see
at the track or (in extreme cases) in panic-braking
situations.

In a corner, ANY car will spin if you try hard enough.
 The first car I ever spun in the dry was a VW GTI --
that's right, brothers and sisters, front wheel drive
didn't save me, amen hallelujah.  I simply went into a
corner too fast, the back end started to come around
(yes, the BACK end), I countersteered and slowed
gradually just like the instructors had told me, then
the front end hooked up, pointed my nose at the
outside of the corner because I'd turned the wheel
that way, and the rear went POING out into the
iceplant, butt-first.  (For years, the joke on my
racing team was that Fahrvergnugen was German for "to
mate with iceplant.")  The last car I spun in the dry
was a Mazda Miata -- front engined, rear wheel drive. 
The issue in both cases was very simple: I entered the
corner too fast and I slid off course backwards.  Some
incipient spins are correctable; some are not.  

Which brings me back to my refrain: you never know
where your car's limits are until you find them, and
the best way to find them is at a driving school,
autocross, or track day, where the worst that is
likely to happen is that your friends will make fun of
you when you spin.  At least until THEY spin, and then
you get to make fun of them.  Then -- and here's the
hard part -- you make sure NOT TO DO THE THING THAT
MAKES IT SPIN once you get back on the street.

> As for hydro-planning, it's never happened to me. 

Credit where it's due: the advances in tire technology
during the past decades have been incredible.  It's
probably not an exaggeration to say that the
bread-and-butter radial tire of 2002 could outperform,
in comparable sizes, the top-of-the-line racing tires
of 1962, or pretty much any year before the advent of
slicks and ground-effects.  In particular, tire
manufacturers have given a lot of attention to the
problems of hydroplaning, because it's something that
can happen to anyone, anytime, under the right (or
wrong) conditions.

> I think the reputation of the 911 comes from the
> early, short-wheelbase cars, made before 1969.  
> Those things would swap ends coming out of the
> driveway. 

With all due respect... I think much of the reputation
of the 911 comes from people who hear good-humored
hyperbole such as this, and interpret it as Divine
Truth.  Just as the reputations of Alfas, M.G.s,
Triumphs, Fiats etc. are cast in stone by people whose
cousin's college roommate used to date a girl whose
previous boyfriend was always complaining that his
(insert car here) wouldn't start and that's why he was
never on time and so she dumped him, and therefore all
(insert car here)s are unreliable, flaky pieces of
crud.

When truth conflicts with the legend... print the
legend.

> But after more than 30 years of
> refinement, the 911 is now as
> easy to drive as a Honda Civic.

Is it just me, or does that sound really sad to anyone
else?  I guess that's another legend to be printed
when it conflicts with the truth: that Sports Cars are
SUPPOSED to be harder to drive than the average
grocery-getter, and therefore they confer special
status to those of us who choose to drive them.  So
it's sad to think that the only real difference
between someone who drives a 911 and someone who
drives a Honda Civic is $80,000 or so.  I guess I'll
have to prop up my pathetic illusions of moral
superiority in some other way... well, duh: I just
bought a Berlina!  I mean, REAL Alfisti drive sedans,
right? :-)

--Scott Fisher
  Tualatin, Oregon
.
Yahoo! Sports - live college hoops coverage
http://sports.yahoo.com/

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