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Microsoft Money Leads To Street-Legal Porsche 959s
Ken Greenebaum writes "Soon there will be a 'new' Porsche 959 racing down highway 520 in Redmond. This
article in autoweek describes how Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Ralph Lauren teamed up with Bruce Canepa to make the 959 street legal. Best quote: Gates 'suggested to Canepa that perhaps they could federalize the car by buying a number of sacrificial 959s to "crash and test."' They modernized and increased the performance of the already super car to: 575HP making the 15 year old cars race to 60 in 3.3 seconds with a top speed of 215MPH."
The thing that struck me about this article was how screwed up the US political system is whereby bills are all bundled together, I won't even get into the fact that with enough cash you can get your own laws considered. This particular law was denied twice (which in of itself should see it permanently denied) but on the third try it was ushered through because the bill it was riding on was a sure fire winner, lame.
:)
All that being said it's cool that they finally got the cars into the US, only wish I could afford one
suggested to Canepa that perhaps they could federalize the car by buying a number of sacrificial 959s to "crash and test."
How about spending that crashing and testing time on windows instead???
Microsoft Money doesn't help me buy anything. It does tell me that I'm way over budget and will be bankrupt within 3 months of the start of the fiscal year.
Bill Gates in a Vin Diesel like role? The influence, the respect, the mystery...
Robert Love as the guy undercover as the Porshe employee investigating Microsoft's under-the-table dealings with Porshe, to see if more than "Microsoft Money" is involved...
Natalie "Hot Grits" Portman as his love interest who is also a Porshe racer...
Steve Ballmer, who screams "On your mark, get set, go" over and over like the crazed monkey he is...
Darl McBride running around, making sure the cars are using street-legal parts else pay him a special fee to make sure their cars don't "have problems" before a big race?
Who knows... It wouldn't be any worse than if Hollywood tried to make this!
What has always struck me as idiotic is that the 959 wasn't street legal in the US while other, non-crash-worthy super cars like the Ferrari F40 and F50, Pantera and Shelby Cobra have been.
John Carmack is seen hastily building a new rocket, loaded with weapons-grade plutonium, mumbling something about being "one-upped" about his Ferrari and some reference to a "last laugh".
Easy, Ashcroft, I was kidding about the plut++++NO CARRIER
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Once they heard Ford was switching to Linux they figured they had to do something to compete in the auto market.
Would you have a list of the various legal and non-legal "non-crash" cars? What are the requirements.
And if I please may rant a little bit: The 959 is good enough for the Autobahn, it is good enough for you. Crash data for the car exists, the Kraftfahrtbundesamt has strict specs for giving the "street legal" verdict.
Alex
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder
What has always struck me as idiotic is that the 959 wasn't street legal in the US while other, non-crash-worthy super cars like the Ferrari F40 and F50, Pantera and Shelby Cobra have been.
Whether or not a car is 'street legal' in the US is entirely up to the manufacturer. The car must adhere to emissions and safety regulations. The car must also be crash-tested and all relevant information throughly documented. There's a host of hoops the manufacturer must jump through that can add significantly to the cost of the car.
It's not the government that was keeping the 959 from being street legal, but Porsche itself.
--
a.b. murray
Currently, it costs $90,000 to import a USED Nissan Skyline GT-R R34 to the U.S. and to make it street legal. For those of you who don't know, it's the silver and blue car that Paul Walker drives in 2 Fast 2 Furious. (Yeah, it's the one with the steering wheel on the wrong side. . . ) Mind you, it costs a third of that in Japan BRAND SPANKING NEW! You can buy a 2-year-old Toyota Corolla equivalent for 6 thousand in Japan, however, due to the asinine import laws governing foreign trade, it costs two times the cost of the car to get the tests done to prove that the car was street legal and emmisions compliant in the first place, and to pay the import duties. To get the car released from customs to do the emissions testing, a bond of 250 PERCENT OF THE PRICE OF THE CAR must be put up to ensure that you will get the emissions done. You get that money back, but who has the cash to pony up like that when you are buying a car?
Anyways, that's my rant on Stupid American Laws.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!"
-Leela's Dad
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
Gates 'suggested to Canepa that perhaps they could federalize the car by buying a number of sacrificial 959s to "crash and test."'
...so I assume they'll be installing Windows on them?
Let's see exactly how much a Porsche Carerra GT would cost Bill Gates (relatively speaking).
His net worth is currently $US34,234,884,352.40 (according to the Bill gates Net Worth Page).
A brand-new Porsche Carerra GT costs an estimated $US400,000.
That means that the cost to Bill Gates is approximately 0.0012% of his total worth.
According to the US Census Bureau, the median net worth of a US household in 1995 was $US40,200. Let's adjust that upward by, say, 10% to take into account the past eight years - the amount is now $US44220.
0.0012% of 44220 is 53 cents.
Conclusion: A Porsche Carerra GT for Bill Gates is equivalent to a couple of cans of Coke for the average American.
I had no idea MS Money was that good. Is anyone going to patch gnucach for this? Will I have to wait for Quicken to do it first?
I mean, just think how useful it would be if I could have bills introduced into the Senate from my OSS program anytime I couldn't legally use (or afford) something. Hell, maybe they could implement it for the EU as well. That would be kick ass.
Is it because Bill Gates is involved, or did (almost) everybody here
decide to trade in their aspiration for freedom and pursuit of happiness
for this pitiful whining about how there ought to be some law to stop
these "rich bastards" from buying faster cars than most of us here can
afford. It reeks of ill masked jealousy and outright socialism.
There IS an outrage in this story, and it's the fact that there already
WAS a law like that, and that it took these people 10 YEARS and hundreds
of thousands of dollars to obtain PERMISSION from their own government
(the government "by the people", charged with protecting "our rights") to
import a few rare cars! It's an outrage that customs considers these cars
contraband because of some ill advised regulations that clearly shouldn't
apply in a situation like this.
Would the same laws make anyone who builds a custom vehicle a
criminal? Saying that it's for private use off public roads clearly wasn't
a defense, since the cars that were imported under "race" classification
were impounded as well!
It would make a lot more sense for crash-test/emission laws to impose an
additional tax on non-compliant cars. That way mass producers would make
sure their cars comply, but enthusiasts willing to pay the fee wouldn't be
turned into criminals for possessing "illegal" cars. Based on the
principles of freedom that are supposed to govern this country, that's
what i (apparently wrongly) assumed must already be the case!
This article shed some light on a very disturbing example of how our
government appears to have lost its appreciation for who are the servants
and who are the masters, the government or the people that elect and
employ them?
Purists? Try snobs. Every generation of Porsche owners has it's share.
There's your example.
Then there is the 964 owners who say the 993 isn't a true 911 because Porsche got help from the Japanese to reign in costs and thus produced a lower quality car (the 993 actually sold for $5000 less that the previous year's 964). They also point to the swept back fenders and headlights as more proof
Then, of course, is the 993 owners who say the 996 isn't a true 911 because it has a water cooled engine. They are many, and probably the most vocal of the snobs.
And no doubt there will be 996 owners who find something wrong with the next generation. I'm pretty sure there are even a few 356 owners who think anything else isn't really a Porsche.
Basically these are the people who are insecure about their decision to buy their car and try to make themselves feel better about it by convincing others they own the 'real deal'. These truly are the oft mentioned people who buy a Porsche to make up for a lack of manhood.