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Is the Porsche Carrera GT Too Dangerous?
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "CNN reports that the 600 horsepower Porsche Carrera GT is notoriously difficult to handle, even for professional drivers. Known as the car actor Paul Walker was riding in when he died, there is no suggestion anyone was to blame for Walker's crash but Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson says drivers are on a 'knife edge' handling the car and described it as 'brutal and savage". 'It is a phenomena — mind blowingly good. Make a mistake — it bites your head off.' Todd Trimble, an exotic car mechanic in Las Vegas, says the Carrera GT is a 'very hard car to drive.' It's (a) pure racer's car. You really need to know what you're doing when you drive them. And a lot of people are learning the hard way.' The sports car has a top speed of 208 mph, a very high-revving V10 engine and more than 600 horsepower says Eddie Alterman, editor-and-chief of Car and Driver magazine. 'This was not a car for novices,' says Alterman. Having the engine in the middle of the car means it's more agile and turns more quickly than a car with the engine in the front or in the rear so it is able to change direction 'very quickly, very much like a race car,' adds Alterman. The Carrera GT is also unusual because it has no electronic stability control which means that it's unforgiving with mistakes. 'Stability control is really good at correcting slides, keeping the car from getting out of shape,' says race car driver Randy Pobst. Alterman concludes that learning to drive a car like a Carrera GT can be extremely tricky. 'Every car is sort of different. And this one, especially since it had such a hair-trigger throttle, because it changed directions so quickly, there is a lot to learn.'"
You know, some of us remember driving cars that didn't have airbags, antilock brakes, traction control, rear view cameras, auto felch, auto transmission, etc. Neither then nor now were those cars "too dangerous".
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
You certainly have a point, but supercars at this level can be dangerous even at legal speeds.
At low speeds, these cars have two particular challenges for the driver; a huge amount of torque in the lower gears and a lack of the downforce that they rely upon for stability. You need an absolute feather touch on the accelerator or you will spin out - and this is much more likely to happen at 40mph than 140mph.
This isn't a touring car like an Aston DB series or a lower end Porsche. Those are designed to be a pleasant high-end driving experience - not to provide maximum performance. The Carrera GT is effectively a road-going version of a full-fledged race car and, as such, needs a lot of skill to drive safely under any conditions. Personally, I'm not sure why you'd even want to take one onto normal roads; the concentration and restraint needed to keep it under control must surely make it much less fun than taking out a more normal high-performance car and letting it rip.
And blaming the driver. A little background. While not professional drivers Walker and the driver were on a race team together and did plenty of circuit races. The guy driving has a GT3 so is more than familiar with the class of cars in question. Each had many more hours logged racing than any pilot would have flying before being able to get his flight license. It's easy to blame the driver, and it could rightly end up that way. However, the question of whether the car malfunctioned or should not be considered street legal should also be asked. Point being, if you believe these guys had no business driving this car then nobody shy of an F1 driver should be able to by them, hence they are too dangerous to sell to the general public.
This is a known drawback of ABS -- longer stopping distances in snowy conditions. You actually stop faster if the wheels are allowed to lock up, because the tires effectively become plow blades and a wedge of snow accumulates in front of each, helping to slow you down. This doesn't happen if the tires never stop rotating. http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/motorvehiclesafety/tp-tp13082-abs2_e-215.htm