Tag Archives: Porsche

125 Years of The Car, Germany

125 Years of the Car – Day 2

http://www.fastgerman.com/Germany.htm

The Porsche Museum was easily my favourite of the three (Mercedes, Porsche and Audi), which was also contributed to by the very knowledgeable tour guide, who actually drove one of the cars at the 2010 Goodwood Festival of Speed. I found the comments by Ferdinand Porsche dotted around the museum very interesting, my favourite of which ‘In the beginning I looked around but couldn’t find the car I dreamt of, so I decided to build it myself’. The line up of 911 Turbo’s from 930 – 997 on revolving platforms at exactly the same turning speed was the longest point of admiration from me. I liked the nickname for the 930 Turbo as the ‘Widow Maker’, which was mentioned on a recent excursion by a PCGB member with reference to the outrageous turbo lag and tail out cornering. The museum was nowhere near the size of the Mercedes Museum but I preferred the more peaceful atmosphere, design of the building, more knowledgeable tour guide and better contents – I’m biased on this however.

Porsche Museum, Germany

More events can be seen here:

http://fastgerman.com/forum/events-attended/

Ruf Porsche 911 Electric

Well the times are a changing as they say, many a Porsche fan will acknowledge the last proper 911 as the 993 model due to the fact it was air cooled. The 996 isn’t that popular in the styling front with the oversized headlights and numb steering but the 997 seems to have pulled back the majority with the original 911 style lights and some improvements on the handling front. Those of you who like your German tuning companies such as Hamann, Dinan and Ruf will know these are the ultimate in performance upgrades. So why on earth have Ruf produced an electric 997?! The name appears to be something along the lines of eRuf Greenster, Bon Choice…

Walking to Tower Bridge, London on 13/10/09 I was suprised to see a dark green 911 with what looked like a cheap, clear plastic convertible roof pinned in place, German plates and a film crew. After a search on the net I’ve found some more info: –

eRuf Greenster 997

“This isn’t just some farfetched concept as RUF full intends to start selling its electric vehicle as early as next year.

The electric powertrain, called eDrive, was developed by technology company Siemens and consists of an integrated electric motor and generator, electronic control module, and a lithium-ion battery array. In the Greenster, the powertrain is rated at 362hp (270kW) and 700lb-ft (950Nm) of torque and is mated to an automatic gearbox with only forward and reverse gears. The entire vehicles weighs in at 1,695kg and can accelerate to 100km/h from rest in just five seconds. Top speed meanwhile, is a claimed 320km/h.”

Porsche best moments

The latest news I read from Porsche is all to do with their hopes of buying Volkswagen, then getting into too much debt, being refused a loan by the Government and then selling back up to Volkswagen. Not to distract away from their business as a stock broking company, we have seen some real dogs released such as the Panamera and the new Cayenne. Lets try and breath some racing pedigree back into the name and look at the best moments by one of my favourite sports car makers:

911 Turbo (930 LE)

The movie Bad Boys really showed off the perfectly spec’d 964 turbo in black with the Porsche Cup splits. A close competitor to the 930 in terms of Porsche’s finest moments:

911 Turbo (964)

The porsche 968 one of the favoured starts to Porsche track days due to a near 50/50 weight distribution, front engine rear wheel drive layout and exceptional handling escpecially in Club Sport spec. A brief spell of motorsport in a turbo spec club sport brought a very limited run of the 968 turbo:

968 TurboPicture from Carfolio

Ah the Carrera GT:

Carrera GTPicture from Porsche

Let us hope Porsche start producing more cars like these worthy of the bedroom wall poster caliber!