To err is to human.
I don't expect any sympathy from anyone when I say this, but reviewing cars is hard. The old adage of "never meet your heroes" is well known and often propagated, yet, when the time comes to step on some toes in the name of journalism, many are put off by the fact that the dream cars they spend their entire lives idolising, lusting after, chasing, believing, sacrificing for, and that shape their lives is a load of crap. There seems to be no way of expressing discontent and disappointment - even rationally with supporting evidence - on the internet: someone's going to be upset by having their idols go through a mud facial under a boot in a review. I'm not above admitting that I may have made mistakes in my review; my day job was being a racing driver, and writing is only a hobby. And so it's not entirely inconceivable that I've expressed my disappointment in a few cars in the wrong way, and some higher up in COTW saw it fit to punish me for it.
Why else would I be subject to a fate so utterly despicable, inhumane, senseless, and cruel as being forced to race a Porsche 356 and be publicly humiliated like this this week?
I also don't expect any sympathy from the internet when the higher ups of my very fun and well paying job with a mostly flexible schedule tell me to flexibly bend over a table for some well paid fun. The sensible thing a sane person in a sane world would do would be to report it to HR and perhaps sue their employer, but this is a very, very different world, hence why the sensible thing to do for me is to bend over said table and ask what I should scream and how I should scream it. You may not guess it from how much I complain, but I really love my job. At the time, I wondered who it was that I had offended in my previous review; was it the childlike Ferrari? Supra fanboys? Stuck up BMW drivers? Mustang boomers? People who never drive cars at their limits and therefore can actually like the NC1 "NSX"?
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/car-of-the-week-week-107-porsche-356-carrera-speedster.381420/page-66#post-13260879
"Yes, I do love racing dangerously! Oh daddy, give it to me raw, please! I don't need racing harnesses, seatbelts, roll cages, fire extinguishers, or even common sense-" *slapped* "Oh, airbags and locking differentials are just added mass! I love the older type of tyres, brakes, and such fine, precise footwork trained by driving without ABS! Such strong, heavy, muscular rear ends, swinging back and forth like a wrecking ball! Why yes, I do love it so when I can't see where I'm going and what I'm doing when I have a chrome, glaring metal rod at eye level! Being unable to see makes all my other senses perk up and the whole experience that much more enjoyable! Really!"
The answer, as it would appear, was me critiquing the (lack of) safety measures in the previous week.
To cover the scars on my body, I will at least have my fire retardant racing suit, and to cover my irreversibly scarred ego, my racing helmet with a mirror finish visor. Oh, and because safety is first and foremost, a personal responsibility, I'm also... fitted, with the very technologically advanced safety feature of a very strong suggestion to "just don't crash, then". Beyond that, I have a useless looking... hoop, over the rear seats that serve gosh knows what purpose, and a bucket seat to hold me in place; not even the crotch belts you get at dodgy traveling carnival rides to prevent you from going eyes first into the windshield frame in the event of a crash. And GT3 RS owners have the gall to whine about having straps for door handles.
I sigh as I lean forward - unrestricted by any seatbelts - to turn the key stuck right into the flat dash of the Porsche 356, invoking a sound somehow both mechanical and organic, as though you can hear the car physically draw breath when idling. Fuel Injection has long since wholly replaced carburetors in the automotive industry - evident by how I can't even spell the word without spellcheck - but driving so many old cars in COTW has really made me appreciate the sound of a carbureted engine breathing mechanically. The Flat 4 engine purrs irregularly far, far behind me, the vibration of which jittering the key tag to match the state of my nerves. As I completed the tyre warming parade lap, I took my second to last place on the grid, lining up against five other 356 Speedsters on the oddly dry British morning, essentially forming a 6 million USD pendulum set in some obscenely rich and masochistic kid's needlessly complicated physics experiment.
"Just don't crash, then", I guess.
To err-
*lights gone green*
is not an option.
The Porsche 356 is a rear engined car without locking diffs, modern springs, radial tyres, disc brakes, ABS, TCS, AWD, rear wheel steering, or advanced aerodynamics to help mask its inherent flaws like a modern 911. It therefore handles precisely like anyone would expect: it's an inconsolable tail wagging monster, and driving it at speed is incredibly frustrating. I mean, I don't know what else I'm supposed to tell you.
That really could've been the end of the review, but apparently it's not enough nowadays to just point out what should be common sense; I have to explain in detail why common sense holds true, like the kid in physics class that has to prove a theory in the textbook, and I'm surprised I wasn't in a school uniform prior to or during the race. I suppose then, my job this week is to provide you, dear reader, with the novelty and comical juxtaposition of driving this 64 year old car at its bleeding edge limits, and maybe survive enough to bring you some footage as evidence to supplement my argument of common sense, which, if not for word count padding to fill the page like any school assignment, can be summed up simply by, "it sucks".
Kore de ii, sensei?
We really are all slaves our entire lives, regardless of jobs, aren't we?
You have to be sure to apply some throttle to shift weight over to the rear before you turn too hard for any corner, as otherwise the rear end will swing out. This makes setting up for a corner vastly different from conventional wisdom, as instead of full brake, partial brake and partial turn, engine brake and full turn, gas right before apex, and turn gently out, it's instead: full brake, engine brake and slight turn, slight hint of gas while waiting for weight to return to the rear and turning not too hard, and then hell for leather gas and hope you don't understeer too wide on corner exit.
While the comparatively heavy rear end of a RR car being a moody mess is common knowledge by now, what often gets drowned out by that is how soft the front springs on rear engined cars have to be to allow for weight transfer over the featherweight front end, already being pulled up by the see-saw effect even at a standstill. What this softness translates to in hard driving is that there is an incredible amount of squat under braking, which causes the rear end to become unhinged, and the understeer on power is quite hideous even with just 108PS. It's not at all an uncommon occurrence for a driver to viciously and violently snap between chronic understeer and apocalyptic oversteer several times in one bend, never being able to find that knife edge balance of neutrality in this toggle switch of a car. If you're at home and wondering how driving this car feels like, it'd be like trying to hold a light switch perfectly in the middle between on and off; it's flipping impossible because the switch just wants to snap to either side, just like this car just wants to snap between under and oversteer. Of course, this usually results in a passionate meeting with another competitor, or just a wall if you're feeling particularly responsible and self isolating. Safety is, after all, first and foremost, a personal responsibility.
N-NANI?!
DOITSU DORIFUTO?!
There might be an argument to be made for a tail happy car being fun to drive, but I can assure you that this car is not at all fun to slide. Applying the throttle to shift weight over the rear after they break loose does a grand total of jack all, as the open diff means all the power will be sent to the inside wheel, which will be lifted so much it struggles to even generate smoke, much less do any slide adjusting, drift holding work. Given that it's impossible to drift or correct the car when it goes sideways, you have to make every effort into ensuring the car never breaks loose to begin with; a tall task given that even turning the wheel hard on full throttle makes the impatient rear end want to overtake the front. The only option you're therefore left with as a driver is to "just don't turn too hard", and I guarantee you every racing driver will be as happy to hear that as, "just don't crash, then".
Well, why don't you just stop a Tsunami by standing right in front of it and politely asking it to stop, then? Because that's exactly what trying to correct a slide in this thing feels like. It's going to happen, and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. The best you can do is to just brace for and make room for it to minimise casualties when it happens. Or, you know, you could drive really slowly - that works too in the sane world.
The car, especially for something conceived in the late 1940s, has a surprisingly aerodynamically slippery looking teardrop shape to it, with an implicit, striking beauty from its simplicity not found in cars today, with minimal protrusions and creases, exuding such a sense of slipperiness that it could almost make one feel velvet at their fingertips just by looking at it, even with the factory's flat paint, and especially when bathed in metallic paint like Rob's car. This teardrop shape however does unfortunately mean that the edges of the car, where the tyres are, are narrower than the width of the body at its centre, where you sit as a driver, and this width disparity is immediately obvious when you see the tyres from an angle that looks towards the centre of the car, so much so they look inset.
I really do wish the rear wheels can be set wider apart for more track and stability. As it is, precisely placing this car a unique challenge as well: on wide open racing tracks such as Goodwood, you'll want to make the most of the road width by running your tyres right up to the edge of the asphalt, which overhangs your car body over the grass. On walled in corners such as the very creatively named "The Chicane" on Goodwood, or even urban tracks, the definition of "making the most of the track" changes, as now the limiting factor isn't your tyre placement, but instead making sure you don't hit the wall with the protruding body of the car.
While the 356 looks vastly different from anything else Porsche has ever produced, there are some instantly recogniseable bits of DNA that has very prominently survived to the modern day, such as the twin bug eyes popping out of its surprisingly sleek and smooth body, and a flat engine that is, for reasons beyond my limited imagination, overhung out the rear. The gearing on the 356 also feels familiar to me as a proud, loving owner of a 981 Cayman GT4, in that 1st gear is in Stuttgart and 2nd is in Singapore. The gauges of the 356 too, show promising DNA that Porsche has knowingly built upon, being large, clear, and easy to read at a glance... provided that the sun isn't at an angle that strikes the chrome highlights of the dials, windshield, or steering wheel such that it casts a glare, which is an eventuality as unavoidable and dangerous as the rear end of this car stepping out, given that that the Speedster has no roof, and no tinted rear windows to filter out sunlight or high beams from other drivers from blinding you in your mirror.
A rather amusing overkill touch on the tachometer is that the rev range is separated into colour coded zones to tell you where the engine makes optimal power, exactly like you would find in modern diesel buses, except it really doesn't take being Lewis Hamilton or Ernst Fuhrmann to figure out that if you want good things to happen with this engine, rev the nuts off this NA 1.5L Flat 4 engine. While the tachometer suggests anything from 4,000rpm and above is useable, ideally I'd say you want to be above 5,000 for it to really feel like it's doing anything, and it really comes alive only at 6,000. Official specs claim that max power of 108PS happens at 6,500rpm, and peak torque of 123N⋅m happens at 5,000rpm. I know I just said this engine is lifeless at anything below that, but with how horrendously long the throws are, each gear change takes about an eternity and a half, and it might be faster to just lug the 840kg (1,852lbs) car around a track than to row it across with frequent gear changes, despite its canoe shape suggesting otherwise.
While I try to be of firm opinion in my reviews as much as is possible, I really do hesitate to critique historic cars. And with the Porsche 356 being the marque's first mass produced car, it's all the more precarious a task to critique it. I get that the first time is always special, but just as is getting bent over a table, there's no practical use for a RR layout: the rear seats of this thing are useless and the frunk is largely taken up by a spare tyre, anyway. Critiquing this car and holding it to modern standards and expectations is akin to asking your grandpa to work a 9-5 job and call into question his outdated views: it's entirely pointless. He's earned his respect and right to be who he is, and he knows it. The best you can get out of him is to sit down and calmly listen to his stories, how things were back then, and perhaps learning a few things from him, never talking back or challenging him because you're dedicating time to give him to talk, with quiet knowledge that his views and methods have worked for his time but may not today, and just nod along with him.
Before you ask, this grandpa car still kicked my butt when I challenged it in a rental Demio.
And that I feel is largely the same with classic cars as well: you have to dedicate a lot of time and resources to their upkeep, and once you look past their very glaring faults like the engine and its stupid placement, and stop heckling it to go fast, that's when I feel that the strengths of this car really comes to light. Despite me complaining about the massive squat under braking, the suspension of this car is surprisingly taut, darty, and responsive. It also handles bumps and road imperfections really well. It has a really good 160mm (6.3in) ground clearance to make travel room for its aforementioned soft front end, meaning you never have to worry about scraping like you would a modern supercar. The car may evidently be old, but it doesn't feel nearly its age when I was behind the wheel. Had the engine been put in a more sensible place, this would be right up there with the Mark I Golf GTI with how enjoyable it is to drive. On a wide open road in a T Shirt, shorts, with a small enough driver and just the right weather on just the right day, I think this would be one hell of a stylish, enjoyable cruiser, with its ever delightful engine never being rude or obnoxious, while still oozing character. Despite the word "Carrera" in its name, I never once felt comfortable with this car when driving it near its limits, and I would never want to race this again.
Rear engine cars is a stupid idea that never had any practical application, be it on the road or for the racetrack, and I genuinely believe the 911 is a dinosaur of a car kept alive by the... *er-hem* enthusiasm of its fans, and bleeding edge technology that would've done more in a mid engined car. I can excuse the 356's rear engine layout because, come on, it's 1948. People didn't know better. But the important part about mistakes is that you learn from them, and make your future actions better than your past mistakes. Every Porsche that changed the game since have been mid engined; the 959 in 1986, the Boxster in 1996, Carrera GT and 2004, the 918 in 2013, and even the 911 RSR was finally forced to sensibly relocate the engine before the rear axle in 2016. And if Porsche can keep making mistakes to this day at the behest of their fans with the 911, then I should be able to keep ruffling feathers with my reviews as well as long as I'm still enjoying my job. If you don't like them, there are always other reviews, just as I've a Cayman GT4 in my garage instead of a 911.
I'm not apologising for a word I wrote, and I'd take more than bending me over a table to change my mind, because unlike when I was bent over the table, I actually felt something in the car that failed to get me killed.
No comments:
Post a Comment