Wednesday 3rd December 2014

Speed thrills: PH Blog

As a journo loses his job over a speeding offence what hope for future representation of fast cars?

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Last week fellow motoring hack Owen Mildenhall was convicted of dangerous driving by a court in Inverness after hitting 127mph in a Porsche 911 on the A96. Going by the reaction in the local media the aggravating factors of being from south of the border, a sideline as a racing driver and driving a yellow Porsche were of far greater significance than the fact it was just shy of 1am but, however you cut it, Owen was never going to leave with his licence in his hands. And as a result has lost his job.

Don't go beyond second gear now...

As you might expect the rights and wrongs have not escaped PH attention and a vigorous debate is chugging along already - join it here should you wish.

This discussion has inevitably spread among those of us in the business too, 'there but for the grace of' little comfort given the wider implications. Implications that extend to both the consumers and producers of media concerning the enjoyment of fast cars.

Outside of his friends and colleagues I realise there's unlikely to be much sympathy for Owen's situation - motoring hack gets busted in a Porsche press car, boohoo and all that. Clearly we all have to operate within the law and driving in such a way that it endangers others cannot be condoned.

A speed limit about to be left behind, yesterday

But as fast cars get ever faster and the chasm between their area of competence and legal limit on the road gets ever wider how do we convey in words, pictures or video a sincere sense of the excitement in driving them? How, as an owner, can you really expect to get any enjoyment out of a car that, like the Porsche Cayman GTS we had in the other day, will hit 85mph in second gear?

Obviously I only know that because I worked it out from the gear ratios published on the spec sheet... But is that really the way we want our cars assessed? While a degree of artifice can be achieved with talented photographers, sharply edited footage and a creative turn of phrase there is still no substitute for a properly crossed-up, fully-lit cornering shot.

The obvious response is to say 'save it for the track' and, for sure, if you're going to go the whole Harris and do fourth-gear sideways stuff in an F12 it's the only practical and sensible solution. But if fast cars are only tested, filmed and photographed at maximum attack on a circuit does it not just feed the fantasy and ignore the reality of what they're like on the public road, the environment in which most of us will experience them?

 

Save it for the track? Fine in principle...

Maybe there's something we can learn from our two-wheeled brethren. After all, they've long since contended with machines whose abilities far, far outstrip the legal limit on any public road, a certain island in the Irish Sea excepted. True, on a bike you're as much exposed to the very real physical peril as you are isolated from it by modern cars. But there must be a trick to enjoying a machine that can double or even treble posted limits in the blink of an eye without necessarily doing so at every given opportunity. Bikers, we need your help.

It's that or writing about nothing more powerful than an MX-5. And even as a Mazda fanboy I'm not about to advocate that.

Dan

 

[Source: Press And Journal]

[gforceg]

Maybe the pendulum has swung as far as it can and we'll see a return to lighter smaller more agile and less grippy performance cars being attractive to those who can afford them. Maybe not.

I do think the arms race should have run its course by now.

[gforceg]

mrclav said:

Sorry but I have to disagree with your last point. Human beings by nature will always attempt to improve on previous efforts no matter what the situation or product. If we applied your thinking to computing, mobile phones, the internet, medical products etc, we'd all be a LOT worse off than we are.

I appreciate your argument but the examples you give are useful. Clearly 800bhp in a road car isn't (very often!).