Stainless steel used in 987 Caymans - fact or fiction

[Buggyjam]

Doing a bit of wiki-ing and looked up the Cayman and found:-

"The entire aft portion of the Cayman is made from stainless steel"

Ehhh? Mm. So did a bit of searching and sure enough this snippet was at least once mentioned on PH. So is this actually true or more likely some urban myth that has crept into being?

Edited by Buggyjam on Saturday 21st October 09:02

[EGTE]

Galvanised steel, more likely.

[Patrick Bateman]

See if a magnet sticks to it.

[Buggyjam]

Patrick Bateman said:

See if a magnet sticks to it.

Unless it's ferretic stainless steel

Seriously I can't see it. Not least why? It's an expensive material and I understood stainless is quite hard to persuade into complex curves (think delorean panels and kitchen worktops) so why use it only on a really curvy section? For whatever reason this seems to be mentioned in some places and on wiki, so must have started for some reason. Can't beat a good myth anyway.

[Buggyjam]

That's a good insight, solved that one! If it were me I'd have been cheeky and said "if painting negates the need for treating thus, then care to explain why I have a small rust patch on the lower arches where little stones off my wheels have frazzled through your paint and galvenising?"

Edited by Buggyjam on Saturday 21st October 23:58

Edited by Buggyjam on Saturday 21st October 23:59

[EGTE]

Definitely sounds like galvanised (high-strength) steel, then.

[ooid]

Very interesting to hear Porsche Press's response. I also always thought this was stainless steel, and just looked at where I read it, one of the porsche books I've got, the designers (Pinky Lai) himself saying it's stainless steel;

"It's like a monument, a huge sculpture in stainless steel. A lot of these insider bits of knowledge are hidden. Once you see a beautiful car on the road, it's just beautiful. It's taken for granted. But all the hardship behind it, all the blood, sweat and tears go along with that. They are not just visible"

"There was just one operation to stamp it. The workers lifted it without rubbing or scratching it. The most difficult area for the stamping was the valley and mountain, called a "negative draw". The draw angle was sideways. The sheet metal had to wrap up to the roof frame and end with a flange. The rocker sill had flanges that turned in and up. The mold makers had to work a certain draw angle that did not create any rubbing of the mold...." From Porsche Sixty Years, Randy Leffingwell (p.343)

Anyway, super-difficult form to mass-produce in that curvature though, this was the first thing got my attention when I saw Cayman first-time.

Architect Frank Gehry famously said about double curvature forms;

Flat surface = $
Single Curvature = 2$
Double Curvature = 10$

[AW10]

I would offer he's not actually saying the Cayman has major stainless steel bits - he's comparing it to a huge sculpture made from stainless steel...

Edited by AW10 on Wednesday 25th October 10:57

[uknick]

Just dug out the original sales literature from 2008.

There's a drawing of the car showing what it's made from.

It says the only aluminium part is the bonnet. Wings are sheet steel, cabin structure is high strength steel with some super high strength steel parts, such as side protection bars in the doors.

The rear hatch has an outside panel of high strength steel attached to a sheet steel internal frame.