Porsche Carrera GT
Robert Farago takes a fantasy drive in Stuttgart's latest toy.
Imagine you’ve driven 165mph in a Volkswagen Phaeton W12 on a derestricted German autobahn. Now imagine you’re driving a Porsche Carrera GT (CGT) on a three-lane American highway with no traffic, one mile visibility and perfect weather. Do you put the hammer down and try to better your personal land speed record, despite the obvious risk to life and licence?
Well, of course not. That kind of egocentric accelerative exuberance would be criminally irresponsible, regardless of the conditions. But just for fun, let’s pursue this fantasy for a while…
In this vision, your right foot rests atop an accelerator hot wired to a 605hp, race-bred, V10 engine. The car holstering this brute weighs just 1,380Kg.
It’s a Porsche.
So what the hell, you muck about a bit, change gears, play around with the throttle, that kind of thing. I mean why not? It’s not like you’re commuting to work or anything.
You soon learn that the Carrera GT can accelerate from one 100-plus speed to another with as much urge as most sports cars muster blasting from zero to sixty. It’s a reassuring discovery. Should you go for it, your TED (Time Exposed to Danger) will be a lot shorter than it was in the uber-Phaeton. You also tap dance on the Carrera GT’s middle pedal a few times, until you’re certain that the 
brakes could haul you back from the brink in a femto-second.
You take a deep breath, plant your right foot and let loose the dogs of war. With no appreciable delay, you’re rocketing towards the horizon like an amphetamine-crazed greyhound chasing a turbo-charged mechanical rabbit. With the engine mounted just behind your head, the GT’s trademark V10 howl is relatively muted, whipped backwards by a self-generated hurricane.
The first sprint takes you from 80mph to somewhere into the 150’s in about ten seconds from launch, in fifth gear. The next charge puts 160 something on the clock, and seems positively uneventful in comparison with your first high speed foray, or the Phaeton’s autobahn storming. Could it be true? Is it getting easier to approach the far side of the GT’s 911-esque speedometer? Now that is strange.
Cruising at 110, slicing through a knot of 
traffic, you check the gigantic carbon fiber rear wing in your side mirror and wiggle the steering wheel ever-so-slightly. The car feels as planted as a Kings Canyon Sequoia. In fact, the GT feels like its itching to head off down the nearest slip-road, sniff out a suitably serpentine country road, and prove that all this triple digit straight line strutting is nothing but kid’s stuff. Which it isn’t.
Maybe it’s the way the GT looks that makes your passengers urge you 
onwards, ever faster. Porsche’s top-of-the-line model isn’t a self-conscious babe magnet like the Ferrari Enzo or Lamborghini Murcielago, both of which are unabashedly bling in the great Italianate style. The German GT is a supercar scalpel, bereft of needless affectation. An admirer doesn’t have to see the car’s perfectly formed carbon fibre tub to know, somehow, that it’s there. The Carrera GT’s solemnity of purpose and endless, fanatical attention to detail inspire confidence on the subconscious level.
Anyway, in this fantasy, you and yours are ready to rock and roll. You floor it and keep it floored. Into sixth, and off you go, setting the pavement on fire with your determination. Fifteen very long seconds later, the little devil on your shoulder is suddenly agreeing with the tiny angel, whose pleas for you to cease your assault on the double ton have become a single, endless, mindless, scream.
You press on for another five seconds (just to show them who’s boss) and then back off. The car slows to a sensible speed. That’s it. You’re done. Only one question remains: how fast did you go? Damn! You forgot to look at the speedo!
“One seventy nine,” a voice calls out. God bless marriage. And God bless the Sultans of Stuttgart, because the only genuine anxiety involved in this accelerative adventure was generated by your own mind and body -- not the GT.
And there you have it: a fantastic journey into the outer reaches of time and space, with no relation to the actual time your reporter spent driving the Porsche Carrera GT. How did that go? Oh, about as well as you’d expect. The CGT’s a very nice car, if you like that sort of thing.
Copyright Robert Farago 2004
RF said:
And there you have it: a fantastic journey into the outer reaches of time and space, with no relation to the actual time your reporter spent driving the Porsche Carrera GT.
...in the same way as the pic of the F430 and Gallardo together in the December edition of Evo is "faked"?
Only one car in my opinion pulls off the cab forward look really really well and that's the Mclaren F1 (Ultimas are rather good but a slightly different body shape).
A question. What's it like to drive at normal speeds, say, I dunno, 50-100kmph? Victorian speeds? I've heard the clutch isn't interested below around 200kmph.
Otherwise Porsche, can I get finance?
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