Monday, August 28, 2006

Sunday Porsche Blogging: 911 Rallying

Rallying a Porsche 911


This Post is a Day Late and Worth the Wait!

Check out Henri Toivonen flog on his Rothman’s 911 during the 1984 FIA Rally season. Because almost all rallying is done in the dirt Henri made very good use of the rear-end weight bias of the rear-engined 911 that he drove. If you have ever wondered about apexing a 911 in the dirt, the helicopter shots from this film will give you some good hints.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Rendezvous Meets Google Earth

Rendezvous

This is the best car chase without a chase, an accompanying real time guide map is linked below

Claude Lelouche made one of the great Paris/Car movies of all time with the Rendezvous, an early morning drive at breakneck speeds through the streets of Paris without regard to any traffic signals. Mr. Lelouche used a Mercedes 300 and later a Ferrari for the engine soundtrack; no Mercedes has ever sounded this good. Well, over at bhendrix.com they have gone and put the movie online and synced it to a Google Earth moving map of the ride through Paris. The fantastic mashup and great travelogue is here.

The Autoblog has more on the great original movie.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Drunken PCA Member Wrecks Porsche 908 – PCA Pays $250,000

Disclosure – the author has been a member of PCA for many years.

The Porsche Club of America (PCA) has been found liable for the drunken actions of two of its members four years ago. An owner of a Porsche 908 was gracious enough to display his uber-rare race car at a club technical event in Huntsville, Al. The car’s owner had an agent who was responsible for transporting the car and the agent was unable to pick the car up the following week as planned; the agent finally arranged pick-up of the car six weeks later. The week of the delayed pick-up two PCA members had access to the car, one was an officer of the local region and the other was the owner of the garage that was storing the car. The two members decided to drive the race car on the street after drinking wine at breakfast. Apparently that foray passed without incident because more wine was consumed at lunch and the car was subsequently wrecked during some more drunken street driving. The cost to repair the vehicle was approximately $250,000.

The car’s owner filed suit and the Federal District Court in the Northern District of Alabama heard the case last year and handed down the opinion last June. The President of the PCA, Tom Bobbitt wrote in the August issue of the club magazine Panorama (the August issue is not yet online) that “the two drivers were acting outside the scope of any club authorization and not in connection with any club event, the Court nevertheless found that PCA had an ongoing obligation to care for the car indefinitely because it had been used in a PCA event and PCA benefited from the arrangement.” Neither Mr. Bobbitt nor I are attorneys but he described the liability as a “bailment for which PCA as the bailee is liable.” Mr. Bobbitt also wrote that the club intends to strip the two members of their memberships and that the club will attempt to recover damages from the two.

Club President Bobbitt wrote about three lessons from the experience; two of them have to do with the casual nature of many club events and the need for more contractual agreements. The third lesson has to do with the personal responsibility of club volunteers, a very diplomatic way of saying that one should not act like a jerk. Flying Debris would like to add two more lessons to that list; one is the stunningly obvious - don’t drive race cars drunk. The other is that if you’re going to drink alcohol at breakfast you may as well not kid yourself, drink liquor. Frankly a few pops in the morning should be followed with a comfortable couch and a few football games on the tube rather than driving a purpose built race car around the neighborhood.

Sunday Porsche Blogging: How to Kill a 911

Top Gear - How to kill a Porsche 911

If This Video Were't So Funny It Would be Truly Depressing! In complaining about how tough this early seventies 911 is Jeremy, a Brit says, "Germans; can't beat us, can't beat Croatia" and then continues to try to kill the poor 911.