Scary moment

Yesterday, minor roads near Reading (Grazeley area), no other traffic, enjoying the drive. Hump back bridge comes into view whilst doing about 60; nothing coming the other way so dropped a gear and exercised my right foot. Airborne for a moment then an enormous bang as I regained the road. OMG - had I bottomed the car? Was that the front spolier gone? Whatever? Looked in the mirror to see two new appendages - the safety roll bars had deployed - the bang msut have been the mechanism that fires them... Nice man at OPC Reading reset them and tested the car foc.

I also heard about some deploying whilst on a high speed circuit of Millbrook, car bounced on the bank and "pop" there they were!!! Scary Im sure[ ]

It mentions in the turbo user guide (it's the same one for coupe and cab) that they will deploy if the wheels come off the ground. It thinks you are about to roll it, or have just gone over the edge and are about roll down the hill.

Nice party trick, when taking a friend for a test drive!!

Jeff -you hooligan! Mel PS Well done!! [ ]

Interesting indeed. I often wonder at the purpose of these divices. What form of protection does Porsche think they offer in a cab! They must have done their homework on this of course but I have never seen any writeup on their use or usefullness. I also took out the wall of my cab once in the hope of fitting a subwoofer between these devices. There is actually room for a 10" low profile sub woofer like the Blaupunkt ODW1000 (although it would be a tight fit). But I couldn't help think that the roll bars are fastened to what I thought a flimsy piece of aluminium which would easily crush on impact. Just think, if they weren't there you would have a great place to put some decent speakers or even some proper back seat leg room.

I think they offer more protection than having nothing, although it is the windscreen surround that offers most of the protection. If you draw a line between them and the windscreen your head should be beneath it. Without them, then the windscreen and your head take the weight of the car. You need the seatbelt to hold you in, which it might if you are upside down and gently lowered down, but probably won't if you are rolling over at speed, although it does have seatbelt pre-tensioners. Whether they are strong enough or not, I don't know. As far as I am aware there is no official roll test for any car (cab or coupe). The reason for making them pop up, rather than having a more rigid and useful permanent hoop, is aesthetic. I always wondered whether you could rely on the sensors to deploy them when you relly needed it, given that it may be years from purchase before you need them. They might have jammed. I think the main reason for including them will be legislation. I expect there is some rule somewhere to say you have to have them (at least for some markets). Whatever you drive, it is best not to roll it anyway.

Footnote when deployed the bars have a black plastic cover over the top couple of inches - would you believe this has the Porsche logo on??? What marketing guru thought it necessary to promote the brand to the fireman pulling you out in a real roll???

Is the logo upside down, so that they can easily read it when the car is upside down?