BEHIND THE WHEEL | 2009 PORSCHE 911 CARRERA S CABRIOLET
Your Left Foot: Now Left Out
By JERRY GARRETT
Published: April 30, 2009
A PORSCHE, to most people, is a sports car. To me, it can be a time machine. Even a new Porsche loaded with technogadgets— a 2009 911 Carrera S Cabriolet, in this case — stirs fond recollections.
It takes me back to 1967. A red 356 Speedster of uncertain 1950s vintage, tossed from one corner to the next, in and out of fog banks, as I furiously shift through the gears on the drive south on California Highway 1 along the Big Sur coast. The tattered canvas top is flapping in the wind; my girlfriend, wearing a silk bandana and enormous Audrey Hepburn sunglasses, is smiling.
Or late September 1979. I am driving across upstate New York in a decade-old silver 911E, the road unwinding before me through mile after mile of blazing fall colors. My tired old 911 and I are headed to the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen. When I honk the horn, the lights go on. When I flick the light switch, every light in the car goes black. When I crank up the defroster, the side windows ice over. That’s entertainment!
Or, some 20 years later, when I aimed a new millennium edition 911 straight as a bullet across the Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys, the road ahead disappearing over the horizon. Turquoise waters flank me, a fireball sun in the sky ahead. Will we get to Mallory Square in time for the sunset bell?
In each of these reveries, I am rowing my own boat, sawing through the gears, working all three pedals and listening to the engine sing.
But my reverie is interrupted as I pull away in a 2009 model equipped with a newly domesticated version of Porsche’s PDK transmission, originally developed for racing. It’s as if someone has swatted the arm of my phonograph across the record. I was ready to drive this Porsche, not have it drive me.
The PDK (its full name is Porsche Doppelkupplungsgetriebe, or double clutch gearbox) uses two wet clutches to shift its seven forward gears with minimal interruption in the flow of power to the wheels. And though it can make all the gear changes without any help from the driver, mechanically it’s a manual transmission. It does not connect to the engine through the fluid coupling known as a torque converter that is used by conventional automatics.
Such distinctions aside, say “auf wiedersehen” to the clutch pedal.
Porsche has been experimenting with automatics since the days of the 356 models, and first offered its semi-automatic Sportomatic in a 911 in 1968. The fully automatic Tiptronic, shifted by tapping the center console’s gear selector, made its debut with the 1990 models. It was renamed the Tiptronic S a few years later when steering-wheel shift buttons were added.
Tiptronics proved popular with those who couldn’t, wouldn’t or shouldn’t work a clutch. But now that they are being supplanted by the PDK transmission (except in the 911 Turbo and Cayenne S.U.V., for the time being), it seems hard to find anyone who will truly miss that gearbox when it is gone. A 6-speed manual continues to be available.
Actually, the PDK preceded the Tiptronic, having been introduced in racing first on the 1983 Porsche 956 and later on the 962. The advantage in competition was that the dual clutches facilitated almost instantaneous gear changes — faster than the driver’s hand — which helped to keep the turbochargers pumping at full pressure rather than losing boost during the shift. But the PDK, which was not particularly reliable, made the car 90 pounds heavier at the rear.
“It was like towing a trailer,” said Derek Bell, who raced one back then.
The PDK 962 was fast, but had a relatively short career in competition, at least as an official Porsche entry. Porsche withdrew from Group C racing in 1987, no longer racing as a factory team with the 962 and PDK.
Audi, Volkswagen, Nissan and Mitsubishi would eventually come out with dual-clutch transmissions for their road cars years before Porsche decided to re-introduce PDK for 2009.
Despite packaging and reliability refinements, the technology adds 66 pounds over the 6-speed manual, mostly to the 911’s derriere. It also contributed $4,080 toward the $119,925 sticker price of my 911 S Cabriolet test car.
Externally, 911s appear all but unchanged for 2009. Unseen changes, however, make them handle with greater precision, brake better and go faster. New 3.6- and 3.8-liter 6-cylinder engines get direct-fuel-injection systems that facilitate higher compression ratios. Horsepower increases by 20 in the 3.6, to 345, and up 30 for the 3.8, to 385.
The engines are not simply more powerful, they run in a more relaxed manner, too, thanks to the PDK’s seven forward gears (compared with the Tiptronic’s five). Gearing is similar to the 6-speed manual in the lower gears, but the PDK’s seventh speed permits cruising at far lower engine speeds (2,200 r.p.m. at 80 miles an hour).
Federal mileage ratings for my S Cabriolet test car are 19 m.p.g. in town and an impressive 26 on the highway. A 186 m.p.h. Porsche that gets 26 m.p.g.? That’s almost ridiculous.
When ordered with the $960 Sport Chrono Package Plus, PDK gains Sport and Sports Plus settings for even faster shifts. That option also adds Launch Control, which helps the 911 do naughty things from a standing start — like 0-60 sprints in less than 4.3 seconds. Without leaving those telltale twin strips of rubber on the pavement behind you.
In Sport mode, the PDK is 0.2 second quicker than the 6-speed manual getting to 60 m.p.h., Porsche says; in Sport Plus mode, the margin doubles to 0.4 seconds.
In milliseconds the PDK will unerringly pick both the right engine speed at which to shift and the correct gear. Its two clutches operate separately: one is assigned odd-numbered gears and reverse and the other clutch takes care of even-numbered gears. Imagine a dealer shuffling a deck of cards — it’s that fast.
You can leave it in fully automatic mode or shift it manually — just like the Tiptronic — via the gear selector on the floor or the two sets of plastic buttons on either side of the steering wheel. The button-button method — push to shift up, pull to downshift — is a rather odd ambidextrous set-up. Paddle-shifters offered by most competitors execute upshifts with the right hand and downshifts with the left.
In regular mode, for maximum fuel economy, upshifts occur early and often; I was in fifth gear by 29 m.p.h. So this really is a car that can be driven effortlessly by any member of the family (operator’s license required). And that is the part that’s tough for me to get my head around.
Driving a Porsche has often been a daunting experience, best left to experienced drivers (ideally, holding high-risk insurance). Now, with systems like PDK, Porsche Stability Management and Porsche Active Suspension Management, some of the fear of God has been engineered out.
Is this progress? Along with my lyrical memories of Porsches from bygone eras, there were terrifying moments, too: Hitting a patch of ice in a 911 — which typically have a 38-62 front-rear weight balance — while rounding a corner, feeling the rear end break loose and spinning more times than the Mad Hatter ride at Disneyland. Those outings won’t be missed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/a...b0a47d515d&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=AU-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M096-ROS-0509-HDR&WT.mc_ev=click
