A dozen 911s were being warmed up outside my hotel room window that morning, filling the courtyard with a magic-charged metallic music. I drove another around Gmund, Austria, where the sawmill that served as the spiritual home of post-war Porsche was located, and from which the 911's predecessor, the original 356 sports car, was born. Turned out to be just a whiff, ahem, of clutch, and reading the oil level rather than the oil pressure gauge. I feel privileged to have experienced being bitten (punished for my ineptitude?) by this nasty side of the 911's character.Īnother occasion saw fellow Globe Drive contributor Dan Proudfoot and me use a pair of all-wheel-drive newly introduced Carrera 4s as snowmobiles on a snow-covered northern Alberta runway, and chased each other over a fast, snow-packed road through the Rockies, pelting each other with pea gravel.Īnd I felt an empty pit form in my stomach after doing a 0-100 km/h test launch of one of the ferociously potent Turbo models, thinking I had scrambled its engine. That was in the days before Porsche had largely cured its notorious and often-excitement-generating lift-throttle-oversteer issues. I once spun one in the hairpin at Shannonville Motorsport Park, the instructor in the right seat shouting, "Don't lift! Don't lift!" after I'd carried too much speed into the corner.
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