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Porsche: Excellence Was Expected

by Karl Ludvigsen

Excerpt from Chapter 61, Volume 3

Porsche Pushing 1999-2003

The Carrera GT was a clear statement that Porsche was not to be eclipsed in the sports car arena by upstarts from newly acquired Volkswagen marques such as Bugatti, Lamborghini and Bentley.

In 2003 Porsche's Leipzig plant manager Siegfried Bülow had to go back to his 8,000-strong pool of potential employees because he anticipated needing 70 more staff to carry out another task for Porsche: the assembly at Leipzig of the Carrera GT. At the Detroit Show on January 8, 2002, Wendelin Wiedeking announced that in the second half of 2003 Porsche would go ahead with the production of a refined version of the exotic open two-seater that it unveiled, to general astonishment, at the Paris Louvre on September 28, 2000.

For its new model Porsche revived a designation first used in 1957 for a lightweight version of the four-cam Carrera, a car cut out for competition. The twenty-first-century Carrera GT, however, was conceived not as a racer but as the ultimate roadgoing Porsche. "With the Carrera GT," said Wiedeking, "we want to do more than just demonstrate our technical competence in the sports-car segment. This vehicle also mirrors the strength and dynamic self-confidence of the company and the Porsche brand."

Gestation of the Carrera GT
The new Carrera GT traced its origins to cars built for racing. Apart from its success at Le Mans, Porsche was shut out in its 1998 GT-racing season. Breathing asthmatically through restrictors, its turbocharged engines were denied the power that could have made them competitive. Particularly lacking, said Norbert Singer, were the mid-range torque and response needed to accelerate away from the slow corners that proliferated on the latest race-track designs.

Drawing a line under the turbo-blown era, motorsports chief Herbert Ampferer recommended that Porsche face its racing future with naturally aspirated engines. Work on such an engine was put in hand to power a new open GT1 two-seater, the LMP 2000. On November 28, 1998, Porsche announced at its annual motorsports gathering that it would not compete in 1999 but would have a new racer ready for the 2000 season. "We decided to stop for one year," said Horst Marchart, "and develop a complete new car."

Ampferer had recent experience to draw upon: the V-10 of 3.5 liters that he'd built and tested to take the place of the Type 3512 V-12 supplied to the Footwork Arrows team. His engineers, led by Thomas Ludenbach, scaled up the concept of this engine to 5.5 liters, keeping the 68-degree vee angle that they'd used with the earlier unit. Twin overhead cams for each cylinder bank were gear-driven and opened four valves per cylinder. The main castings were aluminum, using a Nikasil coating directly on the cylinder bores. The cylinders were cast integrally with the block to keep the engine as short as possible-22 1/2 inches long-and also stiff enough to be used as the rear portion of the frame.

Much like Honda's Formula 1 V-12, the new Porsche ten grouped its pumps and accessories in a case that extended across the front of the crankcase below the crankshaft nose, whence its train of gears was turned. A single water pump on the right side served both cylinder banks. The left-hand bank was offset forward of its mate to accommodate the side-by-side titanium connecting rods. Butterfly throttles controlled the Motronic-generated mixture to an engine capable of revving to 10,000 rpm and producing 680 horsepower.

For the rest of the LMP 2000 Ampferer's crew had drive-train and suspension componentry that could be carried over, with improvements, from the GT1/98. Britain's Lola Composites produced a new carbon-fiber frame tub to Porsche"s designs, while Norbert Singer went back to the tunnel to develop an open body-also in carbon fiber-with marked bulges over its wheelhouses.

Although the program suffered some delays, a prototype LMP 2000 was ready for tests at Weissach by the beginning of November 1999. Among its first testers were Allan McNish and Bob Wollek, the latter calling it "an excellent car." All that remained was to marry it to Porsche"s unmatched 24-hour-racing expertise and subject it to Weissach"s rough roads and rollers and the long grinds around Paul Ricard. But this was not to be. On November 21 Porsche announced that the project would be halted. This was a "business decision," it said, driven by the need to concentrate all engineering resources on the development of its Cayenne.

Cancellation of the LMP 2000 was a stunning disappointment, wrote Mike Cotton. "Many people working at Weissach have been betrayed by Dr. Wiedeking"s `U"-turn on motorsport," he said, "not least the dozens of engineers and technicians who have put their hearts and souls into the creation of a new challenger, a vehicle that might well have been Porsche"s 17th Le Mans winner." Were Ferry Porsche still living, Cotton speculated, the promise of a year earlier would not have been broken. In the two years since Ferry"s death, the Briton thought, "Porsche AG has become a vastly different company to the one he knew, in which the accountants have finally triumphed over the engineers. In 1999, it seems, profit comes before pride."

Cotton was not alone in judging this decision harshly. Popular and TV-friendly Supercup races were all very well, but Porsche"s friends and allies were accustomed to see it jousting boldly against tough rivals in the world"s greatest sports-car races. Putting its reputation on the line in racing over half a century was an important foundation of the respect afforded the Porsche brand. New boss Wiedeking had backed the GT-racing efforts of 1996 through 1998, despite meager results in the latter two years. Now he was prepared to take a chance that Porsche"s reputation could survive a longer furlough from the tracks. As for Le Mans, he sniffed, it was not what it once was: "It"s really just VW with several different brands and some smaller brands."

Responding to Different Competition

The Carrera GT was to be powered by a normally aspirated V-10 engine with twin-overhead camshafts for each cylinder bank.

His decision to halt the LMP 2000 project did not imply that the Porsche chief lacked a competitive character. In fact he was not one to shy from a challenge, especially in the commercial arena. And there, in 1999, he perceived threats to Porsche that were just as menacing as any race-track attacks. Other car makers were preparing and unveiling exotic sports cars at the apogee of the market. Ford"s Aston Martin revealed its Vanquish and Mercedes-Benz its SLR, to be built in Britain by McLaren. BMW introduced its upscale Z8. Audacious initiatives from the VW Group included Lamborghinis, a revival of Bugatti, Bentley"s Hunadieres concept car and-most outrageous of all-the Volkswagen W12 open two-seater with its 500-horsepower W-12 engine, a stunning sports car that VW said it planned to produce.

These provocations spurred Wiedeking into action. "In recent times," he said, "the giants in the business have discovered the sports car, serving-you might say-some special cream on top of their big cakes. More and more companies are now rounding off their model range with high-performance vehicles claimed to be `sporting" and `dynamic."" Porsche wasn"t going to play second fiddle to these upstarts. Aston Martin, BMW and Mercedes-Benz were one thing, but Volkswagen! It was time to lay down a marker, to impress upon the industry and public that although Porsche might not be racing, it was second to none in sports cars. Wiedeking mustered his troops and issued marching orders: "We have to show the world that we"re still the best in sports cars. Let"s design a superb top-of-the line sports car in a high price segment, which in its style and technology would fit into the Porsche range. It can also showcase our abilities in design and engineering."

"There were no design restrictions," said one of his troops, Harm Lagaay, "and no need to use any carryover parts from existing projects. The only brief was to make a strong statement in the field of top-end sports cars, which Porsche had not made since the 959 of the mid-1980s." Borrowing from other projects wasn"t prohibited, so use could be made of the 5.5-liter V-10 that Herbert Ampferer"s racers were developing for the LMP 2000. It kept its small-diameter racing clutch, which made driving the concept Carrera GT somewhat tricky, and was detuned to 558 bhp at 7,500 rpm and 442 lb-ft of torque at 4,500 rpm.

August Achleitner, manager of vehicle concepts, raided the motorsports parts bins for components from the GT1/98 and the LMP 2000. These provided the hydraulic-shift 6-speed transaxle and the front and rear suspensions, including the stillborn racer"s adjustable anti-roll bar. Steering had the added refinement of power assistance. Track widths of the Carrera GT were similar to those of the GT1 racers at 63.8 inches in front and 61.8 in the rear, while wheelbase, lengthened during the project for aesthetics more than function, was 106.3 inches. Room was found behind the cockpit for an 18 1/2-gallon fuel tank, while the oil tank for the engine"s dry-sump system was in the transaxle housing like that of the GT1.

New-look five-spoke forged-aluminum wheels had central fixings and measured 19 inches in front and 20 in the rear with respective Michelin Pilot Sport tire sections of 265/30 and 335/30. Inside them were massive 15-inch ceramic brake discs gripped by aluminum monobloc calipers with eight pistons apiece in front and four pistons in the rear. ABS was fitted to the dual-circuit system.

Tying all the machinery together was a space frame constructed of members made of high-strength aluminum, in principle a reversion to Porsche"s pre-956 racing-car construction. In the Carrera GT these members were positioned to take crash impacts as well, bracing the cockpit bulkheads laterally and using the closed doors as front/rear structural elements. Energy absorption was a function too of steel inserts in the bodywork, which was made of carbon fiber. This was consistent with a major objective of the project, which was "to keep weight as low as possible," Lagaay said, "without too many gimmicks, electronics and so forth." The weight announced by Porsche was 2,750 pounds. A Ferrari 360 Spider, on a wheelbase 4 inches shorter, weighed 3,200 pounds.

The challenge of styling the Carrera GT was to make it look fresh and exciting-and very Porsche-like-without relying heavily on the company"s past styling cues and models.

Carrera GT Style
Harm Lagaay"s part of the job was none too easy. No recent Porsche cues or design idioms were relevant. The GT1 racers had been styled to look as much as possible like a 911, not to explore new design directions. The Boxster looked backward in style, not forward, and the 911 was a successful evolution of a classic. In meeting Wiedeking"s challenge, Lagaay needed to make a fresh start. He had to employ the most subtle of means. "Our brand is not identified by any distinctive element such as a radiator grille," he explained, "so its personality derives from the way we design the details and handle the surfaces. The typical Porsche shape is set by the combination of surface treatment, highlighting and tension, which to a large extent comes from the transition between convex and concave shapes." Here Lagaay and his team had the rich legacy of such dedicated artists of sheet metal as Erwin Komenda, Dick Soderberg and Wolfgang Möbius upon which to draw.

The Carrera GT was a baptismal project for a new arm of Porsche, a West Coast design studio. Porsche Engineering Services Inc. was set up in March 1999 in Los Angeles to carry out design work for Porsche and other clients as well. That spring, the studios in both California and Baden-Württemberg were assigned two days of sketching concepts that would suit a super-Porsche. Three of these were chosen to be modeled in one-quarter scale. Evaluating these at the end of May 1999, one was rejected as not having enough Porsche-ness and another as having insufficient aerodynamic potential. Coupe concepts were set aside at an early stage in favor of an open car, said Harm Lagaay: "People who buy such a car want to be seen." With the coupes, as well, it was hard to avoid results that looked 911-ish.

In the next stage, the development of a full-size model, designer Grant Larson played a key role. "We took a lot of time over it," said Harm Lagaay. "We needed surface tension to communicate some emotion." Another challenge to the designers was that the car"s forms had to have high feasibility, August Achleitner told Peter Morgan: "Our stylists had a very difficult job, because they had to take account of the technical requirements. That makes this car different to a normal study. We didn"t want to show a car that will be watered down for production. It is very near to a production car." That, plus interruptions, meant that the Carrera GT"s body design wasn"t ready until March of 2000.

Derived from Herbert Ampferer"s LMP 2000 power unit, the rear-mounted V-10 engine of the Carrera GT sat forward of the coildamper units for the racing-inspired suspension.

The silver-skinned clay model showed a sleek two-seater that artfully married elegance with aggressiveness. True to Porsche"s principles, it expressed eager urgency without the meretricious excesses of some of its big-company rivals. Its low nose with wide inlets was unremarkable; instead the Carrera GT"s character was expressed by the dashing sweep of curved lines on its flanks, from air vents behind its front wheels to engine-room inlets, and also by twin headrests fronting a carapace above its V-10 engine. A fine mesh over the engine was its "negligee," according to Lagaay, both concealing and revealing. The wing spanning its rear deck above a central tunnel in the engine cover lifted electrically to be more effective at high speeds.

The finished Carrera GTs-two concept cars were built-abounded in fascinating detail. Lifting its rear deck revealed its viscera, coil/damper units and an oil filler and cooler, with wheel-removal tools in a receptacle on the left. Cladding concealed the engine. High-intensity headlamps hid under transparent fairings while neon tubes were used for turn-signal and brake lamps. Side mirrors had vee-strut mountings. A very high yet narrow console separated the passengers and placed the sequential shift lever high and next to the wheel, like that of a rally car. The steering wheel itself was new to Porsche with a Y-shape to its central spoke, which carried several controls. This foreshadowed the style of the similar wheel of the Cayenne.

The functional side vents and beautifully integrated rear spoiler clearly stated the purpose of this powerful sports car without any of the styling excesses so characteristic of exotic supercars.

Instead of fixed dials, the Carrera GT used a high-definition display to communicate with its driver. He could choose either a highway-touring display or one which suited closed-circuit racing, even presenting his lap times. From a compartment between the seats a video camera swung out, at the ready to record the instrument readings or a special drive. The manually adjusted seats looked relatively flat to make entry and exit easy, but had side and knee braces that swung up into position to hold the occupants under high lateral gs. These were adjustable to suit drivers of different posterior dimensions. Front and side airbags were provided for both driver and passenger. A full windshield had attachments for the fitting of a removable roof, which could be stored in the rear compartment.

Lifting the Silence

Behind the unusual steering wheel with a Y-shape to its center spoke lurked a high-definition display in lieu of the usual five-dial layout used by Porsche. The control for the concept car"s sequential shifter was situated in the high center console.

The Paris Launch of the Carrera GT came as a stunning surprise. The old "leaky" Porsche company was a thing of the past. Harm Lagaay explained to Peter Morgan how this was achieved: This has been an extremely inspiring project with such a small group of people, all thinking and working in the same way in creating this super-Porsche. Young or old, it didn"t matter who was working on the project, they were all saying to themselves that this was going to be the best. I think that"s how we managed to keep it such a closely guarded secret. Those of us involved were 100 percent committed to the project, and even the best-informed people outside that immediate circle didn"t fully appreciate what was going on.

A feature of the Paris "reveal" was stunning action footage of Walter Rohrl driving the silver GT through a dramatic desert moonscape. This was filmed during the third week of August 2000 in Nevada"s Valley of Fire State Park, northeast of Las Vegas. With temperatures of 105° F and upward in the baking desert, Rohrl wished he hadn"t brought black jeans to Nevada. Driving the prototype Carrera GT was no sinecure. Its triple-plate racing clutch was so fragile that a gang of pushers was always at the ready to get it going. "Around corners," however, said Rohrl, "it drives like an out-and-out racing car."

In its final design, as promised, the Carrera GT was strikingly close in appearance to its concept-car origins. The "negligee" over its engine remained and the two-piece removable hardtop was perfected. NACA inlets for cooling appeared in its rear deck.

Although both were envisioned as establishing Porsche at a new high level of the market, conceptually the Carrera GT was the antithesis of the 959 of almost 20 years earlier. The 959 was packed to the gunwales with electronics and hydraulics at the state of the art and beyond. It was the very quintessence of Porsche as a technological innovator and leader. The Carrera GT in contrast made no such claims. In fact it proudly forswore any but the most essential electronic aids. It was an avowed emotional interpretation of a sports-racing car for the road, much more a Dauer GT than a 959. And unlike the four-wheel-drive supercar, if built it would be homologated for sale in the good old US of A.

One thing the Carrera GT would not be was a spectacular money-loser for the company in the tradition of the 959. "You may rest assured that it is not our corporate policy to subsidize this product segment," said Wendelin Wiedeking at the GT"s Paris launch. "Rather, each and every car we introduce must contribute to our overall business results. So we will test the acceptance of the car in the market and the size of the market before taking the final decision to build the Carrera GT." Assessing the market"s size was the tricky part, he admitted: "Nobody really knows for sure how big the market segment is for the Carrera GT and its possible competitors," embracing two-seater sportsmobiles costing between $300,000 and $500,000. A certain jostling for position seemed likely.

Were the Carrera GT to be built, it would make nonsense of a statement by sales chief Hans Riedel in the context of the Cayenne decision. "We don"t live by replacement," he said, "but we live by discretionary income. So we want to enter larger and less volatile segments." This fitted the Cayenne decision to a T, but it would be hard to find a smaller and more volatile segment than the one the Carrera GT would occupy. Yet Riedel had another saying that was applicable. It was: "With 12 the first kiss, with 22 the first job and with 42 the first Porsche." To that he could add, "With 52 the first Carrera GT." From technology the Porsche brand"s appeal had been successfully refocused toward emotion during the 1990s, and here was one hell of an emotional Porsche.