http://www.popularmechanics.com/automot ... 02956.html
Few limited-production supercars represent real-world technological breakthroughs. Think about it. Most have followed the same old formula with tube frames, lightweight construction, sophisticated, high-horsepower engines, and some even have carbon-fiber brakes. The all-wheel-drive Porsche 959 and the McLaren F1 were arguably the most advanced supercars of the last century, and nobody has done much that's really different since. Lamborghini's Countach was outrageous-looking, but it wasn't a highly advanced car--it didn't even have ABS.
Of course, one myth about supercars is those ludicrously low 0-to-60-mph times. Maybe you can go 0 to 60 in 4 seconds in your Countach if you rev it to six grand and drop the clutch. But if you try that three or four times in a row, your Lamborghini's clutch will probably be history. Then your exotic car will be laid up three to five weeks and it'll cost you more than $5000. So instead, you let the kid in the hopped-up Camaro win the stoplight drag race and you drive your supercar as conservatively as you would a minivan.
I am amazed that there are some people who own supercars and actually brag about how few miles they have on them. The only fun they have with their exotic cars is looking at them in their garages. Maybe it has something to do with how much they think their cars are worth. Or maybe it's those expensive clutches.
Porsches are different. These cars are built to be driven hard and they can take it when you drive them that way. And they've been like that since the beginning. With a rear-mounted, air-cooled four-cylinder opposed engine, and fully independent suspension, they were advanced from the start. The ceramic clutch in the Porsche Carrera GT is a good example of how they think at Porsche. Clutches aren't sexy, but at Porsche they engineer the whole car and they build it to last. I had a new Porsche Carrera GT on loan and I absolutely hammered it. Surprise: Nothing happened to the clutch. Not that I was trying, but I couldn't fry it. You could put the power down cleanly again and again. The clutch in the new Carrera GT is designed to last some 30,000 to 40,000 miles. Look, I drove it hard--I didn't abuse it--but it's meant to be really driven.
Porsche has made a really worthwhile contribution to the supercar genre. The Carrera GT's multiplate clutch is lighter and smaller than any comparable unit. It's patented by Tilton, so there's an American connection and that makes me like it even more. Porsche has been using ceramic-composite brakes for a while, so it was a natural to put this superlight, highly resistant material into service to help transfer the V10's 600-plus horsepower to the pavement. Porsche's Ceramic Composite Clutch is a boon. The clutch-plate diameter is only 6.65 in., which helps the low center of gravity.
The Carrera GT will sprint to 60 mph in just 3.6 seconds, turn 131.6 mph in the quarter and top out at 205 mph. Your results may vary, of course. But thanks to the ceramic clutch, you can do those 0-to-60 runs over and over again. The Carrera GT costs $440,000, but I wouldn't be surprised to see ceramic clutches on much more affordable production Porsches soon.
Early Porsches looked like upside down bathtubs, but they worked right and went like hell. There's a lot of German pride in their engineering. A few years ago, I was traveling on the high-speed German autobahn. Occasionally I'd get off the highway and drive through a village. It seemed that in each little town there would be two churches, located a few hundred yards apart. And on the hour, the clocks in both their steeples would strike at exactly the same time. Precision is the German way.
Back to clutches. The McLaren F1, which has a BMW V12 engine, is arguably the best sports car of the last century. But the clutch is good for only 4000 to 5000 miles. And, of course, the McLaren clutch is very expensive. By developing a superior clutch, using ceramic materials, Porsche showed they could think outside the box.
I can hear you now, "Performance-car clutches that only last a few thousand miles?" Yep, performance-car clutches that last only a few thousand miles. People who own them say, "You have a supercar, you live with it." To me that's the same flawed logic that killed the British motorcycle industry. The people who built BSAs, Triumphs, Nortons and Velocettes actually thought that their customers liked "decoking" their cylinder heads occasionally--you know, taking them off, scraping away the built-up carbon deposits and grinding the valves. Maybe people got used to doing that dirty, time-consuming maintenance, but that didn't mean they liked it. I remember when my Triumph Bonneville got to the 8000-mile mark. A friend said, "Now that's gonna need a rebuild." When the new Honda 165s and 305s came out, they didn't need that sort of forced-march attention. So bike enthusiasts began buying them in droves. And one by one, all those great British brands--the ones that didn't believe in progress--went out of business.
In the 1950s, people pointed to Ferraris as being highly advanced cars, but they really weren't. People fell in love with Ferraris--the image, the styling, the powerful engines, the sounds. But Enzo Ferrari, the company founder, clung to solid rear axles on his road cars for a long time. He didn't convert his cars to disc brakes until one of his race drivers, Peter Collins, had Dunlop disc brakes installed on his own road-going Ferrari and shamed the old man into making the change. Ferrari always said he remembered the sound of a V12 engine in a Packard, so his cars had V12s. Signor Ferrari also liked to say, "The horse pulls the cart." So when the radical, midengine Lamborghini Miura came out, Ferrari's top of the line 365 GTB/4 Daytona was still a front-engine car.
But the people at Porsche go their own way. Their prevailing logic is, "It doesn't have to be that way." And the ceramic clutch is a good example of how they constantly stretch. Now, if the British motorcycle industry had taken that attitude, maybe we wouldn't be riding Honda Gold Wings today--we'd all be on Velocette Thruxtons.
