A new reason (to me) to never own a Porsche

[Roger Feeley]

My son-in-law has a Porsche Boxter. He drove it to work and parked in the companies underground garage. It wouldn't start. Something is wrong with the charging system and he has a dead battery. Long story short, in order to pop the hood, you have to push a button. There is no mechanical way to open the hood to get to the dead battery. Whaaaa???

Thankfully, Porsche provided a way. You take the cover off the fuse box inside and there's a place to clip a charger or booster box.

But really?

I wouldn't have a sports car anyway. At 6'-3" and a bad knee, I have no desire to climb out of such a low slung car. I'm more of a truck type guy. But this fly-by-wire stuff is getting out of hand.

A few years ago there was a case where a woman was driving a Kia Sorento on I-29 heading north from Kansas City. Apparently, the throttle is an electronic link and not mechanical. Something went wrong in the cars computer and the throttle went full open and stayed there. For 90 minutes she was escorted by Highway Patrol at over 100 mph while 911 had her try all sorts of things to stop the car. Finally something worked, the car stopped and she pulled off into the median. The car was immediately flanked front and back by cop cars to prevent it from going again. She got out and fainted dead away. My takeaway from that is that I will never own a car that doesn't have a reliable kill switch, even if I have to install something myself.

[Wade Lippman]

I've never understood the concept of sports cars. Or expensive watches. Or designer clothes.
"I am so rich I can spend money on things that are pretty much the same as cheap things, except for price"?

[Art Mann]

If you have never owned a sports car, then how do you know it is "pretty much the same as cheap things"?

[Roger Feeley]

I didn't mean to start a flame war over sports cars. While it's true that I have no interest in them, I certainly don't begrudge others who do. In point of fact, I am grateful for the racing industry that has brought us so many safety innovations.

My point was that some things on cars are unnecessarily complicated. Maybe on that small car, it's not possible to provide a mechanical linkage to release the hood. I'm not an expert. But, superficially, it seems kind of silly that the only way to get to your dead battery requires a working battery. I picked on Porsche, but my comment applies to other things as well.

Two years ago we rented an SUV and the cigarette lighter failed and we couldn't power our GPS. To me, a cigarette lighter socket is about the simplest component on a car but this one had a section in the manual that only a Philadelphia lawyer would understand.

[Malcolm McLeod]

We are allowed to spell 'fun' in many different ways.

[Wade Lippman]

If you have never owned a sports car, then how do you know it is "pretty much the same as cheap things"?

Enlighten me. I have a Mazda CX-3. What does a Porsche Boxter do better for 250% of the price of a Mazda?
Obviously it goes faster and accelerates faster, but since the Mazda goes as fast as you can drive a car, and accelerates as fast as you can reasonably accelerate a car, I am not sure those count as better.

[John M Wilson]

A few years ago there was a case where a woman was driving a Kia Sorento on I-29 heading north from Kansas City. Apparently, the throttle is an electronic link and not mechanical. Something went wrong in the cars computer and the throttle went full open and stayed there. For 90 minutes she was escorted by Highway Patrol at over 100 mph while 911 had her try all sorts of things to stop the car. Finally something worked, the car stopped and she pulled off into the median. The car was immediately flanked front and back by cop cars to prevent it from going again. She got out and fainted dead away. My takeaway from that is that I will never own a car that doesn't have a reliable kill switch, even if I have to install something myself.

A remarkable number of these "run away car" stories end up being a panicked driver pushing on the wrong pedal with all of their might.

Stop and think about it... how many of us (in our younger days) have done a "brake torque" on a car with an automatic transmission? If you hold the brake pedal down, all 4 wheels are holding you still. You press the accelerator, the engine roars, but the car won't move. (Let off the brake a little and you get the desired burn-out). In modern cars, the brakes are far more powerful than the engine.

Even if this lady's throttle had hung open, and her brakes had faded to the point of uselessness (not easy to do with disk brakes), if she had shifted into neutral, the car would have slowed to a stop.

Not saying it can't happen in very unusual circumstances, but after the 60 Minute hack-job on Audi for unintended acceleration, a jillion trial lawyers tried to replicate the results and couldn't. They did eventually find that the placement of the pedals on the Audi was non-standard, and this led to the driver inadvertently applying the accelerator rather than the brake.

As risk-averse as automakers are nowadays, these electronic things are tested nine ways to Sunday. Not saying it can't happen, but the failure tree is immense. Far more likely is an error by the human in the loop.

Just my two cents...

[Frederick Skelly]

I wouldn't own one simply because their styling just turns me off - and always has. The boxter is the best of the bunch, but only by a little. ( Sorry, Porsche faithful here.) Yeah, I know they're faster than the devil and they're a blast to drive. They're german - of course they are. But their styling just turns me off.

Though I could get used to ugly for a twin turbo cayenne. That beast is hard to beat, if you're going to buy an SUV anyway.

[Roger Feeley]

Enlighten me. I have a Mazda CX-3. What does a Porsche Boxter do better for 250% of the price of a Mazda?
Obviously it goes faster and accelerates faster, but since the Mazda goes as fast as you can drive a car, and accelerates as fast as you can reasonably accelerate a car, I am not sure those count as better.

There is a feeling of 'wearing' the car rather than just driving it. At one time in the distant past, my wife had a sports car and it's a different experience. She loved driving it but hated paying the repair bills so we got rid of it. She still kind of misses it. I just didn't care. It's just a different perspective. This morning, my wife learned of a place in NJ called DiggerLand where you can go drive a backhoe and frontloader and stuff. I thought that would be great fun. My son-in-law said he would rather strap on a really fast car and drive around a race track.

[Roger Feeley]

John, that's generally my assumption as well. In this case the chase went on for 90 minutes. The police were involved almost from the beginning and no charges were filed. Apparently, there were interlocks to prevent the car from going into neutral while the throttle was on full. Stuff like that.

I stick with my takeaway. I will never own a car that doesn't have some way to kill the engine. Even if I have to have a switch wired up to kill power to the computer or something, I'm going to have a way to stop the car.

"The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."
Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott: Star Trek III: The search for Spock.

[Mike Henderson]

The 911 I had was fun to drive but it rode hard - my wife hated riding in it. And it used a LOT of gas (11 MPG around town). It was a 2 liter boxer engine and it put out a lot of power but sucked up the gas. We used to joke that it was gas cooled (instead of air cooled).

I owned an MGB earlier in my life - when I was single. It was a fun car, also.

Mike

[For legal street driving, you won't see a lot of difference between an expensive sports car and a lower priced sports car. The expensive sports car usually has an engine and suspension that is designed for racing (with some detuning for the street). The engine is often designed that it could run at very high RPMs and output a lot of power for an extended period of time, without blowing up. But you just can't use that in legal street driving. It's funny to see someone driving a Lamborghini out here in LA - stuck in traffic, inching along at maybe 20 MPH.]

[Art Mann]

Enlighten me. I have a Mazda CX-3. What does a Porsche Boxter do better for 250% of the price of a Mazda?
Obviously it goes faster and accelerates faster, but since the Mazda goes as fast as you can drive a car, and accelerates as fast as you can reasonably accelerate a car, I am not sure those count as better.

If you have lived life as an adult for any length of time and don't know the differences between a sports car and an SUV, there is nothing I can say that will enlighten you. It isn't just about speed or acceleration.

[James Baker SD]

Maybe on that small car, it's not possible to provide a mechanical linkage to release the hood.

I have a 95 Mazda RX-7. It has a lever under the dash to open the hood. Lever is attached via a steel cable to the latch on the hood. When the car was less than a year old, I pulled the lever one day to check the oil or something, and heard a loud, ugly "bong" as the steel cable snapped. It took the car back to Mazda and they could not figure out how to open the hood with the cable broken either. Kept the car a week trying, then told me they would have to cut the car body off its chassis to access the hood latch. I refused to approve that drastic approach as it seemed to me my car's value would be that of a vehicle salvaged from being totaled.

Long story short, dealer finally called Japan, they sent someone over who managed to release the hood by removing one of the headlights using special tools he had. They found a sharp piece of weld in the channel for the cable had cut it, so they completed ground and polished the channel before installing a new cable. All total, the car was gone for about 2 weeks, but fortunately for me, it was still under warranty.

But, a mechanical solution doesn't always make it easy.

[Jamie Buxton]

Enlighten me. I have a Mazda CX-3. What does a Porsche Boxter do better for 250% of the price of a Mazda?
Obviously it goes faster and accelerates faster, but since the Mazda goes as fast as you can drive a car, and accelerates as fast as you can reasonably accelerate a car, I am not sure those count as better.

"Better" is generally not linear with cost. For instance, there are many SMC folks who buy Festool tools. They cost a bunch more than DeWalt and the like -- maybe five or ten times, depending on which tool. They're probably better than the DeWalt class, but five or ten times -- not likely. Yet many woodworkers have found the performance benefits worth the cost. Maybe you can think of Porsche owners as the automotive equivalent to Festool owners.

[Wade Lippman]

If you have lived life as an adult for any length of time and don't know the differences between a sports car and an SUV, there is nothing I can say that will enlighten you. It isn't just about speed or acceleration.

If you can't explain the difference, you don't know the difference.