EC stoops to a new low, Porsche design team finds a brain

[Brett Dikeman]

European Car just arrived, with a photo of the new 911.

There's some idiot behind the wheel pretending to be driving, and the 
photo has been poorly edited to look like the car is blazing down the 
highway- they blurred the rims, but not the tires.  So you can see 
dirt and tread on the front tire, for example.  I've seen people on 
car webboards do a better job of photoshopping stuff they've taken.

The horror doesn't stop with the photos. There's blithering, mindless 
commentary such as "the 19 inch wheels forced powertrain engineers to 
rework the gearboxes".  Uh, no- they bumped up the TIRE size, and 
that changes the final drive ratio.  Rim size has jack to do with 
final drive ratio.

Oh, but it gets worse.  It's then implied that the transmission gear 
ratio changes "gave Porsche wizards the opportunity to address other 
concerns [...] shortening the shift linkage and improving and adding 
synchros on the six-speed."

The 6-speed manual tranny in the 911 lacked syncros? And since when 
did messing with the gear ratios "give you the opportunity" to mess 
with the shift linkages?  Well, what the author meant was that the 
new tranny uses a triple syncro on 1st/2nd, double on third, and 
single in 4th/5th/6th.

Some googling around turns out there were rumors Porsche would use a 
version of the DSG in the 997, but

"Randy Leffingwell" should be embarrassed of himself, and EC editors 
should practically resign for letting such crap through the door. 
But I'll overlook it, because I'm too busy giving a standing ovation 
to Porsche's design team for ditching those stupid looking headlights 
and going back to 993 styling, like the round units with in-bumper 
fogs/turn signals.  The mid 90's 993 was probably the best looking 
911 ever made.  How do you say "BRAVO!" in German?

Brett
-- 
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~brett/