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.
