Porsche Has Been Beating Up Its Cars For Decades

Let's just drop that Porsche from a crane. That'll be fun.

We long knew that Porsche is made up of a bunch of engineering and design perfectionists, but we gave little thought as to what happened during behind the scenes testing. Porsche’s Weissach design center is also the location where Porsche has been beating the everlasting crap of its cars since the 1960s. Government mandated crash testing wasn’t what it is today, but Porsche still took it upon itself to build some of the toughest and most durable cars possible. For example, it’s been testing vehicles on the skidpad for more than 50 years.

The test track is also one hell of a thing, partly due to its metal potholes. Porsche test drives cars over those potholes at 25 mph, and then through a salt water tank to test corrosion resistance. The off-road track isn’t only for Cayennes and Macans, but also for rally cars.

And then there’s the crash test. Right, so before Porsche began performing the familiar brutal force impacts, it used to drop vehicles from a crane. Yes, really. Everything is much more state-of-the-art today, but it’s fun to learn about the extremes Porsche put its cars through back in the day, even something that sounds as primitive as using a crane for crash testing.

View the original article here

Porsche Has Been Beating Up Its Cars For Decades

Let's just drop that Porsche from a crane. That'll be fun.

We long knew that Porsche is made up of a bunch of engineering and design perfectionists, but we gave little thought as to what happened during behind the scenes testing. Porsche’s Weissach design center is also the location where Porsche has been beating the everlasting crap of its cars since the 1960s. Government mandated crash testing wasn’t what it is today, but Porsche still took it upon itself to build some of the toughest and most durable cars possible. For example, it’s been testing vehicles on the skidpad for more than 50 years.

The test track is also one hell of a thing, partly due to its metal potholes. Porsche test drives cars over those potholes at 25 mph, and then through a salt water tank to test corrosion resistance. The off-road track isn’t only for Cayennes and Macans, but also for rally cars.

And then there’s the crash test. Right, so before Porsche began performing the familiar brutal force impacts, it used to drop vehicles from a crane. Yes, really. Everything is much more state-of-the-art today, but it’s fun to learn about the extremes Porsche put its cars through back in the day, even something that sounds as primitive as using a crane for crash testing.

View the original article here

Say Goodbye To The Guy Behind Every Porsche 911 For The Past Two Decades

August Achleitner was “Mr. 911” at Porsche for eighteen years.

If it takes a village, as they say, to raise a child, it surely takes an entire company to build a car – sporty or otherwise. But at Porsche, that's come down to one man more than any other. And now he's retiring.

That man is August Achleitner, who has, for the past 18 years, been the one individual responsible for developing every new version of the 911. He's also handled the 718 Boxster/Cayman program since 2016. But with the development of the new 911 now complete, Achleitner is hanging up his driving gloves for good.

August Achleitner first joined Porsche in 1983, woking on chassis development as a as a mechanical engineer. He held a variety of roles until 2001 when he took over responsibility for the pivotal 911 line, ushering three generations of the iconic sports car into production and onto the market, and added responsibility for the 718 a couple of years ago.

Now that he's retiring, Achleitner will hand over responsibilities to Frank-Steffen Walliser, the head of Porsche Motorsport and the GT line that's given us such notable variants as the GT3 and GT2, and previously the father of the 918 Spyder.

That puts him in prime position to take over the 911 program. Walliser will assume Achleitner's mantle at the beginning of the new year, by which time we can expect Porsche to have named his successor as the head of Porsche Motorsport and head of GT development.

“We thank Gustl Achleitner for his extraordinary commitment to our company,” commented Porsche CEO Oliver Blume, to whom Achleitner reported directly, on the changing of the guard. “Over the course of 18 years, he shaped the Porsche 911 more than anyone else. He understood just how to continually refine the 911, while always retaining its character.”

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