Having got some good feedback from you concerning my vintage R&T ads posts, I decided to upload more than just ads and include some vintage articles for your reading and nostalgia pleasure.
And I’ll begin with this, an Article found in the June 1978 R&T discussed here. As ever, click the images for better resolution and easier reading.
This is why I liked reading Road & Track. I subscribed to both Road & Track and Car and Driver. Road Tests and Comparison Tests.
Agree! “R&T” and “C&D” were my two favorite car magazines in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s.
Today Elaine Bond and David E. Davis are arguing cars in Heaven. Us mere mortals are all the worse for their departure.
I agree. I don’t mind colour photos, but everything else about today’s car magazines have gone downhill.
This was the car that taught us the word “intercooler”. I love how R&T had to explain it as “an intake air cooler”. The driving experience was really something and required a whole new vocabulary to describe it. Outrageous, insane, etc, etc. This classic piece reads like a Tesla article would today. Thanks for sharing!
It sounds like this would still be a very, very fun car to drive. Not that I could afford the maintenance and repairs, but still.
Peak Porsche!
nah
Peak Porsche would be a turbo targa with a slantnose conversion.
I was under the impression that Porsche never built a Targa Turbo because the body shell was not rigid enough, but I may have been imagining things…
When I was a kid, Pete Rose the baseball player was a neighbor. He rolled through the subdivision in a brown 911 Turbo one day and I was blown away. I seem to recall that his had the wild two tone cloth interior with the huge misshapen blocks of color…tough to look at. Guy across the street apparently felt that if a nouveau-riche guy like Pete could have a Porsche, so could he, so the neighbor suddenly bought a bronze colored 928…good time to be a kid.
I just looked up the uphosltery, and it’s a flannel material called “pasha”, and comes in several colors. It was available from 1980-84
When I think of Porsche, I think of this era of 911 which had that whale tail spoiler. Whether it had turbo or not it still screamed “Porsche” the later models that dropped the big rear spoiler don’t really evoke anything out of me.
Ditto. I never liked the retractable wings Porsche(and many since) adopted in place of it either.
Same here. It has to either be fixed rear wing or no rear wing.
Really enjoy reading these old road tests, and the vintage ad’s as well. Thanks, keep ’em coming. The auto rags of today really need to study these old issues and get back on track.
The first time I made the mistake of letting off the gas coming out of a curve (and oversteered, (front to back, front to back, front to back) into a cow pasture (thankfully) in my Father’s 911, I became wary of Porches.
My ’67 Corvair, that …other…6 cylinder, rear engine, air cooled car, although slower, was a much more benign handling car.
I’ve always liked this generation Porsche 911.
It’s funny how things have changed. These stats, which blew everyone away in 1978, are almost identical to my 2006 Cayman S. From weight, to 1/4 mile to 0-60 times- it is almost a dead ringer. Everything except the price, which at $34,000 ($105,439 adjusted) equalled almost double the base $58,995 price in 2006. We really live in an amazing time for performance!
http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/reviews/a11313/2006-porsche-cayman-s-1/