Porsche 911 Carrera 2.7 RS: The good and the better

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We interrupt our programme about energy prices, the role of the passenger car in society and its electric drives for a throwback to the Good Old Days (tm), when men were still real men, women were still real women and little furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were still real little furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. Please have your rose-tinted glasses ready, because there will be scenes with a very yellow Porsche 911 Carrera 2.7 RS "Touring".

Honour and Aero

But first the glasses have to stay down. We need the unclouded view through the clear glass, because it shows: In the seventies, the Porsche 911 was a design full of problems. Old Porsches had nothing to do with today's functional maturity of the design. Their weight distribution together with their idiosyncratic axle load change behaviour earned them the reputation of "tail skidders" because that's exactly what they liked to do: skid with the rear end breaking away.

The most annoying thing, however, was the aerodynamics. Much was written even then about the elegantly round lines, but the physicist sees immediately: the 911 looks like an aerofoil. Thus it generated lift like an aerofoil. The elegant nose also allowed a lot of air under the already light front (under 40 per cent axle load at the front), so that in the sixties Porsche had resorted to the desperate measure of fitting lead blocks in the front bumper of the 911.

"The car there below me was bucking".

Tilmann Brodbeck had joined Porsche in 1970. He had studied mechanical engineering and aerodynamics, and he wanted to use them to go either to Porsche or into aircraft construction. The first wish came true. "I remember with horror how the old hands initiated me as a newcomer," Brodbeck recalls. "We drove in 911s at over 200 km/h through the Kassel mountains. The motorway section was completely unrestricted back then. The way the car bucked under me there, that was pretty bad. But as a newcomer, I didn't dare let it go."

Even this early experience in his Porsche career revealed to Brodbeck the major constructional and functional problems with the 911. These soon became apparent in the field when competitors began to overtake the 911s in customer sport on the racetrack. This set off alarm bells in Zuffenhausen and Weissach.

Company management: "Do something!"

"On the straights, the 911 could score with engine power," says Brodbeck, "but fast curves were faster in some competitor models. Of course it was impossible for a Ford Capri to overtake an expensive Porsche. I mean: The Ford Capri was a great car, but that still wasn't possible." The company management ordered the technology: "Do something!". The door closed and Tilman Brodbeck's supervisor told the new guy, "You heard him: do something!" And with that he left him standing there.

Italian inspirations

To ensure that the task was not too easy, the specification was also that the solution had to be retrofittable for existing customers. Brodbeck started with the front. In the wind tunnel, he experimented with pins, ropes and fingers to divert air to the sides so that less of it flew under the car. Based on the findings, the team made a front spoiler from GRP, which alone reduced lift by a third. A steel production part, however, would have required a year's tooling lead time.

With GfK, on the other hand, there was concern that the accident properties would be too poor. A bump in the parking space would already destroy the component. Here Ferdinand Piëch made one of his striking decisions: "That's great. Then we'll sell more spare parts." And that's exactly what happened when the part for the 911 S made its debut. No customer complained when they had to reorder the front spoiler due to their own mistake.

Less lift AND more top speed

When it came to the rear, Brodbeck remembered how he had always pondered about the rear of his Fiat 850 Sport Coupé: was there a reason for the sharp edge and could this reason have aerodynamic backgrounds? From his studies, he knew about the theory of clean tear-off edges. His colleagues dismissed the idea: pure design. But Brodbeck's team kept at it. After two and a half days in the wind tunnel, they had developed a functional rear spoiler that, together with the front spoiler, reduced lift to a third of the previous value.

Improved aerodynamics

"Of course, that is no longer possible today," says Brodbeck. "But back then there was simply still so much to get that such big leaps were possible. You can see that from the fact that not only was downforce reduced, but the RS also had a faster top speed at the same time because the aerodynamics improved. At today's level of technology, downforce and wind slip are in competition in development." The team increased the spoiler until the reversal point, where the top speed dropped again: an optimum of aerodynamic efficiency had been found.

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Spoiler-Entwicklung (6 Bilder)

From the test track to series production

When testing the aero kit, Porsche's engineer-racing driver Günter Steckkönig consistently set better times with the kit than without. His colleagues, however, insinuated that he was only doing this to confirm his boss with the aero spinning, the effect of which many simply still doubted. The development team tried to explain the background. This helped the design team in particular: "When the designers understood WHY it had to look like that, they really blossomed," says Brodbeck.

But because such things simply did not exist in road vehicles at the time, a stern headwind blew everywhere. The KBA expressed concerns that pedestrians could be injured by the spoiler or even that motorcyclists could be decapitated. Porsche's killer argument to this was: "Please leave the church in the village, it's only about 500 units." Because that's all the factory wanted to build in order to get approval for Group 4 racing.

The sales department was appalled by the RS. The department expected to be able to sell, quite possibly, 100 units worldwide. Ernst Fuhrmann, who had been running Porsche's business since 1972, gave them a choice: "Let's make it short, you have two options: Either you sell 500 of them, or we put the prototype in the garage and this car will not exist."

Hard to understand from today's perspective: The planned RS had 210 hp instead of 190, which had to move 960 kg. It was the first 911 to have wider tyres at the rear than at the front, which had been logical before but was always rejected for economic reasons. However, it also had the Aero package, which required some getting used to and irritated the sales department as much as so many conservative technicians in the company. Would the conservative Porsche clientele accept it?

Success is success

The 500 units for homologation for participation in Group 4 were gone in no time. At the beginning of October 1972, Porsche presented the 2.7 RS at the Paris Motor Show. By the end of November, all 500 units had been sold. Forgotten was "we can't sell that". Instead, the sales department asked if they could produce more. The demand was so high. But the customers had a wish: couldn't the racing-oriented Porsche be a little less racing-oriented? The 2500 DM "Touring" package was born: 115 kg more in comfort, sound insulation, door panels and opulently upholstered leather seats instead of the shell of the "Sport" package for 700 DM.

Customers subsequently bought 1308 units with the Touring package, compared to 200 units in Sport trim. They didn't care that it took them half a second longer to reach 100 km/h (Sport: 5.8 s / Touring: 6.3 s). This ratio has remained until today. We read a lot about the GT3 (used instead of "RS" for the model series since 2004) in racetrack trim because this variant marketed the car. However, the best-selling variant remained the one in the Touring package, which was discreet on the outside and opulent on the inside.

As sales of the 2.7 RS broke the 1000 mark, there was even a Group 3 approval in it. The aftermarket spoilers for the Aero sold like hot cakes, indeed: Peu à peu we saw more and more openly displayed spoilers on road cars in the seventies. It is no longer possible to determine how many aftermarket spoilers came onto the market, but there were a lot. However, the commercial success proved above all Porsche's strategy right that the model policy came from the technical development. Today, the considerably increased knowledge of Porsche's markets plays a role in model development. But in the absence of such knowledge, the technical idea had to prove itself in implementation. The spoiler solution, which was not very popular at first, was an example of this.

Driving old cars

For their 50th birthday, the old darlings were allowed to jog around the Black Forest. So I enter the story in the form of a white RS "Sport". Plump, bucket seat with foam-rubber thin upholstery, just the way I like it. The defining aspect of driving an old car for me is always how well it all worked back then. Not better than today, but much better than the layman would like to assume. After all, this car is already 50 years old, although Porsche has of course looked after it so that it drives like it was taken out of the dealer's window the day before yesterday.

Manual cold start

The main difference to modern cars: instead of an automatic cold start, you have to give the injection engine a little throttle when starting, either with the foot pedal or with the little lever next to the seat, which also opens the throttle valves a little to increase the cold start speed. This solution was still used on motorbikes until around the turn of the millennium. When the Boxer is running, it can hardly be shaken, not by jerking through towns, and certainly not by having to sing towards the red on the rev counter in order to accelerate out of it.

Compromise scissors

I will hardly be able to convey the joy of the naturally aspirated revving engine in text to future generations of drivers. "So I have to go up into the upper, loud rev range to make progress? And little goes down below? I don't know. My electric hybrid diesel does it better." For me, such an engine manages the compromise gap between economical (12-litre-ish in the RS) and well-behaved when coasting and fiery when it matters (16 to 20+ litres) as clearly as a person with a split personality and hardly less interesting.

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Porsche 911 Carrera RS 3.8 Clubsport (4 Bilder)

What you hear

In the RS, the feedback from the environment is clear, as it is only insulated by thin sheet metal. In old Porsches, you can see where the front wheels are running: under the two gun barrels that hang in the field of vision that, at ideal seat height, allows the sloping bonnet to just about disappear. In the RS, however, you can also hear the tyres. And the gearbox. And the then optional limited-slip differential, which the buyer treated himself to in 1973. The car weighs little enough that there is no need for power steering. The youngsters will never experience that again either: Without servos, you feel ten times as much road feedback from the front axle.

Sport runs a little fatter

It goes "BANG!" under the car, as if someone had thrown a cannon underneath. What today is played by electronic gimmicks like an old sampling lyre was then a side effect of the mixture tuning. The Sport-RS runs a bit richer than the yellow Touring, says Porsche technology about its museum pieces. Perhaps a little too rich for the highway, given the scale of the explosions, but I have no doubt that this thing can still get very close to its factory lap times when guided by a knowledgeable hand.

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Porsche 911 Carrera 2.7 RS (8 Bilder)

The Touring can basically do the same as the Sport, only everything is more damped, behind more padding, less sound pressure, more weight and it even pats (in this concrete comparison) significantly less. Personally, it remains a mystery to me why so many more Touring than Sport packages were and are sold. Why do I buy a bottle of Château Lafite if I want to dilute the wine with water? The solution to the riddle will lie in human nature: One wants the prestige of the RS, but actually wants to drive the normal 911. The Touring package has allowed such a balancing act since the seventies.

Which is your favourite Porsche?

When asked "Which is your favourite Porsche?", Ferry Porsche always used to say: "The one that is currently being developed in Weissach." Because the better is the enemy of the good. I had to think of this when I first got into the 964 Carrera RS with the automatically retracting/extending spoiler and finally into the 993 Carrera RS 3.8 Clubsport. Let's forget the 964 for a moment, because that's a good car, but it pales next to the baby blue 3.8 like a TV picture with the plug abruptly pulled. The Clubsport was my kind of car: sheet metal floor, because even carpets weigh something.

A bucket seat that holds you like a monkey having a panic attack. Cage so it can race. Gigantic, knobbly fries counter on the back that presses against the rear. Everything of the finest, but of the finest only the necessary. Unsurprisingly, the Clubsport runs circles around the first RS, you can immediately tell even the museum cars after all this time. "Of course, everyone raves about how beautifully narrow old Porsches are," says Tilman Brodbeck later. "But when it comes to driving dynamics, the newer models are rapidly outpacing them. And the 993 in particular marked the end of many of the 911's design weaknesses. It was very healthy."

The health of the oldie (yes, in a few years the Clubsport will get its H-plate) becomes apparent when, at about 200 km/h on the motorway, a mobile phone blind man pulls into my lane directly in front of me at about half speed. The Clubsport's brakes, which were highly praised by the press at the time, immediately bite hard and the wheels quickly lock with a loud squeal. The brakes and the sporty, late-acting ABS were rightly praised by the trade press at the time. My backseat driver honks at the blind man on his mobile phone as he passes.

I, on the other hand, am deeply relaxed. For the blue Porsche, there was still plenty of room for possible emergency manoeuvres - room for more braking, room for a swerve, with 300 hp even room for an escape to the right in front. What a great car! And yet I know from direct experience that Mr Porsche was always right: The next model drives even better. After all, that's what it was built for.

(cgl)