Taking it out for a spin
BIRMINGHAM, ALA.--So you think you're a good driver? So did I--until the first 20 minutes on the track at the Porsche Driving Experience, a two-day instructional thrillfest for well-heeled motoring enthusiasts. My group of six is teeing up for the first exercise, three simple-seeming lane changes at about 60 miles per hour, a quick turnaround through orange cones, and three more lane changes. Our instructor, a congenial, 49-year-old racecar driver named Jack Baldwin, has emphasized one thing above all: Hammer the brakes. And do it before you turn.
A couple of my classmates seem hesitant. When my turn comes, I race smoothly through the lane changes. But then I brake too late, and take out a few cones in the turn, before navigating back through the last three lane changes. Suddenly, Baldwin's sunny demeanor has clouded over, his boyish grin usurped by a Jack Palance sneer. "We get a lot of guys like you here," he drawls, glancing under the 911. "There's a cone stuck under your car." For the next two laps, the orange appendage signals driver overindulgence, until a kid working the track comes over and fishes it out.
Humility, it turns out, will be a prevailing theme of the course. And for this, about 20 car buffs--most of them men, about two thirds of them Porsche owners--have waited months and forked over $2,695. Despite the steep price, Porsche insists profit isn't the goal. The real purpose, says Jeff Purner, 40, the program's operations manager, is to let Porsche owners experience the cars in ways they can't on the street, and to persuade others to become Porsche owners. "We want people to understand what Porsche is all about. Having fun," he says.
With about a six-month waiting list, Porsche is planning to add more track days next year and introduce bigger and cheaper classes. It may expand to other tracks as well. Other manufacturers have the same idea. BMW offers several programs at its driving center in Spartanburg, S.C., ranging from $400 to $3,650, and it has started using a racetrack in North Carolina for a $4,650 advanced class. Audi runs driving schools in central Florida, near Atlanta and Toronto, and in Fort Worth, with four programs costing from $500 to $975. Even Mazda has rolled out a low-budget driving program in 15 cities to promote its new Mazda3 economy car, with group instruction, driving clinics, and timed laps for a $40 fee.
Porsche's lure, of course, is the chance to zoom around the track here at Barber Motorsports Park in the latest 911. The course begins with a lecture on the physics of driving. The 20 students are all ears, but after about 45 minutes, the attention wanders. There's a collective impatience to wrap up the classroom work and get behind the wheel.
Slip sliding away. Soon enough. While Day 1 is still young, the drivers head to the track in vans and select their own 2004 911 Carrera. Each is a rear-wheel-drive production model with a six-speed manual transmission and sport suspension, clocking in at about $80,000. Baldwin leads one group to the lane-changing set-up and a slalom course. The reason for all the emphasis on braking becomes evident. On the third exercise, an autocross--a wiggly figure eight about 200 yards long navigated in a Porsche Boxster--several drivers drift onto the sidelines during the first curve, the result of braking too late. Then on the skidpad, watered down to simulate black ice, virtually every driver experiences the kind of tailspin that can result from hitting the brakes and turning the wheel at the same time. Worse, the students learn, is pressing the gas before the car's nose is pointed in the right direction. "The dumbest organ in the male body," advises instructor John Lewis, 36, "is the right foot." His point: It's about control, not speed.
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