Going Faster With The 2009 Porsche 911 Carrera S Cabriolet
Porsche has always prided itself with developing vehicles that reached a pinnacle of excellence even in the modeling stages. The company’s mantra is to cruise effortlessly at fast speeds while the driver seems oblivious but manages looking cool. The Porsche 911 Carrera has always seemed to have been the best sports car for sophisticates.
But the all-new 2009 Porsche 911 Carrera S Cabriolet is aimed at those who are clutch-clueless. Thanks to the gods of mechanical performance engineering at Porsche, you no longer have to fret about having to step on the clutch pedal to shift gears since that chore has been taken out of the equation for the S Cabriolet. Basically that means anyone who has never had experience driving cars with manual transmissions can finally get behind the wheel of the car they could only have dreamed of owning before.
Jerry Garrett at the New York Times explains more about the new 7-speed PDK transmission made by Porsche in greater detail:
The PDK (its full name is Porsche Doppelkupplungsgetriebe, or double clutch gearbox) uses two wet clutches to shift its seven forward gears with minimal interruption in the flow of power to the wheels. And though it can make all the gear changes without any help from the driver, mechanically it’s a manual transmission. It does not connect to the engine through the fluid coupling known as a torque converter that is used by conventional automatics.
Such distinctions aside, say “auf wiedersehen” to the clutch pedal.
You can, however, shift manually with buttons on the steering wheel or even with the gearlever if you’d like, although it still won’t feel much like you’re actually driving stick. The clutchless shifting system is “foolproof”shift the wrong way and the transmission adjusts without making much of a fuss.
This is all certainly exciting news, given that the S Cabriolet can potentially go 0-60 mph in 4.3 seconds effortlessly. And that’s with a 3.8 liter V6 engine that drives 19 miles per gallon in the city and 26 on the freeway. What the hell kind of Porsche is this, anyway? Fast and green at the same time? Easy to drive? Unrivaled sports car performance? It’s mindboggling, but it’s now, and there’s no going back.
If you happen to have about $120,000 to spare, give or take a few thousand dollars, you may just have the sports car you’ve always wanted.
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