From: Jay Kempf [jkempf@tds.net]
Sent: Friday, September 20, 2002 5:09 PM
To: 928
Subject: [928] s4 trivia question...

Nope,

The tooling for the nose and tail piece wore out and they needed to replace
it. Then the stylists were challenged with the update cause it was time and
the market had changed since the introduction. They had to build a new tool
anyway so why not update it. The aerodynamicists weren't consulted till it
was done. It was built on sound principles but everything about it came from
the styling guys. Amazing. Herr Mobius said that he left the project only
once in it's life because he was needed on another project. During that
short time someone else pasted on the S spoilers and he always hated them.
He called the rear lip spoiler the Marry Queen of Scotts design. When it
came time he was able to put on the rear wing and front treatments that he
had been thinking of for a while. All him and really no one else. He liked
the idea of a spoiler that as he said "floated above" the rear. If he had
his choice I think it would have levitated instead of being attached.  I
laughed my butt off when I heard him recant this whole saga... So much myth.

One of the biggest design styles in the s4 redo was to reduce the height of
the look. That is the sole reason for the vertical rounded sections. It
brings the shadow line down lower fooling the eye and making the car look
wider because they couldn't make the car wider physically. And no I am not
making this stuff up. I wanted to hear all of the aerodynamic input that
made them compromise the styling but it was the other way around. Lapine
confirmed all of this.

Another piece of trivia that came out was that the original car was made 3"
wider than it ended up. It got all the way to the final management approval
that way. When the board realized how wide it was they thought they would
never be able to sell it and so they told the design team to take 3" out of
the car. Part of the reason for this was the width of drive on trains and
travelled lanes in Europe. When they did the easiest place was a centerline
cut. So our engine comparment is 3" narrower than it was supposed to be.....
:) Get the picture... Why can't you pull the heads easily on the early
cars?... Because of trains..... hahahahahahahahahahah

It just goes on and on like that....

jfk



-----Original Message-----
From: Jay Kempf [mailto:jkempf@tds.net]
Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2002 7:53 AM
To: 928
Subject: [928] Re: s4 trivia question...


Yeah,

One other thing that came out was completely agianst my impression of the
era at Porsche. The 928 project beginning to end was on a complete
shoestring. The entire team had to bear heart and soul for every dime of R&D
dollars. Not because the company wasn't behind the design but because
everybody had to fight for everything because the company was growing so
fast. The 310hp S engine was developed using something like $10,000 total!
And the company wasn't going to fund it. So the engineers invited the
decision makers to the track as Weissach and asked them to drive it. The
board including Ferry kept asking them what they had done to the car and the
engineers just kept saying just drive it. And when they started the car and
it grumbled their eyes were open a little. Then all that was heard was the
tearing of tires on the track and the General manager came back and said to
them you have your funding. That was all it took back then. The entire
design team and especially Lapine said that that was a magic time a Porsche
when there were no big justifications no marketing, just make Ferry happy
and Ferry knew all people by name and all projects intimately. They didn't
care really what the customer thought of their cars. They just built the
best they could and they knew in their hearts that if they did their job
right it would all work. That isn't the case now. And wasn't the case
through the 90s.

Jay K.