senor honda

https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/g...ml#post9382683

senor honda

Inside the Porsche Experience Center


Wednesday, November 16, 2016





«

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

»




Down a main hall in the Porsche Experience Center in Carson, just south of Los Angeles, there are decorative metal sculptures on the wall of famous racetracks, especially ones where Porsche has won - which is most of them.
"And this one, in the middle, that looks like a plate of spaghetti, is our facility here," says the tour guide.
Boy, she's right about that. It's frankly startling how much Porsche has packed into this rectangle of just under 50 acres, a former golf course located just off the 405 freeway. It can be a little distracting to motorists, we suspect – on one side of the road is the acceleration straight, where we hit nearly 130mph in a 911 during our rack test. On the other side of the road is the Spirit of Innovation, the anchored Goodyear blimp.
That this $60 million facility even exists, especially just 30 minutes from Los Angeles International Airport, even in heavy traffic, is remarkable. Privately, Porsche executives spoke of the legal hoops they had to jump through to develop the property, which is a more ambitious project than the other Porsche Experience in Atlanta, as well as three others around the world. We got a preview of the facility on Monday. On Tuesday, it will be teeming with media and celebrities for a massive grand opening that will continue into the evening.
The idea is twofold. First, attract existing Porsche customers, who may want to come and simply hang out; there's the Speedster café, which sells Starbucks coffee conveniently located next to the inevitable gift shop. There's a room with five sit-down simulators, where you can "drive" on the Porsche Experience handling track, or on a dozen other tracks from around the globe.
The other goal is to attract potential Porsche customers, who hopefully would be impressed not only with the facility, but the chance to drive almost all the existing Porsche street cars available on the circuit, which includes the acceleration strip, a tight little handling course of about a mile and a half with a mini Laguna Seca downhill corkscrew; a wet skidpad that teaches correction of both understeer and oversteer, and a short straight that features a sliding mechanism that, at about 20mph, kicks the rear of the car to the left or right, requiring immediate driver intervention.
And finally, there a little off-road track for the Porsche Cayenne SUV that takes you up an impossibly vertical hill and down again, and a log bridge that is built like a huge see-saw; if you're really good, you can drive over the bridge and balance it exactly in the middle. But not even our instructor has been able to do it, and we sure couldn't.
What we did was part of a 90-minute session with an instructor that guests can partake in, price as yet undisclosed. We started out in a 911 for straight-line acceleration, then moved to the handling course. The next transition was to a new Boxster 718 for the skidpad, then to a Cayenne for the off-road portion. It's great fun and good training for those who haven't spent much time on a track.
That said, Porsche owners hoping to bring their own cars to the Porsche Experience will get no farther than the big parking lot. The track is only for the Porsche fleet owned and maintained by the center – no private cars allowed. Also no racing, not even autocross – liability and noise issues, we were told.
Regardless, Jens Walther, the affable president and CEO of Porsche Motorsport North America, said that it's possible some of the legendary Porsche racecars that will be restored and housed at the Experience Center might be seen on the track in preliminary shakedown runs. And when the Long Beach Grand Prix happens, expect the Experience Center to host teams and competitors.
Indeed, Walther appears to have the best job in the building: His new glass-lined office overlooks the garage area, where mechanics will work on racecars and rebuild engines for the various Porsche racing series. The sparkling garage area is very Roger Penske-like – "You learn from the best," Walther admitted – with an engine rebuild area that will be visible to guests through an as-yet built glass wall. The mechanics "are essentially surgeons," he said, "and we wanted a look that is a bit like a medical operating room."
The engine parts will be cleaned in the back – there's also a dynamometer behind the wall – then the parts and the block will be brought out and mounted on engine stands while they are rebuilt. The process takes about a week per engine, we were told.
"Los Angeles needed a place like this," Walther said. Given the Southern California Porsche culture, owners now have a place to meet, a destination for club drives.

senor honda