Are all years of the 930 considered Widowmakers?

[levdeb]

Got my 1988 930 and I love sharing with folks its nickname was The Widowmaker. But as I read (ok, watch youtube) more about them, it seems the first 930s were "killers", but when they made the next group of them up to 1988-89, they were no longer considered as hard to drive, and maybe no longer had that moniker...?

Just want to tell the story accurately... and make sure my custom plates aren't way off the mark... lol

Thanks all!

[KNIGHTRACE]

It was in 1978 or 1979. Porsche was in a giant lawsuit over the 930 and lost if memory is correct. It could have put them out of business.

[SLNT930]

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/06/30/Too-dangerous-to-drive/4466425793600/

On a 10-2 vote Tuesday, the jury decided that Porsche should have warned drivers that the car was more powerful than average vehicles. They voted 11-1 that the car's brakes were defective...

The driver, Cynthia Files, had been driving 60 mph in a 25 mph zone at the time of the accident, said attorney Craig McClellan, who represented Fresh's widow, Martha Garrison.

During the trial, McClellan produced an internal Porsche memo that stated the Turbo 930 had a tendency to oversteer. The memo described the car's handling as 'poisonous.'

The memo was damning but 60 mph in a 25 zone, wtf!?!

[levdeb]

Dang, so it would probably be inaccurate to say my 1988 930 is part of the "Widowmaker" pack...

[mark houghton]

Isnt that kinda woke in today's world? I'm sure some widowers were also made :-)
In my opinion they all have a tendency to oversteer when suddenly off-throttle in tight turns. It's just physics with all that weight in the rear. Perhaps Porsche changed the steering geometry/alignment since the 70's cars to compensate somewhat. Braking before entering the turn, then staying on the gas through the turn does the trick pretty well. Perhaps the most dangerous part is hitting full boost at the turn apex and losing traction.
I've never had an issue but then I don't drive as hard as some people might.

[gorskined]

i was always under the impression along with the oversteer. The original short stroke 3.0l with the 3ldz turbo had a lot to do with the nick name . They went from no boost to full boost in a split second . The newer versions have a more refined boost curve,

[levdeb]

Originally Posted by gorskined

i was always under the impression along with the oversteer. The original short stroke 3.0l with the 3ldz turbo had a lot to do with the nick name . They went from no boost to full boost in a split second . The newer versions have a more refined boost curve,

Yeah, I've only done about 800 miles in this one, but I've not had that "oh no!" moment while playing with boost trying to get it to kick out. It feels more in control than our 1971 911T, with those big hips for sure.

[Ollies930]

From what I remember the '78 and up 930 received rear suspension changes to reflect what the RSRs had in order to make them more stable. The brakes were upgraded as well and tire sizes changed in order to make them easier to drive. The earlier cars were more difficult to drive, but the moniker "Widowmaker" really is not fair. Put somebody who cannot drive into a high performance vehicle and you will end up with not so unexpected results. Do you know how many people got into accidents after buying Cobras in the 60's?

[mark houghton]

Originally Posted by gorskined

i was always under the impression along with the oversteer. The original short stroke 3.0l with the 3ldz turbo had a lot to do with the nick name . They went from no boost to full boost in a split second . The newer versions have a more refined boost curve,

Spot on. For reasons I would rather not revisit, my current 930 (dubbed "the Phoenix") is running with the old 3LDZ. Doesn't really hit full boost until 4k...and then it's all in. Really should take the time to have my 7006 rebuilt, or slap on my equally ancient 11.11 K27. Both are better than the 3LDZ as a bit more predictable.

[Mocker]

1978 and '79 930s came with 16X7 and 16X8 wheels, with 205/55 tires in the front and 225/50 in the back. These were the same tire sizes as on a contemporary Corvette, and my understanding is that these were the biggest tires available. The 76 and 77 models' wheels were even smaller: 15X7 and 15X8. Keep in mind that tire compounds and tire and tread design have come a long way in the past 45+ years.

Poor grip + rapid boost onset + steering input = unintended agricultural exploration

[flightlead404]

The term used, "poisonous", in the original German doesn't have the same implication. For sports car enthusiasts, it's rather a compliment.

[flightlead404]

Originally Posted by Ollies930

From what I remember the '78 and up 930 received rear suspension changes to reflect what the RSRs had in order to make them more stable. The brakes were upgraded as well and tire sizes changed in order to make them easier to drive. The earlier cars were more difficult to drive, but the moniker "Widowmaker" really is not fair. Put somebody who cannot drive into a high performance vehicle and you will end up with not so unexpected results. Do you know how many people got into accidents after buying Cobras in the 60's?

look at how many "chargerstang" stories you see in the news every day

[spuggy]

There were several threads that mentioned this lawsuit going back a while:

Lawsuits arriving from the 930 in the late 70's.

In that thread, as well as a scan of contemporaneous newpaper reporting of the verdict, there was this quote from The ultimate Porsche Urban Legend thread:

I met and talked with the Porsche AG factory driver who did testing on the very street where the La Jolla accident ocurred. He also testified in court about the accident and his findings. I got to read thru his report of his work and a detailed analysis of the trial.

Seems the woman driver left the stoplight, full power straight ahead. No traffic. At about 65 mph, entered a left curve, lifted power, oversteer started, foot on the brake, rotation continued to side impact on passenger side, killng passenger. Passenger was a friend of husband.

The speed of 65 was determined by the factory driver who could not make the curve that speed.

He reported that the trial was going well until the defense noticed that the brake pedal arm was broken, and that in the cross-section of the fracture was a large cavity from a bubble in the casting. They introduced this as evidence that the pedal broke when brakes were applied, and that the car therefore caused the accident because of that flaw in the metallurgy of the brake pedal.

The factory tested and could not duplicate a condition where a driver, even sitting well to the side of the seat, could develop enough lateral force to break ANY pedal. The did, however, demonstrate that a brake pedal could be consistently broken if the driver was sitting normally in the seat, pressing straight on the brake pedal with a high force that the woman driver could have put on the pedal, and the car suffered a side impact of the severity that this accident produced. The inertia would drive the leg sideways, putting lateral force on the pedal, and breaking it exactly in the same place as the accident car's pedal was broken.

It is believed that this factor (bad brake pedal) swayed the jury. "Blame the brakes" indeed.

And also this:

Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 21:28:02 -0400
From: PLAlbrecht@aol.com
Subject: Re: Dead lawyers and irony - vaguely Porsche related

Chuck Olson asks

>Is this in reference to the Porsche Turbo multi-million $ suit a
>few years back, which found the company produced a car that was too
>dangerous for the average driver to control in a turn or some other such
>nonsense?
>
>How did that ever come out - I faintly recall (no pun) something about
forced
>design changes in addition to several million $ of monetary damages ....

Hi, Chuck.

The details of the story are even better than your brief recap. Some rich
butthead's wife had the usual 5-martini lunch or whatever. Then proceeded to
go out on a rain-slick curving road in San Diego County (Californians can't
drive worth a damn in the rain when they're sober, never mind when they're
sloshed) and wrapped Turbo and self around tree. The tree is going to be OK
but the other two parties were totalled. Now Rich Butthead sues Porsche for
selling him a car with "unusually high horsepower" and not warning him that
the car could be dangerous to drive. But what Butthead's attorney failed to
mention is the fact that the Turbo was not even sold in the U.S. for that
model year; Butthead had gone to great lengths to bring this one in from
Canada and have it federalized. Porsche got into trouble when they were
subpoenaed for an internal document describing handling tests, I believe on
the Nuerburgring. The test driver had used the word "giftig" to describe its
handling, which can be translated, but translated erroneously, as
"poisonous." "Giftig" in this context is actually a compliment, somewhat like
"aggressive." Or our more modern "*****in'."Anyway, somebody at Porsche USA
(I know who it is, and he retired honorably a few years later) altered the
document to read something other than "giftig" but the opposition somehow got
hold of the unaltered document and they made all sorts of noise about
evidence tampering etc. and Porsche lost the suit. As part of the trial they
even had Porsche race drivers come in and try to duplicate the feat. I think
Juergen Barth worked on this one. Even a skilled Porsche driver could not get
around the turn with the amount of speed this woman had on the car.

As other have mentioned, the tire section size went up over the years, factory torsion bars got bigger/stiffer, and factory beefed up the sways. All of which moved the tendency from oversteer to understeer (although any 911-based car will do either, depending on how it's driven).

And 70-80's tire technology, as others have pointed out, wasn't anything like the tires you can buy today.

My '77, with 21/30 TBs/factory sways (and oversized 17" wheels with modern hi-perf summer rubber in substantially wider section than factory fitment) was quite horrific with the stock 3DLZ if you didn't manage weight transfer.

Inducing oversteer into a curve and then hitting the brake pedal (most probably coming off the throttle, thus significant unloading of the rear - because I doubt they were left-foot braking like Walter Röhrl) sounds like a pretty substantial skills/instruction gap for any rear-engine car..

[Speedy Squirrel]

IMHO, the only real widowmakers were the '77 to '79 USA 930's.

Initially, the US cars were the only ones with air injection. Hans Mezger mentioned the effect that this had on the engine (SAE paper 780718):

"During development of an emission control system for the US version of the 911 Turbo, it was observed that secondary air injection does effect boost and performance characteristic positively. In fig, 12 is shown that there is a distinct increase of boost pressure, torque and power output in the low speed range up to 3000 rpm. By injecting air into the exhaust manifold the temperature of the exhaust gas went up by 80 to 90 degrees centigrade."

But there's more. In the end, they had to fit thermal reactors before the turbo to meet emissions. So you have the CIS continuously injecting fuel (with generous acceleration enrichment), the air injection providing the air to burn it, and a reactor to turn it into heat BEFORE THE TURBO. If you have ever driven an intact early car you know all that adds up to a heck of a wallop at lower engine speeds.

You could find yourself overachieving in a tight turn, hop on the brakes, cause the rear tires to get up on their tippy toes, and then physics rewards your mistake with big oversteer.

[Racerbvd]

Originally Posted by Mocker

1978 and '79 930s came with 16X7 and 16X8 wheels, with 205/55 tires in the front and 225/50 in the back. These were the same tire sizes as on a contemporary Corvette, and my understanding is that these were the biggest tires available. The 76 and 77 models' wheels were even smaller: 15X7 and 15X8. Keep in mind that tire compounds and tire and tread design have come a long way in the past 45+ years.

Poor grip + rapid boost onset + steering input = unintended agricultural exploration

No surprise that Mr “Know-It-All” is wrong about this wheel and tire size on 70s Corvette s, they didn’t even have 16” rims until 1984.

[ryanwilton]

I think the "Widowmaker" label tends to get overstated when talking about the 930. The truth is, Porsche kept improving the platform through the years—bigger brakes, wider tires, revised suspension geometry—all of which helped tame some of the earlier handling quirks. That said, the basic nature of the car didn’t change: rear-engine, big turbo hit, and a chassis that demanded respect. Drivers who weren’t ready for the sudden boost or who carried too much speed into a corner could easily get caught out. In the right hands, though, the 930 is incredibly rewarding and not some uncontrollable monster. The nickname really reflects more about driver experience than the car itself.