1967 Car and Driver-911S test

[Early_S_Man]

Ok ... since I dug it out to make a point about the headlamp assemblies ... might as well post it, right? Enjoy!

[cegerer]

I love the closing paragraph: "The 911S must surely be the all-time high. Where can Porsche go from here?". As usual, thanks Warren. -- Curt

[firecall999]

Wow!

Thats great.

Thanks for posting it Warren.

Alex.

[69 Soft Targa]

Thanks for the post Warren. Appreciate the opportunity for all to view. I've read the 1969 but not the 1967. Those "racy-looking forged magnesium alloy wheels" were 4 1/2 inches for '67 only. They figured that one out. An option at $175 on the other models. $175... I have a set of those 4.5" Fuchs... I wonder what they'd fetch now...

Keep 'em comin'

[NYSCAR]

i thought the 67 911S was 160hp, not 180?

Brad

[epbrown]

Originally posted by NYSCAR
i thought the 67 911S was 160hp, not 180?

As the saying goes, "Depends on who's counting." The '67 S is 160 hp DIN and 180 SAE, which is the standard currently in use, iirc. I may be mistaken, but I think the difference is that the former is rear wheel horsepower while the latter is at the flywheel; advertisers and car makers like the latter because is sounds better.

Emanuel

[Early_S_Man]

In 1967 Car and Driver was still using the 'old' SAE gross hp ratings vs their current use of SAE net ratings.

[pwd72s]

"Price as tested", $7,200 and change. Today, you pay that for an optional carbon fiber bit or two. Ahhh, progress!

[Superman]

Either Car & Driver was determined to find some fault in this car, or they didn't know a diamond when they drove one. Or both. Sure, if you drive it slow, then the "novice" warning does not apply. Duh. With Lake Underwood driving, it must have looked easy. From where I sit, there are no 911s for novices. Anyone who as tried to perform a controlled drift in one knows this.

Still, the car did get some well deserved respect in the article. Thanks, Warren.

[L Sjoberg]

Great article! Does a '67 911S really perform as well as C&D indicates? It looks to me like C&D claimed 6.9 sec 0-60mph in a standard '67 911 5-speed - if I had been able to manage anywhere near that kind of time in my '67 (even with the Webers), I probably would have never sold it to by the SC! And I even had the racy-looking alloys and an S front spoiler, which had to have been good for another 10 hp : )

It's great to read C&D's veiled criticism of the car's handling - "within normal driving limits, and with reasonable caution." I suppose that shows you how far Porsche has come, since they can't seem to find anything bad at all to say about the "new" 911's or the Boxster.

Thanks Warren for a great read!

[rickeolis]

That was very interesting reading, thanks Warren.
I'm sure we all would like to see more like this on different years and models too.
I love the logical layout of the specs sheet, C&D has kept that style, but has some detail throught the years.
Did the wiper parking change later? Mine park in front of me...

[David Bahr]

Warren,
Thanks for taking the time to scan and post. I was four years too late to have a chance to read it the first time.

Those 0-60 times struck me as fast. C&D will do nasty clutch-dumps to get the best time, which is why they regularly beat R&T. Even with that caveat, 6.5 seconds is flying for 2.0 liters in 1967, and C&D thought it was out of tune.

[StuttgartDavid]

Perhaps the 180 hp reference is to the fact that few self-respecting owners of the day would be caught dead without the "sport tuning kit" (colder plugs, 36mm venturis, and a twin-pipe sport muffler) reputed to put it at 180hp!

[gaijinda]

This is great stuff! Thanks Warren.

Just how I got started, reading my dad's old R&T and C&D magazines!

[Early_S_Man]

Yes, the CD writers are a bit hard on clutches and gearboxes ... and even the occasional engine they blow-up on the skid pad (two Corvettes and a Viper, to date, I believe) just while playing the 'Let's see how long before it runs out of oil game!'

The factory times of the day, rather conservative, were around 7.2 seconds to 60 mph, I believe ... and not enjoying the tearing up of clutches or 901 gearboxes, I would have a hard time beating 7.0 seconds myself!

But, you must realize that the focus at CD in '67 wasn't on handling or road racing manners of the type Dan Gurney and Mark Donohue made their venue. Even a year later, for the 1968 test of a Charger R/T witha 426 Hemi in it ... they focused on 1/4 mile and top speed numbers, not enjoying the melody of the exhaust and carbs while driving! I did like their description of 'the lump' in the throttle that unleashed the afterburners, though!

I guess we should be grateful that their weakness in evaluating the usefulness of Porsches on the road led to their hiring Mark Donohue for the famous '69 test ...

[jluetjen]

I don't have the details in front of me (I think that it is buried in one of my UpFixen's) but I think that it goes something like this.

SAE Gross: Engine is measured on a dyno, but without accessories. My sense is that the details of this spec are pretty sparse. So the alternator, water pump and other things are not connected. The exhaust system may also be the dyno's exhaust system that bears little resemblance to real world manifolds and mufflers. I once read that a common practice in the 60's (which was apparently legal according to this spec) was to quote HP at rev's less then the HP peak. This was so that insurers wouldn't be tipped off as to how fast the cars really were. At other times the car companies would quote the biggest HP numbers that they could get using every dyno trick in the book.

DIN: A German or european measurement (still done on a dyno) which better represented what the engine would really deliver in the car. At a minimum I believe that the specifications were more detailed and as a result there were fewer loopholes for playing games with the numbers.

SAE Net: The SAE (Society of Auto Engineers, an US technical organization) got together and wrote a new spec. which better represents the HP delivered by the engine in the car. Of course since no-one in the US trusted the Europeans and their metric system, they wrote a completely different set of rules which result in a slightly different HP reading.

Of course, I'm sure that there are is a complete set of procedures called out by the SAE and DIN regarding how the engines are to be measured and the conditions required for a valid test. But of course, at this point in time they just happen to be different.

Go figure!

BTW: Being a good German company, Porsche has always followed the DIN procedures for measuring 0-60 times (or I suspect 0-100 km/h or 62 mph) too. I believe that the DIN spec's require 2 people in the car with a certain amount of luggage. This is why Porsche's numbers tend to be "conservative".