[Walt Fricke]

FloJo - well, from time to time German engineering on our Porsches hasn't worked out as well as intended. Rubber centered clutches had problems not previously seen. Moving the location of the fuel pump back to the rear torsion tube turned out not to be a good idea. The input shaft seal on the '72-3 915s (or was it the earlier 911 transmission?), which required disassembly of the transmission to replace, did not reflect well on Porsche's engineering.

My favorite is the footwell blower (two of them) on the '84 Carrera: not only was the blower motor prone to failure, but the circuit was not protected by a fuse, so when the motor's plastic fan fused to the plastic motor housing, creating a dead short, you got electrical fire smoke in the cabin. I don't know if this ever led to an actual car fire - wires or other connections probably melted and stopped the process. But it scared the heck out of my wife when it happened to her, and she isn't the kind of person who naturally thinks to disconnect the battery, and where in the car a tool to do this might be.

Problems with later models belong on a different forum.

But I love the cars. And maybe some or all of the problems I recite were the result of higher headquarters trying to cut cost corners against engineering advice. Engineering has to take costs into account just as it has to account for forces.