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Originally Posted by dlearl
+1 On several levels for me.
In late 1979, my then girlfriend took her modeling career to LA. Among work she found was as an extra on "King of the Hill." At the time, I was more into music than cars, and it just so happened that the drummer in our band and I went to LA to shop a demo tape, hoping to score some "showcase" gigs at the Whiskey or Troubadour. Neither happened, but we did get to visit Becky in a parking lot at Griffith Park during night shooting.
To add insult to injury, the car used in the film wasn't even a Porsche, it was a flared Speedster kit car with a VW engine, like this. (Photo too large to link.) The night we were there, it was mounted on a trailer with camera mounts installed, ready for shooting some close up driving scenes.
But this really floored me:
I had the immense good fortune to meet and become friends with Gastone's son, Roberto and be his guest in Milan, and share a couple of fantastic motorcycle trips with him. Both extremely interesting characters.
Finally, thanks to you, Chris, and all the other "first-handers" who have posted. As a kid from Utah who grew up listening to "Little Deuce Coupe" and "Dead Man's Curve," you So-Cal guys were the stuff of legend. As a 50 year commemorative of my family's VW Westie trip from the Seattle World's Fair to Tijuana, I plan to put a roof rack on the SC and do a camping trip the length of the coast this summer. I'm going to have to add a few trips up Mulholland to the list, in your honor.
Really looking forward to the book coming out. Maybe someday I can stop by to have it "signed by author." |
Thanks very much from myself and the other infamous racers of Mulholland Drive.
Hope to see you on Mul in your 356.
And now for some other information, check out this Porsche if you havnt already.
The 918 prototype you see here was in bits and pieces just a few weeks ago, and it’s one of only three in existence. The Porsche team assigned with 918 development arrived in Italy in early January and furiously began testing all the components before slapping together an assortment of chopped and mismatched 911 bodywork to get it ready for the track. And us.
Few outsiders get access to a vehicle this early in the development process – not even a cheap econobox, let alone a next-generation halo vehicle in Frankenstein form. But Porsche wants to show off what it’s been up to and give us a taste of how it’s reworking the recipe for world-beating performance.
The formula for the 918 starts in stereotypical supercar fashion: mount a race-bred V8 amidships that sends power to the rear wheels. In this case, Porsche pulled a variant of the 4.6-liter V8 originally fitted to the three-time ALMS LMP2 Championship-winning RS Spyder. That engine put out a comparatively paltry 503 horsepower, but fitted to the 918, output is up to 570 hp. That figure is before you account for the 918′s two electric motors, and it’s also where the similarities to past supercars ends. Abruptly.
As opposed to most engines, the eight cylinders’ exhaust outlets exit in the middle of the V, driving spent hydrocarbons out and over the engine into a muffler fitted atop the engine. That means heat in the engine compartment is kept to a minimum and – in an ingenious bit of form following function – a duo of exhaust outlets protrude upwards like two titanium trumpets signaling to the heavens. And it gets better.
The 918 Spyder is a full parallel hybrid, with a 90 kW electric motor sandwiched between the engine and seven-speed transmission. Easy enough for a Toyota, but Porsche takes things three steps further.
Another 80 kW electric motor is mounted on the front axle, powering the two front wheels and effectively making the 918 all-wheel-drive on-demand. That motor alone is good enough to get the 918 up to speed and driving around town on just electricity for 16 miles, but the combination of the two electric motors – on their own more powerful than the 1974 911 Turbo – and the mid-engine V8 singing at 9,000 rpm brings total output up to 770 hp, with an even more impressive 553 pound-feet of torque available across the rev range.