[Nickshu]

Originally Posted by tcar

I was sort of bummed as a kid when a friend of my Dad's bought an early 911.

What the ....! it sounded exactly like our neighbor's Corvair!

LOL

GM was working on an air cooled flat-6 years before Porsche. And turbocharging it at least a decade before Porsche too. I'm not saying that a Corvair (sporty economy car) is equal to a Porsche (refined/engineered sports car) but they were thinking along the same lines. That was an exciting time to be at GM, when engineers still ruled the roost before the accountants and unions took over.

I have an article around here somewhere about the Corvair engine design with only four main bearings. The engine was originally designed in the late 1950's to only ever be mated to a powerglide (automatic) transmission with a torque converter. Just after the first cars were launched (1960) GM succumbed to customer demands and offered a manual transmission. This caused vibration problems with only four main bearings which instead of redesigning the engine they came up with a unique two piece flywheel design that soaked up the vibrations nicely. Ironically in the article it talks about how Porsche had the same problem when developing the 911 (901) engine, which they originally built prototypes with only four main bearings and had to go to more (seven?) to address the vibration issues caused by the clutch and flywheel. Anyhow an interesting piece of automotive history...