Car and Driver 10/76 test of 934 vs Monza

[emcon5]

October 1976 Car and Driver test of a 934 and a Monza GT car. It's kind of an apples to oranges test, as the "Turbo RSR" is production based and the Monza is a Tube frame race car. I also question the performance figures of the 934, it seems to me a 480hp race car should have better 0-6 and 1/4 mile performance than the street 930.

Enjoy:

1.1MB PDF version here: http://members.rennlist.com/emcon5/934_vs_monza.pdf

[MotoSook]

Hold on just a minute! The RSR gets to 60 MPH in 7.4 seconds! All that power and 7.4 secs? Granted, torque peak is at 5400 RPM, but come on. What's wrong with those numbers?

My car can probably better that 0-60 time...or is all that aerodynamic crap holding it back? hahahaha OK. maybe it's geared for track speeds

[IROC]

Also interesting is that the specification tables list the "Water Capacity" of the RSR at 12.7 quarts. Uhhhh...what is that? Windshield washer fluid?

I didn't think it was truly a fair fight, but that's just me.

Mike

[juanbenae]

number 14 is the winner!

[emcon5]

Originally posted by Souk
Hold on just a minute! The RSR gets to 60 MPH in 7.4 seconds!

The article says it has a really tall first gear, good for 70MPH. It is also interesting that it does the 1/4 a full second slower than the street turbo, but with a trap speed 12mph faster. Slow out of the hole, but once it gets going, it really gets going.

Originally posted by IROC
Also interesting is that the specification tables list the "Water Capacity" of the RSR at 12.7 quarts. Uhhhh...what is that? Windshield washer fluid?

934 had an air to water intercooler. The small grilles outboard of the brake ducts are radiators for the intercooler water.

Tom

[TerryBPP]

Car and Driver has always been on the side of the company with the highest reader popularity ie. American cars producers. Also, controversey sells. So by Setting a race car (chevy) against a factory car (964) it stirs the pot. I would also guess that with slicks the a porsche with 465hp could turn better than a mid 14sec quater mile.

[dd74]

Originally posted by TerryBPP
Car and Driver has always been on the side of the company with the highest reader popularity ie. American cars producers.

Very, very true. We discussed Emcon's Car and Driver articles at TRE last night, and figured they were good precedents to the New York Times and New Republic plagarism scandals that are going on today.

The question is which car magazine CAN we trust?

Personally, I think the European car magazines are better.

[jluetjen]

It looks like Emcon is lucky enough to have access to original copies of the articles. For the rest of us, many if not all of these old articles are available from EWA in the Brooklands Book format.

Coincidentally, the same #14 934 was also tested by R&T in the January 1977 issue. This time it was comparison tested with a stock 930 3.0 and a 935-76. The gearing must have been changed since the 934 did 0-60 in 5.8 seconds, soundly beating the 930's 6.7 seconds. But both cars were trounced by the 935's 3.3 seconds. They make a comparison to a contemporary Ferrari F1 car that did 0-60 in 2.4 seconds, but WAS 2 SECONDS SLOWER TO 150 MPH THEN THE 935! They quote Jochan Mass as saying that when testing at Paul Ricard at the same time as some F1 cars, the F1 cars would pass the 935 in the corners, but get passed again on the straights.

There is also a pretty cool sidebar article by Ron Wakefield of what it was like to drive the 935 around Wiessach.

[dd74]

934: 0-60 in 5.8; 930: 0-60 in 6.7?

Even with archaic testing, this still seems hard to believe. Turbo gearing isn't THAT tall, is it? Makes it seem like these cars were all lag.

Hmmmm....

[jluetjen]

I think that DD74 may be on to something since in rechecking the articles, the 934 had the same 1st gear and rear end ratio in both the R&T as well as the CD article. Maybe Stephan Wilkenson can shed some light on the subject?

[masraum]

The 934 was the group 4 racecar. That was the reason for the air-water intercooler, because of the regs they couldn't alter the rear lid to put a great big air-air intercooler, so they had to come up with the air-water alternative. I think the 934 probably was on slicks, and with the weight bias, they said there was no chance for wheel spin, so they had to lug the thing out of the hole and then wait for the turbo to kick in. Since it was an early turbo racecar my guess is that it had a huge turbo (or two?) which may not have spooled up until 4000 rpm or higher. If that was the case, then they may have been going 30 mph before the turbo kicked in. They probably could have hammered the 934 off of the line, but they probably couldn't wouldn't for fear of breaking things. In this article they said 0-60 was 7.4.

After looking at John's post it seems apparent that the launch or gearing seems to be the difference in the 934 acceleration runs.

So, John, when are you going to scan that article from 1977??

[emcon5]

For what it's worth, I have the April 76 Moter Trend in front of me. According to their test the first generation 930, AKA "Turbo Carerra" did 0-60 in 6.1 seconds, and went through the 1/2 in 14.6sec @ 103.2mph.

According to MT, first gear was 2.25:1 and good for 52 MPH (at 6800RPM) with a 4.2:1 final drive.

The 934 article claims a 1.6:1 1st gear (good for 70mph @ 7000rpm) with a 4.63:1 final drive.

Tom

[jluetjen]

Steve; I'm sorry but for the life of me I can't seem to scan an 8x10 (or even 7x9) page into my computer and have it be less then 100K and still be readable. Plus my copies were made at a copier in the library almost 20 years ago, so the quality isn't that great. Maybe someone else has a copy of that issue that they can share.

[1fastredsc]

If you have photoshop, or anyother photo editing program, you can change the resolution and pixel size and therefore reduce the size of the picture and size of the file.

[jluetjen]

I've tried that, and all I wind up with is a muddy picture that is less then 100k.

[SC-targa]

If I remember correctly R&T's test of the 1976 Turbo Carrera was hampered by at least two factors. The test car had been abused by previous testers and the clutch was slipping badly.

Secondly, R&T at that time tested with two people in the car. One to drive and one to run the stop watches. Additionally, they are much more gentle on the cars than C&D was. You saw that 5.X second 0 to 60 run that they got with the 74 Carrera? I believe that R&T tested the exact same car and got a low mid to low 7 second 0 to 60 time.

The 934 was not set up for 1/4 mile work. The real indication of it's power is that quarter mile trap speed. 115 vs 102 MPH for the street turbo.

That's a huge difference, indicating a lot of additional power.

Off subject, that Monza sure had a pretty shape and man, what close ratio gearing. That thing must have been fun to bang through the gears. Also, look at the price. At $28k, the full race Monza cost about the same as the street 930.

Regards,

Jerry

[masraum]

Scan the thing at 600 dpi and then reduce that to 75 dpi. From there you can add a little compression and still be readable.

[emcon5]

Originally posted by jluetjen
I've tried that, and all I wind up with is a muddy picture that is less then 100k.

I'll PM you my email address, send them to me and I will make them into a PDF and put them on my Rennlist page.

Tom