One Porsche Drive is far more than just another office building. It’s also a theme park for Porsche owners, wanna-be Porsche owners and pretty much any auto enthusiast in possession of a pulse.
Where to begin?
In one afternoon, we:
- Hang out the tail in 10 different models of Porsche, experiencing a variety of different driving exercises
- Peruse a collection of historic Porsches including a rare 1973 911 RS undergoing restoration
- Lunch in a gourmet restaurant
- Have body mass index measured (don’t ask)
- Covet a $5,700 (U.S.) power-adjustable Porsche office chair and
- Compete in a virtual eight-lap Carrera Cup race at Laguna Seca
It all happened on the site of a former Ford Taurus assembly plant, where Porsche recently opened its new North American headquarters. One Porsche Drive has its own open-to-the-public test track, for drivers to exercise their own Porsche or test-drive Porsches they might like to own (90 minutes for about $300 (U.S.), depending on model), with instruction from coaches provided by the auto maker. And that’s just the beginning of what the Porsche Experience Center has to offer.
Our day begins with a tour guided by Pedro Garcia, a young man living the dream in his “day job” as a Porsche product planner. “I walk every morning through Porsche history,” he says. “This is the ultimate workplace.”
There is only one Porsche Museum – in Stuttgart, Germany. But at the Heritage Center in Atlanta visitors can see a rotating selection of historic Porsches on loan from Stuttgart or from private collections. We see the 1986 Paris-Dakar Rally-winning 959, as well as a pair of much-decorated 917 endurance racers.
Across from the Heritage Center, in a spotless garage, technicians are restoring customers’ cars, including the 1973 RS. The most experienced Porsche restoration tech on the planet works here, Garcia tells us.
In another part of the building is the human performance laboratory where guests can be inspected (sweat analysis, anybody?) and reconditioned like pro athletes. Beyond the usual gym equipment there’s also a heat acclimation chamber and a Batak reaction testing machine. One of the younger, more athletic members of the press gang scores 50 at her first attempt. The world record score is 176.
Outside at the track, a 2.5-kilometre handling circuit encloses an infield playground featuring skid pads both dry and ultra-slick wet; a straightaway for extreme accelerating and braking and slaloming; a tight dry-handling circuit with a polished concrete surface that lets students “hang the tail out” at moderate cornering forces (between ultra-slick wet and ultra-sticky dry); and even an off-road course.
There’s also North America’s only “kick-plate.” A movable, remotely controlled plate set into the pavement randomly kicks the car’s tail sideways (and you don’t know which way it’s going to go) just as you enter a slick wet straightaway. Then obstacles leap out of the ground for you to try and avoid.
In a slickly choreographed routine, Porsche’s instructors cycle us through six exercises in 10 different sports cars that illustrate the differences between rear- and mid-engined, and two- and all-wheel drive handling.
Long story short. The most fun: on the dry low-friction handling circuit flicking the tail side to side rally-style in a Cayman GTS. The most challenging: keeping a Carrera 4S in a constant drift for a full 360-degree circuit of the wet low-friction circle. The most frustrating: catching the surprise slide induced by the kick-plate, only to spin out when trying to avoid the pop-up gate. The most literally breathtaking: recording 1.25 g in a full-bore launch-control departure in a 911 Turbo, followed by a 1.31-g stop at the end of the straightaway, and then 1.18 peak lateral g through the slalom. The biggest anti-climax: three hot laps of the handling circuit in a Cayman GT4 immediately after doing the same thing in a GT3. And the most inadequate: getting only three laps of the handling circuit in the GT3.
All this, and still we’re not done. Now that we are maestros of real Porsches on real pavement, we’re ready for the big time: a Carrera Cup race at California’s fabled Laguna Seca track. It’s just a short walk back inside to the room where eight state-of-the-art driving simulators are lined up on the grid, needing only us to climb aboard and hit the virtual gas pedals.
Are we having fun yet?
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