C2 Performance Stats

[Mark Davies]

Ok this is a bit anoraky but.......

The various car mags seem to have very different stats for things like 0-60, 0-100, 1/4Km etc and a lot of them seem to be for the 3.4 engine and they seem to be inconsistent. EVO for example has a 0-60 for the 3.6 engine of 5.1 seconds but has 4.6 seconds time for the 3.4 engine!

If anyone out there has seen any stats better or more up to date than those below for the 3.6 engine I would be interested (these are from Sept 2000 Autocar and are for the 3.4 engine).

0-60: 4.6 seconds
0-100: 10.5 seconds
30-70: 3.8 secs
standing quarter mile: 13.0 secs/112 mph
standing kilometre: 22.8 secs/145 mph
Top Speed: 173

This test was also against the ' new' M3 and the Audi RS4. The 996 was ahead in all categories but I wonder what the 3.6 engine figures would have been.

Regards

Mark

 

[Guest]

The figures the magazines get tend to vary due to a number of reasons

1. How run in the press car is, i.e. whether it is new and tight or starting to wear.
2. How abusive they are to the car. Since it is not their car, they dial in a lot of revs and dump the clutch. This is not kind to the clutch and if try hard enough they can break the driveshafts (which happened to a 911 a few years ago).
3. The weather conditions and road surface. The engine generates more power on a cool damp day than a hot dry one, but you need a dry clean surface to take advantage of it.
4. Ability of the tester.
5. Spec of the car, since options weigh more, plus how much fuel is on board, how much the people weigh, etc.

The figures quoted by the car manufacturers are normally more conservative than the magazines, since they tend to use figures that don' t involve too much abuse to the car. If you couldn' t match their figures without wrecking the car, or even match them at all, they would have an issue with the trading standards people.

The figures quoted for the current 996 C2 (3.6 320bhp) are
0-62 (0-100kph) = 5.0
Max speed = 177mph (285 km/h)

If you pay out another £6,644.63 you can get the engine upgrade, which makes it 4.9 0-62 and 180 mph.

No 0-100 is given in the literature, but they give a graph which shows 0-200 kph in around 17.5s. 0-100 would be about 11 (which I think it also says on the website - I can' t remember where I saw it).

For marketing purposes they may prefer not to highlight the real difference between the C2, C4, targa, cabriolet, etc. and have them all with the same or very similar performance. The C2 is 5.0, the C4 5.0, the C4S 5.1, the Targa and Cabriolet 5.1 (tiptronic adds half a second to all of them).
This doesn' t really add up though since the C4 is 60kg heavier than the C2, the C4S 125 kg heavier, the targa 70 kg heavier, the C2 cab 80kg and the C4 cab 140kg heavier.
For the cab and targa to be 0.2 secs slower, but the C4S to be 0.1 secs slower despite being the heaviest is hard to explain. The C4S is 9% heavier (based on unladen weight). Either not all the engines are really the same, the gearing is different, the 2 wheel drive struggles to get the power down, or the figures are conservative.

Coming back to the original question though, I don' t know what the real answer is. I' ll see what I can find in my stack of mags.

 

[Guest]

Found some info for you, courtesy of Autocar 19-26 December 2001, when they tested the MY02 C2.

Mph
0-30 1.6 s
0-40 2.5 s
0-50 3.5 s
0-60 4.6 s
0-70 5.5 s
0-80 7.0 s
0-90 8.2 s
0-100 10.1 s

Standing 1/4 mile 12.9s / 112mph
Standing km 22.7s / 147 mph
30-70mph through gears 3.7s

Acceleration in gears
mph 6th 5th 4th 3rd 2nd
20-40 - 5.6 4.1 3.3 2.2
30-50 6.9 5.3 3.9 3.2 1.9
40-60 6.8 5.3 3.8 2.9 1.9
50-70 6.8 5.1 3.7 2.7 2.0
60-80 7.0 5.1 3.6 2.6 -
70-90 7.1 5.2 3.6 2.7 -
80-100 7.2 5.0 3.6 3.0 -

Maximum speeds in gear
1st 40 7200
2nd 70 7200
3rd 102 7200
4th 126 7200
5th 151 7200
6th 177 6950

Brakes (stopping distances)
30-0 9.5m
50-0 25.1
70-0 48.4
Standing 1/4 mile 112-0 114m

60-0 = 2.5 secs

They list their car as 315bhp @ 6800rpm (Porsche literature claims 320), and 273 lbft @ 4250 (Porsche literature claims 274).

The sprint times do not tell the whole story though. Where it wins in the real world is in the in-gear performance figures. The figures in 2nd and 3rd are where you demolish other cars - there is no lag (as with turbos) and the torque curve is flat thanks to the variable valve lift/timing and the induction system.
I believe in another test I read, it manages more than 1 G in cornering, which also beats most others (if I remember rightly I think the Corvette came out the winner for cornering G). I' ll see if I can find it.

 

[Mark Davies]

Stuart

Thanks for the info.

They are an impressive set of stats.

The standing kilometre figure for the M3 in the Autocar test I used was 24.2secs/131mph. Only 1.5 secs more than the 996 but I guess at around 130mph at the end of the kilometre that gives a gap of about 95 metres between the two (I think)!!

Regards

Mark

 

[clubsport]

The performance on the road feels better than the ststistics say...With C2 0-100 in 10.1 vs 9.4 secs for the TT there is very little in it...I have found this when out driving with a friend....once you get above 100mph the TT really comes into it' s own.

 

[Mark Davies]

Can' t run to a Turbo unfortunately. I' ll just have to make do with the C2.

 

[Grant]

Mark, if you are asking if the 3.6 is worth the extra over the 3.4, the answer is YES, the engine offers FAR more responsive in gear excelleration, plus a little more all out grunt & sounds far better. It makes the car an all round " better drive" mainly because of the new " Variaram/cam" rather than the extra 200cc !!