Just 200 yards to the east of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International airport runway 26R sits the former location of Ford’s Atlanta Assembly plant, which shut down in 2006. About five years ago, Porsche started the long process of building its new North American headquarters on the unused space. Some $100 million later, One Porsche Drive (its new address) is a monument to all things Porsche.
-While Porsche Cars North America has called Atlanta home since 1998, it has never had this type of facility. Today, about 450 people work in the 220,000-square-foot HQ building. There are the product planners behind semi-frosted glass, an employee cafeteria, a coffee shop, and a first-class restaurant called 356 that’s open to the public. There is also a restoration center, a small museum, a driving-simulator area, a gym, and vehicle display areas. The real fun, though, is out in the backyard.
-The 28-acre campus includes a sort-of mini proving ground with a 1.6-mile test track, a low-mu skidpad, a dynamics pad, an off-road course (for the Cayenne and Macan SUVs), a kick plate (more on that in a minute), and a low-mu handling track. The track is the centerpiece of what is called the Porsche Experience Center.
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“Experiences” have yet to be finalized, but we’re told the cheapest one will cost about $350 (to drive a 911 GT3 or a Turbo you might spend double). With it, you will get about 90 minutes of seat time in a sports car on the proving ground with direction from Porsche instructors. Potential customers might drop by to see which of the 20 911 models they actually want to buy (the plan is to have one example of each at the ready); or if a new buyer wants to learn how to safely drive their car faster, the low-mu surfaces are a great tool for boosting car-control skills.
-Porsche believes the aforementioned kick plate is the first of its kind in the U.S. It’s a hydraulically actuated steel plate that “kicks” the rear axle of a moving car to one side or the other, simulating a snap-oversteer event (the tarmac around the plate is also low-mu and sprinkled with water for extra slip) and surprising the driver with the kicking direction.
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The handling track is fairly tight and barely taps a GT3’s potential, but that is by design: Porsche didn’t want any passing. The quickest you can get going is about 100 mph. Porsche will also host teenager training and corporate events. The other thing you can do is a launch-control start without fear of police intervention. The sensation of a 2.5-second zero-to-60-mph launch is worth a few hundred dollars on its own, we’d say.
-from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/1RlAK1K
via Agya
