Ferrari & Porsche Archive

A dynamo in your iPhone, no cables or attachment needed to you car, it uses the accelerometer in your iPhone to measure things.

Introducing: Dynolicious

Dynolicious is the first automotive performance meter available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Dynolicious uses the hardware built-in to your iPhone to measure the performance characteristics of your vehicle. No external wires or equipment is necessary, simply slip the iPhone into a cradle or cupholder and go!

Some of the performance metrics Dynolicious can measure:

-0-60 Acceleration

-1/4 Mile Elapsed Time

-Lateral G’s

-Horsepower

Unlike other accelerometer-based performance meters, Dynolicious uses the advanced data-handling and display capabilities of the iPhone to make the most of your performance testing. Dynolicious maintains a history of test runs, showing you averages and trends in your results. Dynolicious also allows you to enter modifications performed to your vehicle, and will instantly show before-and-after results to easily identify gains or losses.

The world economy may be hiting yet another slump and many people are flocking to sell their Ferrari and Porsche. I watch closely how many 599’s, 430’s and 997tt’s are available for sale second hand. There were only 2-3 599’s on sale in May, now there are 17. F430’s have increased 14 to 34. In midst of this difficult economy, the annual Porsche 2009 Fair was held at the Westin Hotel in Ebisu Tokyo.

The open time was 11am, but when I got there at 11:10am, it was packed with about 300 people. What is driving so many Porsche fans here today is the debut of PDK, the wonderful 7 speed automatic transmission.

They were showing the new PDK LED 997’s and Cayenne Turbo S (no PDK). I really like the Targa 4S in pictures, but this was not on display. The LED rear lights look really good on the 911s. There was a 997 Turbo on display but in the corner, symbolizing that the main stars of the show was the 911 and 911s. They also had a GTS, a 2008 Cup Car on display as well. Also on display was the Porsche kitchen.

Started early morning from Tokyo and 5 hours later arrived in Niigata, where we rested at the Ikarashi House, an estate owned by a wealthy family has on his lot a wedding hall, 3 restaurants, bakery, brewery and gift shop. After this we drove up the coastline. See the trip data below, sorry it’s in Japanese. After this we were off to the onsen in Yamagata.

The drive was approximately 10 hours one way, so minimum of 20 hours and 1,000km on the road. There was a heavy storm and we drove across Japan at unreal speeds.

My Spider is finally here. Don’t plan to use this car much, only for long tours around Japan. Not a ?daily driver for Japan with limited parking choices.

My friends were all displaying their souped and modified cars at this show in Makuhari.

I have a long Porsche history. But in all these years, I have never driven a car like the 997tt. The car is so good all-around in any situation, it is impossible to find any flaw.

911 Turbo (997 manual)
911 4S (996 Tiptronic)
911 Cabriolet (996 Tipronic)
911 RS Club Sports (993 manual)
911 Turbo I (964 manual)
911 Cabriolet (964 Tiptronic)

People still say the 993’s were the best. I remember being told by the sole dealer of Porsche in 2000 that Porsche is in deep financial trouble and that the next models will be made “more efficiently” under increasingly automated production line. It came all true, so until 2003 the 996 interior was so plasticky and cheep looking it did not do justice to the engineering part. Now with 997, the interior quality and feel is so good and engineering so well done that it is better than Ferrari in many ways. The VGT speeds up the spin of the boost so the latency is minimal. But Ferrari went way ahead in the transmission department with the Scuderia in 4th generation while Porsche till this day was offering the doggy and slow responding Tiptronic as their option for automated transmission. So having loved the 911 4S in general but hated the transmission, I bought a manual transmission Turbo. Ferraris are a great F1 transmission car and the 911 is best driven manual until PDK becomes available.

Enter Sandman

Porsche wants to kill the GT1 engine used in the 997tt. Too bad. New 998tt is coming in 2010 or later. They will figure something out I hope instead of the 997m block. GO to rennlist.com or any Porsche forums to read more about it.