Jean talked with us about the Porsche, and how it is often considered a “man’s” car, as the majority of its buyers tend to be men. This was bristling for some of us because the car clearly has feminine lines. In fact, I believe I compared its form to an odalisque, as for me, it brought to mind the supine figure of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ “La Grande Odalesque". Given that an odalisque is a term for a harem girl/concubine, I suppose it’s not suprising that men would be the ones splashing out big bucks to get inside one… Er, uh.. a Porsche 911, that is.
Seriously though, google up an image of Ingres’ La Grande Odalesque, and really take a close look at the lines, forms, proportion and layout of the image. The Golden Mean is all over in that painting.
-Side note: The golden mean is a proportional geometric relationship, the awareness of which dates back centuries in art and mathematics. It speaks of a sense of aesthetics and some might argue, is the mathematic embodiment of what is pleasing to the human eye in terms of layout and proportion -a very happy medium between what is too much and what is too little in terms of visual satisfaction. It is represented by the Greek letter, phi, and is found throughout nature, from the form of intricate little flowers, to the nautilus arc of a seashell, to ancient architectural structures, to human form. It can be quantified mathematically as 1.6180339887499.… If you’re familiar with the Fibonacci sequence of numbers that can be graphed to form a spiral, then you’re probably already familiar with the golden mean. -
-Back to our Odalisque… The proprtion of the golden mean is throughout the painting, as a whole and divided into parts. The spiraling arc of the Fibonacci sequence/golden mean can be seen throughout as well. For example, look at the curve from the small of the Odalique’s back to the nape of her neck, the negative space from the viewer’s right side of her face, arcing down her arm and back up where the curtain in the background meets at where her leg is positioned. The very folds in the curtain even!
These same arcing lines that are very near if not exactly conforming to the arc of a Fibonacci spiral can be seen in the Porsche’s form as well. The curve of the car’s body as it arcs up from the rear bumper to the front of the roof line, the sweeping form of the front bumper rising to give shape to the headlight enclosure and front fender, the rounded curve of those fenders as they wrap from the hood plane of the car down around the sides. These are all distinctly feminine curves, and this car is unmistakably female. But people who buy it don’t have to be men… or lesbians. Everybody can appreciate the impeccable splendor of a form so natural and so deeply engrained in humankind’s sense of shape and contour as well as the very composition of the cosmos.
…But try explaining all that to a 3 year old. -Enter my little nephew, Lucian. We’re “Motorcycle Buddies” -meaning that every year, I take him with me to the motorcycle show because the kid is a demon for 2 wheeled transportation… though cars, trains, and construction equipment are all pretty high up on his list of things that are completely fascinating, too.
Lucian likes to hand me one of his Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars and ask me to tell him about what kind of car it is and any interesting stuff I know about the make and model of it. So far, his favorite is the Saleen S7 (I used to sell Saleens, though I never sold an S7 Supercar). Anyway, I was telling him about driving the Porsche and showed him a picture of it on my phone. He gasped and his eyes lit up like he had just seen the coolest car since the Saleen S7. He turned to me and said “Aunt Val, they let you drive a taxi?!!!” I was dumbfounded for a second. It had never occurred to me that a car like the Porsche 911 could ever be equated with a taxicab, but apparently, that bright yellow paint screamed something quite distinct to my little nephew. I suppose it’s not surprising to hear something like that from the same kid who was riding in the car, saw the Minneapolis bike cops pedaling along, got all concerned, and said “Oh no! Did somebody steal their police car?” This kid cracks me up. What else could I really say but “Yep, your auntie Val did get to drive that taxi, and it was fun!”
So, for my nephew’s edification, here’s a quick comparison of the Porsche 911 Carerra S to a typical metro area taxi -though to even things up, we‘re going to pull specs from a the most recently available Crown Vic interceptor:
The Porsche 911 Carrera S is a rear engine, rear wheel drive car. The retired/repurposed police interceptor Ford Crown Victoria taxicab is a front engine, rear wheel drive car. So they’ve got at least one thing in common.
The Porsche features a 3.8L 6 cylinder (boxer layout -horizontally opposed) that makes 400 HP. It has a top speed of 188 MPH and can go from 0-60 MPH in 4.3 seconds. The Crown Victoria, in contrast, has a 4.6L V8 under its hood and could put out 250 HP and was designed to safely handle at 150 MPH, though most had a programmed speed limitation of 120 MPH. The Crown Vic can go from 0-60 MPH in 8.75 seconds.
In terms of the cost, a Crown Vic interceptor would have rung up around $25,000 brand new, but it wasn’t sold directly to the public. The public could get one 2nd hand when municipalities were done with them, and those prices could vary depending on the condition and mileage of the vehicle. One kind of cost saving measure was that the 2009-2011 Crown Vics were flex fuel vehicles, meaning they could run on E85 (ethanol) fuel… though in the long run, that fuel could end up costing the car owner lots of money given how corrosive it can be, even to systems that have been designed to use it.
The Porsche 911 Carrera S has a price point of just under $100,000... Um, ouch! The good news is that you don’t have to be a government agency in order to be allowed to buy a brand new one, so there‘s that.
Aside from price, there is one area where the Crown Vic has the Porsche beat, and that’s cargo capacity. The Porsche has a trunk volume listed of between 4.7-5.1 cubic feet on Porsche’s web site -and keep in mind, that trunk is in the front of the car because the engine is in the rear.. Not that you can see much of that, either when the cover is up. The Crown Vic more than quadruples the Porsche in this category, offering 20.6 cubic feet of cargo capacity. Overall interior space for the Crown Vic is 128 cubic feet.. I can’t find anywhere what the Porsche’s specs are on this, but rest assured, it’s less than 128 cu ft.
Yes, the Porsche is one fine taxi -provided you don’t have much luggage to haul around -or more than one passenger. It is a 2+2 layout, but that “+2” has about the same amount of usefulness as the “+2” that my MG has, which is to say, you can fit a duffle bag or two in the back seat.. Or a person or two if they happen to be the same shape and size of a small to medium duffle bag. Well, whatever. As things are in the status quo, I have zero interest in driving a taxi for a living… However, if a cab company that featured only Porsche 911’s as their fleet cars opened for business tomorrow, I’d certainly apply to be one of their drivers. So, take that for what it’s worth.
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