Porsche’s oft-maligned 996-generation 911 is getting seriously inexpensive, and for some of you, it might make sense to pick one up for an interesting track-day project. The fact of the matter is that a 996 is a quicker, faster, more comfortable driving experience than any aircooled car could ever produce, and they respond to chassis modifications quite well. It wouldn’t take much work to your average $13,000 996 Carrera 2 to make it a GT3-beating track focussed machine. If you aren’t adept in the ways of track work, you’ve got to start somewhere. In the case of Autotrader’s “Hoovey”, he took his 248,000-mile C2 to a driver education course.
Sometimes it helps to have a bit of humility, as everyone needs more driver education, especially before heading out on track. It is unlikely that very many of us are professional racing drivers, so learn from someone who knows more about track driving than you do. Hoovey, in this case, does it right, even if he does end up spinning off track in only his third session. If you bring your car to the track, you might learn a few things about yourself, and by extension, you might learn about your car. This high-mile 996 experiences what the driver believes is a low oil pressure event while on track, so he does the intelligent thing and brings it in. Now, obviously we couldn’t see his oil pressure gauge, but there are natural fluctuations in oil pressure with RPM levels, and if you go from a high RPM wide-open-throttle pull on a long straight, then let off the throttle abruptly, you could see your gauge drop significantly in a short period of time. It’s better to be cautious, but this turned out to be nothing.
The moral of this story is to not worry so much and take your Porsche out on track where it belongs. In our experience, there are two car companies that can consistently turn out a brand new car that can be taken to the track and thrashed on all day; Porsche and Ferrari. But between the two, only Porsche can manage that after a quarter million miles.