2009 Porsche 911. Click image to enlarge

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Porsche Fuel Efficiency Challenge

Birmingham, Alabama – When Porsche asked me recently to participate in a fuel efficiency challenge, I must admit, I thought they were joking. After all, this is the storied company that’s won, “Oh, 28,000-29,000 races in its history, give or take a few,” according to Porsche U.S. Public Relations General Manager, Bernd Harling. So really, who thinks fuel economy when they’re thinking Porsche?

And that’s the point, of course. Turns out that over the years Porsche has been diligently working to increase power and decrease fuel consumption, and they’d like people to know that a fuel efficient Porsche is not a contradiction in terms.

So the first part of my mission (which I did choose to accept) was to drive a 2009 Porsche Carrera 911S — fitted with Porsche’s new 3.8-litre engine and seven-speed double-clutch transmission, the Porsche Doppelkupplungsgetriebe, or PDK — from Atlanta, Georgia, to Birmingham, Alabama as fuel efficiently as possible.

2009 Porsche 911 S. Click image to enlarge

With a base price of $107,600, our car was optioned to $131,330 with features such as a full leather interior, premium audio, navigation, Sport Chrono Plus and the PDK gearbox, which is essentially a conventional manual gearbox that can operate automatically (no clutch pedal, though). It uses two clutches to control the odd (1,3,5,7) and even (2,4,6) gears, pre-selecting successive gears based on engine speed, load and vehicle speed.

In combination with the PDK transmission, the 385-hp, 2009 911S generates an 8.5 per cent increase in power over last year’s model, while fuel consumption is commendably reduced by 12.8 per cent.

The second part of the event wasn’t so much about fuel efficiency, but was more about driving efficiently. Our route to Birmingham (not coincidentally) would take us to within a few kilometres of Barber Motorsports Park, where some of Porsche’s top race drivers spend 120 days a year teaching performance driving to enthusiast consumers at the Porsche Sport Driving School. We would be paired with the likes of Hurley Haywood, Kees Nierop, Cass Whitehead, Patrick Long and David Donohue to refine our performance-driving skills while learning about the new PDK transmission. Our best lap time would be compared with Mr. Haywood’s benchmark of 1 minute, 50 seconds over the 3.83 km (2.38 mile) track.

2009 Porsche 911 S PDK. Click image to enlarge

As many of the invited journalists were heard to say, “Tough work, but somebody’s got to do it.”

Teamed in the 911S with CanadianDriver’s Assistant Editor, Jil McIntosh, I felt we knew a thing or two about fuel efficient driving, even if we aren’t exactly track stars. After all, CanadianDriver developed the 50-Litre Challenge, ran a six-month winter series on fuel efficient driving techniques, and our drivers recently won a Honda Insight (3.8 L/100km) and Toyota Prius (2.9 L/100km) driving challenge.

This experience was put to good use on the sultry but scenic 400-kilometre fuel-efficiency run from Atlanta to Burlington, which we definitely wanted to win. Our 911S with PDK is rated at 12.4/9.0 L/100 km (U.S. EPA 19/26 mpg), city/highway, which equals many mainstream, midsize sedans, come to think of it. There were seven cars (a Cayman S, two Boxster S’s, and four 911S models, variously optioned), each piloted by a pair of auto journalists. The challenge was to see who could exceed the EPA highway target by the largest percentage (assuming we could meet the target…). Given that most of the drive was at low highway speeds (80 or 90 km/h), 9.0 L/100 km or better was our goal.

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