Hot ( lanta) Wheels
Derek McNaughton travels to Georgia to check out Porsche facility
ATLANTA — Past the newly planted oaks and black security gates, on the site of an old factory that once cranked out Ford Taurus cars, sits a head office where people actually look forward to going to work.
Here, at the foot of America’s busiest airport, where jets thunder past on final approach every 30 seconds, is One Porsche Drive, the new North American home to one of the world’s most alluring carmakers.
The site — spread out over 11 hectares of decontaminated earth, grass, field and buildings torn from the pages of Architectural Digest — is a Porsche office.
But it’s not just for staff — the Porsche Experience Center is a place to taste all that Porsche as a brand and car company can deliver, whether you’re a longtime owner, enthusiast, potential buyer or even a groom-tobe wanting to rent gorgeous banquet space surrounded by museum cars.
The HOK-designed centre, which opened in June after a $100-million investment, is airy, open and beautiful, a four-storey glass and concrete structure in the heart of Atlanta.
Far more exciting, though, is what unfolds outside: a 3.1-kilometre test track where customers can drive just about any car in the Porsche lineup. It’s like having your own real-life Hot Wheels set in your garage. Here, it’s possible to drive a 911 GT3 with a PDK automatic transmission before hopping into a manual-only Cayman GT4, just to see how a $150,000 performance car will attack a twisty road course versus one that costs $96,500.
The contrast is striking. Around the test track, at speeds that exceeded 160 kilometres an hour, the mid-engined GT4 felt immeasurably lighter than the rear-engined GT3. Even so, the GT3 felt better, faster, meaner, more exciting. (A 9,000-r.p.m. redline and 475 horsepower will do that.)
But for the customer trying to decide between the two, or one considering a Turbo over a Carrera 4S, the seat time can prove invaluable. Imagine going home in an all-wheel-drive GTS model without having tested the launch control in the Turbo — that’s a one-way trip to disappointment alley. The Turbo squashes your eyeballs as it delivers 1.28 Gs off the line on its way to 100 km/h in about three seconds. Any other model feels slow. If raw speed is what you’re after, the centre lets you know what you’re getting into.
The intent, Porsche says, is for new or existing owners to see what their cars are capable of, or simply hone their driving skills with some of the centre’s seasoned instructors.
Six instructor-led driving modules can also be part of the track experience, ranging from a watered-down oval and low-friction handling circuit to practise mad drifting skills, to a kick plate that shunts the rear wheels, sending the car into a spin from about 50 km/h. The idea is to make drivers react quickly and catch the car before it skids out of control and crashes into something. Costs vary, of course, and a dealer might pick up the tab for a client, but track activities start at $250 US, and the public is welcome.
Buyers in the U.S. can even take delivery of their new car here after spending intimate time with a designer picking out exclusive options, colours, fabrics and various trim pieces made of carbon fibre, aluminum or leather.
But beyond the exhilaration of the test track, past the white walls adorned with tributes to Porsche’s roots, rest some hidden gems. First and foremost is the heritage centre, where very rare Porsches are kept. Here, in the basement that is home to some 450 employees, sits an orange 914 with a flat-eight engine — one of only two in the world. Here, also, is the 993 911 C4S used as a show car when the 911 transitioned from the 964, the 1985 Rothmans Paris-Dakar rally test car driven by Jacky Ickx and Claude Brasseur, and a 997 Sport Classic that was never sold in North America. It is a step back in time, an intimate rendezvous with Porsche’s storied past — there is even a Porsche tractor.
For those with an old Porsche in need of TLC, the centre is also home to a factory restoration shop similar to the only other one in the world, the museum workshop in Stuttgart, Germany. Rates aren’t cheap, of course, but there’s little doubt the factory technicians working on your Porsche will deliver your car months later virtually like new. Currently there’s little to no wait time for booking a spot.
At the end of all this gazing and gawking and driving fast, there’s a driving simulator to hone track skills at the human performance centre which will measure your fitness and set you on a plan to better health.
Best to visit that before dining on some delicious food at the centre’s Restaurant 356 — appropriately named and themed after the first production Porsche.