Porsche Driving Experience Center Atlanta

NMS at Porsche North America HQ in Atlanta

Santa was very nice to me last Christmas, because she sent me a ticket to the Porsche Experience Center in Atlanta. And that's why I got to drive the awesome Porsche GT4 RS on track! Believe it or not, the Porsche folks are serious about their automobiles, and since they probably want to sell you one, they offer a few ways for you to drive one at multiple locations around the world. There's another location in Los Angeles, and one up in Toronto. 

NMS can now fully recommend the Porsche GT4 RS. Makes a great birthday present. 

OK, Porsche, Porsche, Porsche, Blah Blah Blah! What's the deal with a GT4 RS? It's not even a 911! True, a Porsche Cayman GT4 RS is NOT a 911, it's BETTER! here's why!

Here's the test track I got to drive, it's one of two they have there!

The 911 has a rear engine set up, while the Cayman is a mid-engine, which means the weight of the vehicle is more centered, making the car handle better. Yeah, OK, but wait, there's more! The engine in the GT4 RS is the same engine found in the high performance 911 GT3 RS! For the first time you can get a 911 engine in a Cayman! Basically, this gives you almost 500 horsepower in a mid-engine car. 

So how was the driving? Glad you asked! 

Porsche GT4 RS, just under 500hp. I'm driving!

During most of my 90 minutes, the instructor had me on the test track, and we gradually built up speed. Not wanting to damage someone else's $200,000 car, I took it easy at first, and man this car is amazing! Before long I was picking up the pace and having even more fun. What really caught my attention was that the engine automatically blips the throttle to allow the engine to downshift when you brake, so that SOUND was amazing.  By blipping the throttle the transmission can slip into the lower gear more easily. You hear racers doing it with their feet, but this car does it for you, and it made me look forward to braking to hear it!

Porsche Experience Center Atlanta

After lapping a while, we visited two other parts of the test track. The first was a skid pad, where you just drive in a small circle. This drill was intended to get you to drift the car by hitting the gas briefly so that the car starts to spin. Then you have to steer  and coordinate your use of the gas to try to maintain the sideways-ish drift around the circle. To make it easier, the whole pad has water pumping onto it. OK, it's supposed to make it easier, but after a lot of practice on this drill I was just starting to be able to do it at all. 

Brian checks out the view of the two test tracks. 

The other test track area was a straight shot, to launch from a standstill very fast, and then brake all out. This is a good exercise to feel what the brakes and gas can do, and I'd like to think that from other driving I've done (on a track) that I get the idea. However, after doing that once, the instructor had me repeat the exercise, but he didn't tell me when to brake, he only told me where to end up. This was a bit more challenging, but to be honest, it wasn't as much fun as the drift pad and way less fun that just lapping!

They let me drive it for 90 minutes. They didn't let me take it home!

The test track had a lot of corners, with two of them built to mimic the famous Corkscrew at Laguna Seca in California, and one to resemble the Carrousel at the German Nurburgring. I could nitpick and point out that in Germany the carrousel goes counter clockwise but that in Atlanta it was backwards, but since famous track designer Hermann Tilke designed the place, I won't mention it!

The instructor and Brian

The track was maybe a mile, but it had a lot of corners, and elevation change, so it was nice. There was only one place on track where you could pass the other cars on track, and of course the instructors were in charge of letting you know when you could do that. I managed to pass a few cars, but I'd guess their drivers were just out having fun and not really pushing the car, or maybe they'd never done that. It wasn't a race, but I enjoyed passing a few people anyway!

The instructor said to go ahead and act like you own it!

While the driving experience is pricey, and the fancy Porsche restaurant was pricey (we didn't eat there,) and the Porsche gift shop was pricey, they didn't allow any video or in car photos. Unlike at the amusement park where they take your photo on the big roller coaster and want you to buy it, there was nothing like that. 

The car had pretty much race car like seats, big bolsters, so it was comfy for driving. The Porsche dual clutch PDK transmission has been around since 2009, and works great. One different aspect of the driving was that the instructor in the passenger seat had the main rear view mirror aimed at him, so that he could tell me if we were going to let someone pass. That left me with the two outside mirrors, which was fine. This specific use of the mirrors works in this situation, but if you were instructing a driver on a regular track session, you'd want them to have all three mirrors, because it's their job to manage traffic and be aware of cars approaching from the rear. 

Step one: adjust the seat and mirrors before driving. 

In addition to the driving, we walked around the facility and saw some nice cars on display. In one area they had cool Porsches on loan from real people. In another room they had some world class Porsche racing cars too. As the Porsche HQ on this continent, it's a large office building and more. The more part includes a restaurant, a smaller cafe, a shop where they can work on cars, and even more. The even more is a building to totally refurbish your classic (over 20 years old I think) Porsche. Then, there's another building that does every day services on Porsche cars to take care of the southern part of Atlanta. If you order a new Porsche, you can even have it delivered right at this facility. Here's a look at some of the rest of the building. 

1983 Porsche poster, they took 9 of the top 10 positions at LeMans!

Hey, it's Sally Carrera from the Cars movie!

I don't know what race series this is from, but it looks cool!

Serious endurance racing? Porsche does that!

Porsche raced in IndyCars for a few years, so you don't see many of these! Brian and I saw another one at the Brumos Collection museum in Jacksonville on our way down to Daytona in January. 

OK, not the greatest photo, but, this view of the Porsche building was used in the Marvel Civil War movie, with an Avengers logo replacing the Porsche sign, to make it look like the cool HQ building of the Avengers. Call me a movie geek if you like, but you can Google more fun trivia about filming locations around Atlanta. 

When it was time to drive back to South Carolina, Brian took over the driving. I was honestly worn out from concentrating and driving the awesome car for 90 minutes. On a normal track weekend, we usually get multiple 20 minute sessions, and that seems about right for driving hard and paying attention to what you're doing, so going up to over 4 times that much was a workout!