50 years of Sport Auto - some things were better in the past, but not everything
09/20/2019
The Sport-Auto editorial team has published a fantastic magazine to mark its 50th birthday. Congratulations on the magazine and on the birthday!
As is customary for anniversaries/birthdays, the Sport Auto editors look back into the past. And so this special issue has become half vintage/youngtimer magazine. However, it is also nice to see that the magazine is able to draw a line from the past to the present, on the one hand by recalling old stories and on the other hand by comparing cars from the past with those of today or by having today's car testers drive the cars of yesteryear.
As an example, I would like to pick out the cover story, the Supertest, which compares the Porsche 964 RS with the current Porsche 911 S (992). The RS is the first 964 RS built by the Porsche Museum, but it is equipped with modern tires (Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R N0 in the dimensions 205/50 R17 and 255/40 R17), as tested by Walter Röhrl in 2016. It is fascinating to read how the test driver, who is young from a classic car perspective, gets to grips with what he considers to be an ancient car, what he likes about it and what irritates him.
But it is also impressive to follow the quantitative comparison of the two sports cars. The modern Porsche takes almost a minute off the 964 RS on the Nordschleife. From a racing driver's point of view, that's a lot, but there are also almost 30 years between the two cars. And on the Hockenheim GP circuit, the difference shrinks to just over 9 seconds.
Of course, racetrack performance has a lot to do with pure power. The 964 RS had 260 hp, the new one 450 hp. The 964 was lighter (1230 kg, full tank), but with almost twice the power, the modern 911 can of course easily compensate for the 1569 kg kerb weight (full tank), which is a good quarter higher. The wide-track chassis and well-balanced aerodynamics do the rest.
Perhaps the most surprising thing is that the almost 30-year-old 964 RS (albeit with modern but comparatively narrow tires) comes to a standstill only slightly later at 33.3 m than the modern 911 S (32.7 m), which is certainly equipped with much more sensitive ABS. Once again, this is also proof that tire technology has actually made more progress than chassis technology. But we were already enthusiastic about the braking performance of the car in our driving report of the Cup version, which was the basis for the 964 RS.
This article alone is actually worth buying the magazine. And it is enough to trigger countless discussions (about tire development, chassis development, electrical and electronic aids, etc.).
But there is much more to enjoy, such as today's Sport Auto editors' encounters with cars that they themselves never experienced back then, e.g. the VW Golf GTI Mk 1 or the Ferrari F40.
The track test with four Alpina racing cars or the story about five rebels of the past, including the mid-engined Clio or the E43 CSL, are also exciting.
And this is what the cover of the Sport Auto 10/2019 issue looks like:
