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2017 Porsche Macan receives delayed CARB certification

Customers waiting for delivery of their 2017 Porsche Macans will soon receive their vehicles after several weeks of delays. The California Air Resources Board certified the performance crossover for sale Monday. Several outlets reported the certification had been held up in the aftermath of parent company Volkswagen's diesel woes, as regulators are now making much more thorough inspections of the vehicles. Without certification, Porsche could not deliver those vehicles to customers in 13 states that abide by CARB certification, including California, New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida, several of the largest markets for luxury automobiles in America. Not only did dealers need to stop sale of Macans they had on their lots, but an unknown number could not be released from port. Porsche Cars North America (PCNA) imports its vehicles through ports in Jacksonville, FL, Davisville, RI, Houston, TX, and San Diego, CA. A spokesman for Porsche told Autoblog the issue has been resolved, and that the Macans received certification Monday. "Shipping has already been initialized," spokesperson David Burkhalter wrote. Pressed for details on the circumstances behind the delay, he said the process was simply "now the normal business procedure for certification." The Macan is a pivotal model for Porsche, particularly in the US market, which accounts for 22 percent of its worldwide sales. Last year, the Macan was the second-best selling Porsche model in America. Its 13,533 units sold trailed only the 16,473 Cayennes purchased by US buyers. Diesel models of the Cayenne manufactured between 2013 and 2016 contained the defeat devices at the center of Volkswagen's emissions cheating, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The company offers the Macan with a range of turbocharged six-cylinder engines ranging in output from 340 to 400 horsepower. While a diesel version is not offered in the United States, Porsche has now started importing a less powerful, but more accessible (and slightly more fuel-efficient) version with a 2.0-liter turbo four. Related Video:

Porsche Classic launching branded motor oil for air-cooled boxer engines

It's hard not to love the look of a classic Porsche. Whether it's the upside-down bathtub styling of the 356 or the gradual evolution of the 911, there is a little beauty in all of them. However, the older they get, the more that needs repaired to keep them on the road. Porsche Classic is helping out, though, by introducing its own brand of motor oil for the demands of the company's vintage, air-cooled engines.
Developed at the Porsche Development Centre in Weissach, Germany, Porsche Classic Motoroil comes in two weights - 20W-50 for the 356, 914 and 911 models up to the 2.7-liter G-Model and 10W-60 for 3.0-liters-and-up engines through the 993-chassis 911. The company claims that the air-cooled engines have different heat demands than traditional, water-cooled units, and this oil is made to meet those requirements.
According to Porsche, modern, synthetic oils are sometimes too effective when it comes to old engines. They are fantastic at sopping up debris, but those deposits are often holding archaic seals together. Suddenly removing them can cause leaks. The new oil is specifically designed to work with the old-fashioned materials found in its classics. The company also knows that most owners aren't driving their vintage cars everyday. So this formulation is more alkaline that normal to neutralize acids that they build up and corrode components.

Is the skill of rev matching being lost to computers?

If the ability to drive a vehicle equipped with a manual gearbox is becoming a lost art, then the skill of being able to match revs on downshifts is the stuff they would teach at the automotive equivalent of the Shaolin Temple. The usefulness of rev matching in street driving is limited most of the time – aside from sounding cool and impressing your friends. But out on a race track or the occasional fast, windy road, its benefits are abundantly clear. While in motion, the engine speed and wheel speed of a vehicle with a manual transmission are kept in sync when the clutch is engaged (i.e. when the clutch pedal is not being pressed down). However, when changing gear, that mechanical link is severed briefly, and the synchronization between the motor and wheels is broken. When upshifting during acceleration, this isn't much of an issue, as there's typically not a huge disparity between engine speed and wheel speed as a car accelerates. Rev-matching downshifts is the stuff they would teach at the automotive equivalent of the Shaolin Temple. But when slowing down and downshifting – as you might do when approaching a corner at a high rate of speed – that gap of time caused by the disengagement of the clutch from the engine causes the revs to drop. Without bringing up the revs somehow to help the engine speed match the wheel speed in the gear you're about to use, you'll typically get a sudden jolt when re-engaging the clutch as physics brings everything back into sync. That jolt can be a big problem when you're moving along swiftly, causing instability or even a loss of traction, particularly in rear-wheel-drive cars. So the point of rev matching is to blip the throttle simultaneously as you downshift gears in order to bring the engine speed to a closer match with the wheel speed before you re-engage the clutch in that lower gear, in turn providing a much smoother downshift. When braking is thrown in, you get heel-toe downshifting, which involves some dexterity to use all three pedals at the same time with just two feet – clutch in, slow the car while revving, clutch out. However, even if you're aware of heel-toe technique and the basic elements of how to perform a rev match, perfecting it to the point of making it useful can be difficult.