That’s untrue. It can also accelerate quickly- which is a feature you can use on real roads.
It will ride much better than a cheaper car, and have all sorts of nice goodies and gadgets. It is, in some sense, all toys. That’s what luxuries *are.* People are willing to pay for luxury *because it is luxurious* and enjoyable.

The fact of the matter is these people have money. It’s up to them to decide how they spend it. I bet you’d be up in arms if someone was saying you shouldn’t be allowed to spend your own money on something you enjoy, simply because it’s not the most efficient and cost effective way of doing something. Chill out and let other people live their lives.

That’s not the case though, since it’s a Porsche it means it had some sensible Germans design and build it. Meaning not only is it quick to go fast, it’s also able to be driven every day, used to fetch some groceries and generally used like any other car. It’s just that when you want to say take it to a track, hit its top speed on the autobahn or just dawdle along some nice twisty roads it’ll do that too. So it does a lot of things and it does them very well.

See, personally if I were going to buy a car that’s more fun than what I already own I wouldn’t be NEARLY this sensible. No, I’d be looking for say a Caterham 7, as utilitarian as going fast can ever be and it does it… very, very well.

I’ll admit that’s ridiculous, but I don’t think it’s any more ridiculous than my digital camera, all the electric gizmos I own, every vinyl record I have and all the other completely useless things I enjoy.

Why leave it in gear in your garage? So it becomes routine. Why depress the clutch everytime you start a manual car? So it becomes routine and you don’t assume it’s in neutral. Also it’s less work for the starter to do since it doesn’t have to turn the gearbox, good thing to remember if you’ve got a flattish battery, dying starter or some other malady but need to get your car going.

I just think it’s silly to assume the e-brake will work flawlessly no matter what, it tends to be one of the most poorly maintained parts on cars.

Just because people in the UK are idiots doesn’t mean you have to join in, you know?

The time to think about whether the risk was acceptable was before he accepted the risk. Having done so, it’s _his_ responsibility, not the kid’s.

I have no sympathy. It’s just a car. Maybe it’s worth a tenth of that.

I guess it depends on the car, but I don’t believe cranking with the clutch pedal depressed causes any undue wear & tear. My ’94 Toyota pickup wouldn’t crank if you didn’t depress the pedal fully, whether the shifter was in neutral or not. That truck got a new clutch put in at 190,000 miles. We used to have a ’74 Renault 12 that wouldn’t crank if you weren’t in neutral… but, being a ’74, it also wouldn’t start unless the seatbelts were latched. Every stick driver I know parks their car in gear (1st when level or facing uphill, reverse when facing downhill) and generally only uses the parking brake when there’s any slope, however mild. Cramping wheels to the curb is a legal requirement here, but not everyone knows how to do it properly, no matter what transmission they have. Anyway, I too habitually depress the clutch whenever I start, but that’s because it’s an old habit. I didn’t always do it on my old Hondas (which didn’t require the pedal to be depressed), but I did habitually make sure I was in neutral. Thing is, a kid won’t have developed any driving habits, good or bad, by the tender age of 15.

And there’s the rub: the argument shouldn’t really be about what punishment is appropriate for the kid. He’s a kid, kids do stupid things, and I think his dad and Porsche are handling that aspect of it appropriately: it’s serious, but nowhere near life-wrecking. No, the big thing is the dad. He should not have let his kid touch that car. It was not his permission to give. Doesn’t matter if he’s got the most careful kids in the world; the car was lent to him for evaluation and review, and thus should have been treated like any other loaned item with value greater than a lawnmower: use it strictly for the intended purpose of the lending, and keep all other hands off. This was a fairly serious lapse in professionalism, and I do hope the guy has learned that particular lesson well. I don’t blame the kid too much for this, but the dad definitely should have known better. My dad certainly would have.

I’m guessing what happened is that the son gets in the car, puts the key in and means to just switch on the power — not crank the engine — but twists the key too much. Car cranks, it’s in gear and it lunges forward since the clutch is out.

And why is the car worth that much? Two hundred mile per hour suspension, brakes, tires rated to withstand that sort of thing for hours on end, advanced electronics, precision engineered parts meant to produce the most. It costs money to design and engineer this sort of thing. Oh and the Porsche badge on the front, that tends to cost you some money too. No, it’s worth more than a tenth of that. It just is.

Would I pay that much money for a Porsche? No, it’s a trumped up volkswagen. Would I pay that much for something else automotive if I had the means? Oh sure.

On a side note, the amount of vitriol being spewed at this story because it involves an expensive car is embarrassing. There things here *should* be true:
1) boingboing users have intelligent, balanced debates
2) Porsche owned the car, not the journalist
3) a teenager hopefully learned a valuable lesson.

Why can’t we work to improve item #1 a bit for this discourse?

My first thought was “wow, this catalogue of stories of rich kids destroying expensive stuff: this is because they don’t get given responsibilities to match their freedoms.”

But JohnCJ is right: the kid’s *lucky* to have gotten off so lightly (and to get an internship with a racing driver out of the deal!), but he’s doing everything he’s been asked to, to repay his one-second lapse.

To other posters: I’m from the UK, we pretty much all drive manuals here, and yes, any good driver here or in any other country will park a car on a hill in gear and with the wheel turned against the kerb (US: curb). And nobody parks without the handbrake on.

A kid’s not going to have the ingrained reflex of wiggling the shift before raising the clutch, nor even of raising the clutch slowly. Even as an adult, with a car you’re not accustomed to, you might think the stick’s in neutral from waggling when in fact it’s not, and you might raise the clutch faster than the car needs to catch and jerk forward. So, I guess, fair enough.

I *really* like the Porsche guy’s, Mr Rick Bye’s response. “Mr. Bye quietly surveyed the scene for a minute. Then he walked over to my son. ‘Stuff happens,’ he said. ‘We’re glad you’re okay. This is only a car. You don’t need a lecture. You already know.’”

Totally the kind of guy I’d want around in a crisis.

That speaks well of him, and well of Porsche. I suspect this story’ll get them positive PR worth well over $11k.

I am sure there are plenty of things on which you spend money at which others would scoff. Try to maintain some perspective please.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this car has some sort of push button start mechanism and it was left in first with the parking brake on. There should be some safeguards but in all likelihood the kid just didn’t know with this particular car how to turn it on in accessory mode.

I wasn’t deciding how people spend their money, I was explaining why people will think you’re selfish if you spend $180,000 on a car. Why do people always think criticising something is the same as wanting to ban it? If you don’t think it’s a selfish thing to do then argue about that, don’t imply I’m starting a socialist revolution.

Every adult knows what $180,000 can buy, and what good it can do, and that you can easily get a good car for a fifth of that.

Entropy, bitchez!

“If insurance doesn’t cover it, the kid could work that off in a couple years (and it’d be a good lesson).”

Dude, I probably haven’t made $180,000 in my entire career history, and I’ve been working straight for a decade and a half. If that kid could work it off in a few years, um, can I have that job instead?

Read.

I’m of the opinion that automatics just add a level of dumb to operation. Manual transmissions are a reminder to the driver that this thing is a mechanical device, not a golf cart with air conditioning.