Weekly Porsche Wrap

Haven’t done a Weekly Porsche Wrap in a while. Seems like Sunday comes and goes and I never end up getting it done. I was inspired, though, by a post over at PorschePurist.com. Thought it was time to recap the interesting Porsche stuff I come across during the week.

Robotic Porsche named Sting – This is probably one of the coolest, geekiest things I’ve read in a long time. Both Porsche related and otherwise. The Porsche Cayenne was originally built to compete in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge as an autonomous vehicle. This year it was upgraded with radios to communicate with two small airplanes (1/4 scale Piper Cubs…a plane I’ve always wanted to build). The planes fly around looking for targets and when found, radio back the GPS coordinates to Sting. Sting then makes it’s way to the target. That’s just amazing to me. Read the rest and see a picture at the link. [Via PorschePurist.com]

Porsche 911 GT3 RS producing 500 horsepower may be coming – The Internet was all abuzz last week about a leaked document that laid claims to a special edition Porsche 911 GT3 RS was on the horizon. The source was a Teamspeed forum member who claimed to have in possession a leaked order sheet from his local Porsche dealer. According to the doc, the coming GT3 RS will have a 4.0 liter flat six that produces 500 hp and six speed manual transmission among other things. Cost is supposedly to be $216,000. Got some naysayers and questionable elements to the document. Be cool if it did end up being true. Nothing like leaked info to get the Porsche juices a flowin. [Via MotorTrend.com]

Funny excerpt from Ice-T’s new book – I don’t know why this struck me as worthy of putting in the Weekly Porsche Wrap. Even as I type this I’m second guessing it, but hey, too far to turn back now. in Ice: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption-from South Central to Hollywood, Ice-T writes about his experience of trying to steal a convertible roof from a parked Porsche to replace the damaged one on his own car. “I was just ratcheting into the canvas tarp when I heard screams coming from the window of an apartment above. I thought I’d been busted. It sank in when I realized a group of 10 or so kids were shouting things like, ‘Ice-T! Ice-T! Yo, sign this Ice!’ Instead of running, I hung around to sign for them. But that was the point it sank in that I couldn’t do this any more. I was too ­famous to keep stealing.” I can’t imagine we have too many Ice-T fans reading PorschePerfect, but just in case you want to check out the book, you can see it here: Ice: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption-from South Central to Hollywood.

Porsche 911 ranks high on list of cars men want – It’s no surprise, of course. In fact, the Porsche 911 is bought by men 9 out of 10 times according to TrueCar.com. The site has done some studying of the buying habits of men and women and which cars each gender tends to go after most often. Top picks of individual models for men are: Porsche 911, GMC Sierra, Chevrolet Corvette, Chevrolet Silverado, Ford F-Series, BMW M3, Ford Ranger, Toyota Tundra, Dodge Ram and Audi S5. For women, they are: Volkswagen New Beetle, Kia Spectra, Nissan Rogue, Volkswagen Eos, Hyundai Entourage, Volvo S40, Jeep Compass, Honda CR-V, Nissan Sentra and Hyundai Tucson. [Via USAToday.com]

Porsche Cayenne gets bee jacked – A woman was out running errands in her Porsche Cayenne when she noticed some bees buzzing around the car. She didn’t think much of it and decided to wait them out. When she returned to the car, they seemed to be gone. One of her kids in the back seat sounded the bee alarm. They jumped out of the car and ended up finding thousands of bees tucked under the back hatch of the car. [Via MercuryNews.com]