猩氏車評：保時捷 911 GT3（997.5）

來自專欄世界上最好的車評人——傑里米克拉克森車評14 人贊了文章

THE CLARKSON REVIEW: PORSCHE 911 GT3 （997.5）

09 May 2010

SOMETHING STRANGE is going on in this country. In the run-up to the general election David Cameron was constantly accused of being unfit for office because of his excellent education at Eton and Oxford. Isn』t that like suggesting an athlete should be barred from the British Olympic team because they are 「too fast」?

一些詭異的事兒正在英國發生。在大選前夕，卡梅倫因他在伊頓公學和牛津大學接受的卓越教育而被批評不適合擔任首相。這如同因為運動員「太快」而拒絕他們加入國家隊一樣。

It was much the same story with Nick Clegg. People loved him … right up to the point when they learnt he had been educated at Westminster and Cambridge. Somehow, that immediately precluded him from being any good at anything.

這和Nick Clegg（時任英國自民黨黨魁、副首相）的故事是一樣的。人們愛戴他…… 直到當他們知道了他曾在威斯敏斯特和劍橋接受教育。不知怎麼的，那立刻讓他成了什麼事都干不好的無用之人。

It』s hard to grasp what the critics are suggesting. Do they think that an idiotic woman from Mansfield would make a better leader because she is thick? Or am I missing something? And so it was with the vulgar subject of money. There was a time when no one in this country ever spoke about how much anyone earned. I remember once being in a Swedish tank when all of a sudden the captain turned and asked: 「Right. How much did you make last year?」 I couldn』t have been more taken aback if he』d asked me how often I had anal sex.

很難理解這些批評到底說明了什麼。他們是覺得一個愚蠢的Mansfield女人能當一個更好的領袖，就因為她身寬體胖？還是說我錯過了什麼。當談到金錢這個庸俗的話題時也是如此。在曾經的英國，任何人的收入都不會被提起。記得有一次，我在一艘瑞典船上，船長冷不丁兒轉過頭來問我：「好嘛。你去年掙了多少錢？」 我簡直跟聽到他問我多久肛交一次一樣被嚇了大一跳。

Now, though, things are different. We are told, often, that the director-general of the BBC earns more than ￡800,000 and that this is an obscene amount of money. Right. I see. So what should he be paid? Half that? A quarter? Is ￡50,000 acceptable? To someone on the minimum wage, probably not.

然而現在情況有所不同了。經常有人告訴我們，BBC的總幹事一年收入超過80萬鎊，真是駭人聽聞的一大筆錢。好吧，我懂了。所以他的薪水要怎麼付？減半？砍成原來的四分之一？年薪5萬鎊可以接受嗎？這對一個領最低的薪水的人來說，可能還是無法接受。

Doubtless the bitter and the twisted looked at all those multi-millionaires in this newspaper』s recent Rich List and thought: 「How can any one man possibly have a fortune of ￡1 billion?」

這種人心裡對報紙上那些近期登上財富排行榜的許多百萬富翁們很不服氣。他們表情扭曲，想著："一個人怎麼可能擁有10億英鎊的財富？"

Why shouldn』t he? It is no skin off your nose. At the very least, you don』t have to sit next to him on a plane. And anyway, if the government took all his money away and distributed it evenly among the rest of the population, you』d be ￡16 richer and he』d be wondering why he spent his whole life working so damn hard. He did.

他怎麼著就不能有了？這關你屁事。再怎麼說，你也不會在飛機上坐在他旁邊。而且，如果政府沒收了他的所有財產然後平分給剩下的人，你的口袋裡也就會比以前多出16鎊，而他卻會思考為什麼他一生都在努力工作。事實也確實如此。

One thing I』ve noticed over the years is that if you drive into London at 6am, half of the cars on the roads are Porsches and Astons. Whereas if you go in at ten to nine, they』re all Renaults. Simple solution, then. You want a nice car? Get up earlier and do more work.

這些年來我注意到一件事，如果你在早上6點開車去倫敦，路上一半的車都是保時捷和阿斯頓馬丁。但如果你在8點50分的時候開車去，路上的車都是雷諾。這就很簡單了，你想要輛好車？早早起床，努力工作。

This opinion no longer washes, though. I appear to be in a minority of one. People still want to be rich, but they don』t want anyone else to get there first; a point that becomes blindingly obvious when you try to pull out of a side turning in a Porsche 911 GT3.

然而這個觀點不再流行了，我似乎成了少數派中的一員。人們還是想變得有錢，只是他們不想要任何人比他們先達成目標。當你試著把一輛側滑的保時捷911 GT3救回來時，這一點極其明顯。

Now I should make it plain that I have never let a 911 out of a side turning, either. Not because I despise the man who』s driving it, but because I have always despised the car, a machine born of an original idea by Hitler. The engine was in the wrong place, the handling was suspect, the styling never really changed and the air-cooled noise made me think I was in Martin Bormann. Plus, Richard Hammond has one.

現在我應該坦白說，我也從來沒想把一輛側滑的911救回來。並不是我看不起開它的人，而是因為我一直以來都看不起這輛車本身，一輛源自希特勒的車。它的引擎被放在了錯誤的地方，操控令人生疑，外形從沒真正變過，風冷發動機的雜訊讓我覺得我在Martin Bormann（納粹「二號戰犯」）車裡。另外，鼴鼠也有一輛911。

I will admit that since Porsche moved the powerplant forward and began using water to cool the block, rather than air, things have improved. In recent years I』ve even admitted a grudging respect for the way these throwbacks drive. But I』ve never liked the 911. I』ve never thought of owning one. They were, you might say, a bit like Margaret Thatcher. You could admire her but at no point did you think: 「Mmmm.」

我承認，自從保時捷進一步完善它的發動機，開始用水冷而不是風冷時，情況有所好轉。近年來，我甚至因為這些老祖宗開起來的感覺而給它們一個勉強的尊重。 但我從來都不喜歡911，更沒有想要成為911車主。這樣說吧，它們有點像撒切爾夫人，你可能欽佩她但是你絕不會想：「嗯....」（娶她為妻）。

To be honest, I wasn』t expecting the GT3 to be any different. I was even a bit worried about writing a review of the damn thing because there are only so many ways you can say the same thing. Sure enough, it was immediately annoying. The nose is so low to the ground that it scooped half the gravel off my drive and could not be driven over a sleeping policeman, even at 1mph. What』s more, the rear seats have been replaced with scaffolding and the ride, at low speed, was horrific. Not as bad, I admit, as it is in my Mercedes CLK Black. But terrible nevertheless.

實話說，我並不期望GT3能有什麼不同。我甚至對寫這輛令我討厭的車的評論這事有點擔心，因為你只能用那幾種方式來表達一輛亘古不變的911是怎樣的。果然，它還是那麼惱人。GT3的車鼻十分貼地，把路面上一半的沙礫都鏟起來了。就算是以一邁的龜速，我也不能開著它經過一個睡著的警察而不吵醒他。更重要的是，GT3的后座已經被防滾架取代，在低速時的行駛十足嚇人，儘管沒有我的Mercedes CLK Black那麼糟糕，但也很可怕。

The track car in the 911 line-up is the GT3 RS — pay attention at the back please. The normal GT3 is a sort of halfway house. It even came with halfway-house tyres — semi-slicks that made me deeply grateful that we were having the driest April since Jonathon Porridge began. So you have the scaffolding and the hard ride and the low nose but you also have, as standard or on the options list, cruise control, air-conditioning, satellite navigation and iPod connectivity.

在911的產品線里，賽道用車是GT3 RS——請注意後綴。標準版的GT3是那種半家用的車。它甚至還配有半家用車胎——半熱熔的，在這個自從Jonathon Porridge開始以來最乾燥的四月，這讓我感激不盡。所以買了GT3，你就能擁有防滾架，硬朗的駕駛體驗和超低的車鼻，但你也能擁有這些標準或者選裝配置，諸如定速巡航，空調，衛星導航和iPod連接功能。

This, then, is a luxury fighter plane. A class 1 offshore liner. A diamond-encrusted AK-47. And I was facing a long drive in the damn thing. I looked around the yard for something else to take, but, having established the motor mower was out of fuel, settled with a reluctant sigh into the deeply bucketed front seat of Porsche』s mixed bag of nonsense.

這是一輛豪華戰鬥機，一艘頂級郵輪，一把鑲鑽的AK-47。而我要在這討厭的東西里來一次長途旅行。我環顧四周，想在院子里找別的交通工具來替代。但在確定割草機沒油以後，我不情願地嘆了口氣，坐進了保時捷一鍋亂燉作品的顛簸的駕駛座。

The first thing I noticed was that as the speed increases, and it increases at a fair old lick, the ride seems to soften. The car feels less stiff, less as though it is determined to shake yours arms out of their sockets. At normal speed you would even describe it as comfortable.

我注意到的第一件事是，隨著速度的提升——這提升可是相當輕鬆熟悉的，旅程似乎變得溫和起來。這輛車感覺不那麼硬梆梆了，不像是低速時想把你的手臂甩飛的感覺。在正常的速度下你甚至能用舒適這個詞來形容GT3。

If you keep on accelerating, things get awfully hectic. You need to be going very fast for this to happen, though. Chasing-a-superbike fast. Back in the real world, with the biker in a hedge, wiping his bottom, the 911 is also very quiet despite the fitment of aluminium doors and an engine cover made of a lightweight synthetic material. You could live with this car, I thought. Obviously, I couldn』t, because it』s a 911, but you could.

如果你繼續加速，一切變得非常瘋狂。你得反應非常迅速才能感受到，跟追逐一輛超級摩托車一樣迅速。在現實世界裡，摩托車手正在樹籬中擦屁股，儘管911有著鋁製車門和輕質複合材料製成的發動機罩，它也十分安靜。我認為你們能接受這輛車。很顯然我不能，因為這是輛911，但各位可以。

On the Top Gear test track, it was a disappointment. Around the corner we call Chicago, almost all cars will lurch into oversteer as the camber changes. But not the GT3. It understeered. A lot. Despite this, I enjoyed the man/machine interface.

在Top Gear測試賽道上，它的表現令人失望。在芝加哥彎附近，幾乎所有的車都會在車的外傾角改變時出現出現轉向過度，GT3則不然。它轉向不足，非常嚴重。儘管這樣，我還是挺享受和它的人機溝通過程。

Unlike lesser 911s, it had no direct injection, and the gearbox was a standard six-speed manual. It even made proper engine noises, rather than the tricksy exhaust bellow from, say, an Aston Martin. As the miles wore on, I started to think that maybe I could live with this car. And then I started to wonder how it would be possible to not live with it. I was falling in love.

不像911 S，GT3沒有換新機器，變速箱是標準的手動六速。它甚至有像樣的引擎聲浪，而不是像一台馬丁一樣發出頑皮的排氣聲。隨著里程的增加，我開始思考或許我可以接受這輛車。然後我又想怎麼可能不和這輛車生活在一起呢？我愛上它了。

It』s the steering, mainly. It』s beyond fabulous. I know of no car that makes bends such an undiluted joy. The other day I deliberately drove through Milton Keynes simply because it has lots of roundabouts. Then you have the little things: the sat nav that』s so damn easy to use, the enormous range between fill-ups, the extraordinarily low price for what you get and the speeds that can be achieved.

這主要是因為GT3的轉向妙不可言。我從沒見過這樣一輛讓切彎成為純粹樂趣的車。有一天，我故意開著它經過Milton Keynes，僅僅因為這地方有很多拐彎抹角的路。然後你就能享受這小確幸：極其易用的衛星導航，加滿油後超長的續航里程，買到它的極低價格和過人的速度。

And then there』s the shape. As is the way with girlfriends, once you start to like the character, you begin to see handsomeness even when there is none. At the very least, you have to say this is the best-looking Porsche, and to judge by the company』s recent efforts, I』m glad the nincompoops in the design department haven』t tried to change it. It』s not just the looks that grew on me, either.

然後是因為它的外形。就好像談女票一樣，一旦你開始喜歡這個外形的特點，你就會在看到它的瀟洒，就算這無處可尋時也是如此。至少，你得說這是最好看的保時捷。從保時捷最近的努力成果來看，我很慶幸設計部門的那群白痴沒有試著去改變它的外形。當然了，勾起我興趣的也不止是外觀。

In the past I』ve always preferred Ferraris because they are built with passion, not precision. But now, I dunno, I found myself appreciating the quality of the Porsche. No one ever bought a Ferrari thinking: 「That』ll see me out.」 But you could with a 911.

過去我一向更喜歡法拉利，因為它們來自熱情奔放的義大利工廠，而不是一絲不苟的德國工廠。但是現在，我懵了。我發現我自己開始欣賞保時捷的品質了。沒有人會抱著「這輛車會伴我一生」的想法買一輛法拉利，但你卻可以一生都開一輛911。

I shall finish with one more observation. In the Eighties, 911s were bought by City boys who simply wanted a car to show off their wealth. The big Breitling had not been invented then.This is why, I guess, other road users hate them so much.Because there』s an assumption the bloody thing is being driven by Fred Goodwin. Or some other sod who』s paid too much.

我應該再作一點評論來結尾。在上世紀八十年代，純粹想要一輛車來炫耀他們財富的潮男會買911S。那會百年靈手錶還未問世。我想這就是為什麼路上的其他人如此痛恨他們。因為有個陰謀論說的這殘忍的事實是受Fred Goodwin（曾任蘇格蘭皇家銀行CEO），或者是其他領太高薪水的討厭鬼驅使的。

But today things have changed. Today 911s are generally driven, I』ve noticed, by grey-haired, sensible people who need some common sense in their lives but who at the same time cannot live without the extraordinary feel of that steering. It』s a bug, and I fear I have it too. I want a GT3.

但是時過境遷。如今我注意到911s的駕駛者大多是頭髮灰白，通情達理，有生活常識的人，但他們又需要911絕妙的轉向享受。這不科學，我覺得我現在也是這樣。我想買輛GT3。

總評： I』ve never wanted a Porsche. Now I do.

我從來不想要一輛保時捷。現在我想要了。

PROS 我喜歡

Joyous through bends 切彎的快感

The best-looking Porsche 最好看的保時捷

I could live with this car 我能和這車一起過日子

CONS 我不喜歡

Other drivers will despise you 其他人會鄙視你

Its ground-scrapingly low 直刮地面的離地間隙

Unforgiving ride at low speeds 低速時的糟糕感受

翻譯：GearKnobs字幕組 HERRY