What Hatz Told Us: The Secret Details of the New 991 Porsche 911

What Hatz Told Us: The Secret Details of the New 991 Porsche 911:

We went this week to witness the unveiling of the 991-generation 2012 911 at the Porsche Museum in Zuffenhausen, Germany. Against a backdrop of Porsche’s most significant racing cars and design studies—Le Mans–winning 917, the 001, a 956 mounted on the ceiling; y’know, the usual—Michael Mauer, the brand’s head designer, and Wolfgang Hatz, executive vice president of research and design, pulled the silk off what is, in person, an exceptionally well-realized if larger new 911.

We got the press materials and the official photos, already posted here, and then we pulled Hatz aside for the stuff they didn’t print in the car’s kit. Here is what he told us:

• The new seven-speed manual, confirmation of which we broke two months ago, will have a fairly conventional shift pattern: Reverse is up and to the left, gears one through six in a conventional three-up/three-down arrangement, and seventh up and to the right. There’s a lockout on seventh gear unless you’re in fifth or sixth, s no 4-7 shifts are permitted in the manual.

• The new gearbox is compact—both the PDK and the manual use the same housing and most of their internals save the second clutch and third and seventh gears—and would leave enough room for extra cylinders. “A flat-eight will fit,” he said. (We’ll have an in-depth tech feature on the seven-speed manual gearbox soon.)

• There’s also been much talk about the hybrid version of this car. Hatz was a bit cagey on this topic—not necessarily on the “ifs” but the “hows.” He merely said the 911 would need a hybrid system that suited the car’s character. When it was suggested to him that the electric front axle from the 918 would fit and would scale to other cars in the lineup, he nodded sagely.

• There will not be a four-cylinder version of the 911, even though there is precedent and the environmental pressure is on. “I don’t want a turbocharged base model,” Hatz told us. “I love the character of the naturally aspirated engines.”

• And, when asked the perennial question about how the 911 would make its way in a Porsche landscape inhabited by a new and improved Cayman on the bottom end and the rumored-and-very-likely Panamera coupe on the GT end, Hatz replied: “We have a lot of plans for this 911. It has a bright future. The 911 derivatives will increase.”

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