The Porsche Driving Book

by Martin Beck-Burridge and John Lyon. 231pp. 93/4″ x 7″. (Porsche Cars Great Britain, Reading, Berkshire. £18.95).

For 12 years, Porsche Cars GB has been running driving days for its customers, and the company sees this book as an extension of this desire for driver education to promote road safety.

A laudable aim, and the elements look promising. The core of the book, practical driving advice, is sandwiched between an outline history of the marque and a more detailed look at the racing, plus a chapter on the company’s technical achievements — and if any firm is entitled to boast in that area it is Porsche.

However, the message is in danger of being obscured by the medium. Verbose and complicated English obscures and, worse, confuses what should be vital lessons for every driver, not just drivers of sports-cars. Repetitious and laboured explanations struggle to make up for insufficient diagrams; why waste print describing a particular road-sign instead of illustrating it? Many high-quality colour photographs of Porsches doing various things try to lighten the text-book style, but with little effect. In general the advice is excellent, being essentially High Performance Course tactics, but what a pity it is so leaden. If you have a Porsche on order, a copy of this hard-back volume will arrive with it; read it for the useful chapters on the driving characteristics of your new car. If you want to better your driving, buy the dated but clear IAM or Police driving manuals. GC