A light take on weight

While having the greenfrog at GT Performance, I had the chance to put it on Gabe Watson’s brand new scales.  To my surprise, the weight reading came out at 3054 lbs.  Digging out my Cayman R brochure, it clearly says “Curb weight: 2855 lbs”.  That is quite a significant difference of 199 lbs.  I am curious why.

It turns out, Porsche is taking the definition of “curb weight” a bit lightly in Cayman R’s marketing material.  By definition, curb weight (or unladen weight) is the total weight of a vehicle with standard equipment, all necessary operating consumables such as motor oil, transmission oil, coolant, A/C refrigerant, and a full tank of fuel, but without passenger or cargo.  It is exactly the 3054 lbs shown on the scale.  The 2855 lbs is in fact the dry (or empty) weight.  This is corroborated by Porsche Cayman owner’s manual, stating empty weight of Cayman S to be 2976 lbs, exactly 121 lbs more than the Cayman R.

Does the Cayman really carry close to 200 lbs of fluid?  The numbers do add up.  You probably wouldn’t guess coolant alone accounts for 55 lbs.  A full tank of fuel weighs a whopping 108 lbs.  And the rest: engine oil 14.9 lbs, transmission fluid 6.3 lbs, power steering fluid 11.9 lbs, brake fluid 0.9 lbs, windshield washer fluid 13.2 lbs.

Mystery solved, I hope.  Now when some one claims the weight of a car, you know more than enough to call him out, or at least confuse him more!

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