While Hollywood and fans mourns the death of Paul Walker, inevitably new questions arise such as whether or not his Porsche should’ve even been on the road. His 2005 Porsche Carrera GT had a history of crashes and unnerved many experienced drivers. To many racing professionals, Walker’s 2005 Porsche Carrera GT demanded vigilance with its 208mph top speed, 600hp and 5.7 liter race-derived V10 engine.
Walter Rohrl, famous world rally champion and Porsche Tester, once called the the Porsche Carrera GT
…the first car in my life that I drive and I feel scared…I came back into the pits and I was white
Top Gear driver, Jeremy Clarkson, warned that “you need to be awake to drive this car fast” and that “it’ll bite your head off” if you make a mistake. Jay Leno crashed the car going 165mph at Talladega Superspeedway in 2009. Even the former owner of Walker’s Porsche Carrera GT, IndyCar star Graham Rahal, cautioned,
It’s a race car for the street. Simple as that. It asks for and needs respect at all time. It’s not a car for people who don’t have experience driving high end vehicles or race cars really for that matter. However I believe Roger [Roger Rodas, the driver in the crash] was an experienced road racer. To me the CGT is in the top 3 vehicles ever made, possibly the greatest road car ever made. “
Porsche has previously admitted handling problems with the supercar, once paying out part of a $4.5m settlement for the death of Corey Rudl, a a prospective Carrera GT buyer, riding shotgun in a GT at a Ferrari Owner’s Club track day.
Put the deadliness of the GT’s history together with the fact that police haven’t ruled out drag racing [they have] and that sources have said his Porsche was 100+ mph in a 45 mph zone, it’s looking possible that inexperience, speeding, a fluid leak and/or the Porsche’s racing design all contributed to Walker’s death.