First Steps for the Irish Learner Driver.

The main priority for today’s Learner Driver should not be passing the Driving Test but embracing the philosophy of skills for life initially.

Surely passing the Driving Test is the main objective? Not So!

Your main objective should be to acquire the necessary skills that will keep you, your passengers and all other road users safe. This makes sense, but is not taken on board by a very large proportion of Irish learner Drivers, with the result that we have an appalling accident record here which impacts on the whole community.


The first and arguably most important step for the new driver is to enrol with a professional Driving School who will set the foundation for both basic and advanced skills and ensure that safety is a priority. The lack of basic skills throughout the motoring population is very widespread and stems from several inherent flaws which are only now beginning to be addressed by the Government.


Thankfully our membership of the European Club is forcing the various agencies that are involved in the whole motoring scene to take action and implement the various Directives on a structured time scale.


The Irish Driving Test only began in 1966 more than thirty years after the UK introduced that most feared of life events!
Most of the recent EU changes have usually taken effect here three or four years after the UK. These would comprise the Driver Theory Test, revised Test Marking Sheet, Provisional License revisions, and Mechanical Checks on the Practical Driving Test.


Aspects still to be rolled out will be Mandatory Tuition for Motorcycles and Cars and the long awaited Examination and Registration of Driving Instructors. One of the reasons for our poor standards on the roads, particularly within the young driver community is that Driving Instructor standards are not subject to scrutiny. It is quite commonplace to see Instructors giving tuition in a pupils car with no L plates displayed. This shows a complete disregard for the basic rule of Law and by extension the calibre of instruction has to be mediocre at best.


What can you expect on your first lesson with a Professional Instructor? Will you be taken into a city centre? Will you be taken on a high speed carriageway? Will you be driving off down the road in just five minutes? Absolutely not!


What will happen is a concentrated session covering many diverse subjects relating to both the workings of the car and all its equipment and a look at the current Driving Scene into which the new Driver is entering for the first time. An investigation of all the basic mechanics that are the responsibility of the Driver, and which now form part of the Driving Test, will take place, and a brief discussion on the current requirements of the Driving Test.


Once this is accomplished, the basic Cockpit Drill will be looked at along with all instrumentation and secondary controls. Following on from this section, a brief discussion on the use of the Gearbox will take place and then on to the most mystical of Car equipment …the Clutch. (That is of course assuming that we are driving a car with a manual Gearbox, with its accompanying Stick Shift.)


It surprises most beginners that it is the Clutch that moves the car and not the Gas pedal. In fact, since you are going to be on a level stretch of road for the first tentative steps, it is interesting to demonstrate that the Car does indeed move with the foot no where near the Gas Pedal.
This is the point at which we are learning the first real Driving Skill; that of understanding the Term “Biting Point” and how to recognise it.
In the very early stages, a complete mastery of being able to bring the Clutch to” Biting Point” and hold it steady is the key to Driving away smoothly in every different situation. No amount of gas pedal usage will move the car unless the clutch is at Biting Point first. Once the car begins to move, and is building up a little momentum, then the clutch can be fully released gently and the Gas pedal then comes into play.


Next follows a brief demonstration of the clutch control technique by the Instructor followed by the Pupil.
The sequence of moving off safely comes next, followed by the Real Thing, but of course it’s no use getting going if you then don’t know how to stop safely which will also be demonstrated. You are now on the move practising starting and stopping and the adrenalin is finally pumping after all the Theory!


Guess What? You will be doing the whole procedure in Reverse within a few minutes. Yes that’s right…Reversing! Reversing is such an integral part of every day driving that it’s something that can’t be left till later. If it is put off, then chances are that fear of failure will begin to creep in and that is not the object of Driving Lessons.


So there you have, in graphic (almost) detail, the first steps on your Driving Career. If you are going to progress steadily then you should be prepared to do plenty of homework in between your Lessons, with a pad and pen as well as reading the Notes which your Instructor will have given you!


There is plenty more where this came from, so take time to look at all the resources available and you should be well on the way to the basic apprentice stage after three or four weeks. The Driving Test is not a consideration at this stage and will only be addressed when you have a suitable level of skill built up over several months.

Porsche Before Porsche: Ferdinand’s First Fifty Years

Ferdinand Porsche was around 72 years old when the first hand-made, hand-beaten Porsche 356 rolled down the road at Gmund. It was 1948 but Porsche had started his career before the turn of the century.

Just what was he doing for his first fifty years?

The one word answer is “plenty”. A slightly longer answer is designing some of the top motoring icons and fastest cars of the twentieth century. Or, getting all the experience, knowledge and skills needed to produce one of the hottest and most charismatic lines of sports cars in the world.

It all started in the late nineteenth century. Porsche’s father was a tinsmith, but young Ferdinand preferred the new-fangled electricity. He worked for an electrical equipment manufacturer before designing electric automobiles for Lohner. The Lohner-Porsche, with electric motors in the front wheel hubs, (one of the first front-wheel drives), was exhibited at the Paris exhibition in 1900 and won a Grand Prize for 25 year old Porsche.

Porsche kept developing the Lohner. Motors in all four hubs made it one of the earliest four-wheel drives and a petrol engine and generator instead of batteries made it one of the first mixed drive vehicles. Porsche himself raced one of the petrol-electric cars.

In 1905, Porsche moved from Lohner to Austro-Daimler where he became technical Director, and later Managing Director. His first petrol car there was developed into the sports model that won the 1910 Prince Henry Trial.

Cars weren’t the only mechanical designs of the self-taught automotive genius. In 1912 he designed a four-cylinder aero engine. Its layout was a flattened X, almost a flat four.

World War I had Porsche working for the military, designing gun tractors, motorized artillery pieces and an enormous road train carrying an 81-ton gun and pulling four trailers each with eight-wheel drive. Total weight was 150 tons! It used the Lohner-Porsche method of electric motors in the hubs with a 20 liter, 150 hp traction engine providing the power.

In 1917 he received an honorary doctorate from Vienna Technical University.

Porsche turned to small cars after WWI, designing the Sascha, which could hit 89 mph with a tiny 1100 cc engine. These cars came first and second in their class in the 1921 Targa Florio. However, differences of opinion with other directors of Austro-Daimler led to a move to Daimler in Stuttgart, as Technical Director with a seat on the board.

Here Porsche fixed the poor performance of Daimler’s new two-liter supercharged race car, which went on to take the first three places in its class in the 1924 Targa Florio, including first place overall. Porsche was awarded another honorary doctorate, this time from Stuttgart University for his achievements.

At Daimler he designed one of the most famous cars of all time, the seven-liter six-cylinder supercharged Mercedes which progressed through the K and S series to the SS, SSK and SSKL. These cars dominated racing in 1928-30. As well, he worked on diesel engines for trucks and airplane engines.

Daimler merged with Benz in 1926, and the combined board rejected Porsche’s push for small and light Daimler-Benz cars. Porsche quit and moved to Steyr where he designed a large luxury car with a 5.3-liter straight-eight.

Steyr collapsed in the great depression though, and in 1930 Porsche was unemployed.

At the age of 55, when many people these days are taking early retirement, Porsche opened his own design bureau with a select group of engineers that he had previously worked with, including his own son Ferdinand “Ferry” Porsche.

His first job was the Wander W.17, a small medium-priced six-cylinder car. A small car for Zundapp followed. Named the Volksauto, it was an early ancestor of the Beetle, with a rear-mounted radial engine and fully independent suspension. It didn’t go into production because of an upturn in Zundapp’s normal market of motorcycles.

In 1932 Russia offered Porsche the job of State Designer. It was an attractive offer, but he turned it down.

Another tilt at a small car came from NSU. The Zundapp was dusted of to give the basic ideas, but this time a flat-four air-cooled engine was used at the rear, along with torsion bar suspension and swing axles at the back. Three prototypes were built before the project was abandoned, but the VW Beetle was getting closer.

Hot racing cars were still on the drawing board, with the Porsche team building a real monster for Auto-Union. It had a 4.4 liter supercharged V16 mounted at the back. With the weight at the back, swing axles, skinny tires and tremendous power, (it’s reported they could spin the wheels at 100 mph) these cars were a handful to drive, but they won races!

Meanwhile, Hitler was also gaining tremendous power, and one of his ideas was for a “people’s car”. Porsche got the job of designing it, and all his previous experience went into the best selling car ever, the Volkswagen Beetle. Three Beetles were turned into lightweight sports coupes for the proposed 1939 Berlin-Rome road race.

The race never took place because the Second World War started.

During WWII the Beetle was turned into the Kubelwagen, the German equivalent of the Jeep. Porsche designed the Tiger, Ferdinand and Maus Tanks, which all used the mixed drive with an internal combustion engine driving hub-mounted electric motors.

The war ended and the French threw Professor Porsche, son Ferry, and son-in-law Anton Piech in prison as war criminals. (Totally unfounded). Ferry was released after a few months but the Professor was kept with France demanding 1 million Francs for his release.

Ferry and the design bureau took on new projects to pay the money. When the Professor was released, the design of the very first Porsche branded sports car was well under way. This car was the 356, the start of a line of exciting thoroughbreds which are some of the most desirable sports cars in the world today.

Ferdinand Porsche may have had a humble start in life but he was an automotive genius and for half a century he designed some of the most magnificent machinery ever. The Porsche cars of today continue his legacy.