Well, shit. All of that sucks. I wanna point and laugh that you are surprised that a rear-engine vehicle with three people in it failed to respond predictably to steering input, when - practically speaking - there was basically zero weight over the front wheels... but I am, quite honestly, talking out my ass with information probably gleaned from a combination of Top Gear, my father, and Elliott, who all hate Porsches with a passion. (Well, except for Hamster.) And, more importantly, I would also be laughing at a potential car wreck involving your lovely wife and angel of a daughter, and even I am not that much of a dick. So let's stick with "diesel spill". The book and the movie? It's shit when you knew that this was the most likely outcome for both projects from Day 1. But getting to the end and seeing them actually turn out that way has got to be defeating. Sorry about that, man. I've always expected you to have success along the lines of Andy Weir, (but without Reddit). Maybe it is still coming down the pike... The same wind that took your MC cover destroyed my RV cover too. Now the side mirrors are sticking out like ears from big gaping holes in the fabric, and a tear along the roof seam will destroy the whole thing the next time we get anything over 15 MPH. There's another $300 to Amazon coming up during the holiday season... Sorry for the shit sandwich, my friend. And... who the fuck drives an HDMI cable through the goddamn wall?!?
So from a physics standpoint, there are four wheels on two axles. If there is an engine behind the rear axle and nothing up front, there is a load of - not zero, for sure, but we'll call it "neutral." Put a driver in front and the weight loading is neutral plus driver on the front axle - there is more load on the front axle than there would be with no driver. Obviously, the car is not designed to be driven with no driver. But just as obviously, when you put two extra passengers in, there is more load on the front axle, not less. More than that, the argument is that Porsches spin the rear wheels, not the front, which is exactly what happened, but c'mon. The car weighs 3000 lbs. A woman and a 4yo is the difference between drivability and doom? You went where I did - "well everybody knows that Porsches suck and obviously you're a bad driver if you don't know that." But really? Bad enough that you can get a double pirouette in street conditions at 40mph in 2nd gear? 'cuz I'll bet you could give me the keys to a Corvette and point me towards a skating rink and I'd have a challenging time repeating my performance. And once more with feeling - I drove the damn thing 1500 miles in wet and dry, with a passenger in the front seat (a passenger who outweighs my wife and daughter, I might add). If I can do this at 50mph in the rain with no surprises, I should be able to do this at 40. The book was at a top tier agency, was given over to a top-tier editor of their choosing, was edited to reflect the changes of that editor and then, because of the bullshit rules that have grown up around NaNoWriMo and its ilk, I'm not allowed to contact my agent more often than every twelve weeks. This was not the most likely outcome - until my agent decided not to be an agent, and her boss wasn't as enthusiastic as she was. It's really easy to say "well what else were you expecting" when clearly, I wasn't expecting this.
Sorry. Text-based medium. I agree that the car should not have spun. I also know the reputation of Porsche better than I know the cars themselves. (Hence my equivocation.) And you and I both know that 99.999999% of all books written don't get published, and work done for free is always treated poorly by those we do it for. We know both these things, and yet we still do them. The fact that you started at the 75-meter line in a 100-meter race, and were still eaten by a tiger before you crossed the finish line is just the world sticking in a final fuck you for good measure. And that sucks.