And the debate will have no end.

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
-Bill Clinton

Subjectivity becomes irrational at a point. Clearly professional performance race car drivers measure speed and handling as a performance metric. So I will too. Chalk those 2 up to the 991.

But in this forum we get politically correct and say "John Doe doesn't measure performance the same way the professionals car drivers do. He measures it as how big his grin is." Ok. Fine - but Porsche builds ever faster and better handling cars to win races and offers reasonable facsimiles to the public for sale to generate revenue and maintain a business. The factory engineers would throw their hands up if they read this forum.

Visuals are subjective. Performance is objective.

 

So you switch the debate from luxury and comfort to professional drivers. We are talking about 911 buyers and what they look for in a car.

And as someone mentioned for racing these electric gizmos are not going to be there. So don't compare this car with the gt3 cup cars that are winning the rolex24. Thats just ridiculous.

Now as for your argument

Take two drivers who have never been on a track and place one in a GTR and one in a 997.2. Who wins? You bet your bottom dollar the GTR guy wins. Is the GTR the better car? Did Porsche make a mistake with the 997.2.

I don't think so....but with your logic they made a big mistake.

There more to owning a Porsche than numbers. It connecting with the car and extracting all you can out of it. And like I have said there is nothing wrong with the 991 for doing this. It just may be, and again I say maybe more fun to do in a 997.

 

No, I was just addressing your ridiculous and repetitive comment that performance lacks a definition and means different things to different people. No changing the argument at all - this thread has addressed both luxury and performance. Performance is performance and readily definable used when in the sports car context.

Use the term "enjoyment" instead of "performance" and we might agree.

The 2013 GTR will PERFORM better than the 991 CS. Do I like it better? NO. Don't keep blurring definition.

"As I mentioned elsewhere..."-- Buckwheat 986

 

You lost me on this one. I don't think I've blurred anything. I find the 991 another variant of the 911 line. Its a nice variant with some strong points. IMHO it's not worth moving from a 997.2 at this time. I felt move power and umph with the 997.2 I test drove OVER THE SAME COURSE. My apologies that I can't translate your performance numbers into better pants in the seat experience. Maybe on the track or on another test drive.

And I'm sorry that the engineers in Germany won't like my thoughts on this. Talk about repetitive!

 

Buckwheat,
The push back in your seat feel, I did not get either. Having owned the 997.2S/PDK, it only did that if you punched it in the sweet spot. At some speeds it would not downshift into the right gear and right rpm and thus would not give you full torque, but sometimes it would, I just needed to learn those spots. Hopefully that was the reason. Or maybe I have a clouded perception of speed with my Gt2 and CTT, when I punch it the torque literally lifts my feet off the floor!
Manifold,
You really did an excellent job explaining the feel off the drive. I was not as impressed with the dashboard as so many said they felt such an amazing difference from the dash. The two best things of this car over the previous model I thought was the exterior looks, and tft screen within the gauges...I love it on my Cayenne.
The ride was much smoother, but the route we took could not really give me a sense of handling, nimbleness, or steering feel.
If I still had my 997.2S I would not trade up for this.

 

And that's fine -

Rather my point is with your loose definition of performance:

"As I mentioned somewhere else it depends on what performance means to the buyer." --Buckwheat

Nope. "Enjoyment" means something different to buyer - "performance" is definable in a sports car context. And the 991 strictly outperforms an equivalent 997. You keep mixing the 2 concepts.

You've "mentioned it somewhere else" (your words) so I brought up my opinion on your loose definition of performance.

 

i have recently read an interview with Patrick Simon, who held the Ring record for couple of years in a street legal EDO 996GT2, that when he raced the 24h Nürburgring in that stock 997.2 GT3RS (together with Chris Harris, Roland Asch, H.v. Saurma) 2 years ago (amazingly finnished 13th overall!), he raced the car with ESP on cause he said the system was so perfectly balanced, he was simply quicker the whole time with it on. we will see what new gizmos find their way into the 991 race cars, and i definitely think some may find their way into it, cause they could make sense.

 

OK...yes......Performance numbers are certainly definable.

But I still stand by my thought that for many buyers performance transcends the numbers.

 

1000x agree

 

And lets agree that you have a great car coming, drive the hell out of it, report everything back to us and make us all jealous!!!!

 

On or around Feb 26th. I'll take some vids and a ton of photos for the forum.

 

I thought I was going to be in the minority but +1 on the OP comments. Drove one yesterday and came away underwhelmed. It's a really great car with nice luxury amenities and amazing performance. It's just not for me. The whole car felt muted. If I wanted a hot daily driver with effortless performance, this would be the car. I want to be part of the process; to be flooded with feedback. It didn't do that. I believe this car will sell like hotcakes because it will make the average Joe drive like a hero. If that becomes my goal in the future, I think I'd take a GT-R first.

 

I do think some of the debate is simply due to the ambiguity of words, even though we all basically agree with each other. 'Performance' is especially ambiguous. If we mean objective performance, certainly the 991 is superior to the 997 in terms of 0-60, lap time, etc.

But I would say that things like throttle sensitivity, feedback through the steering wheel and brake pedal, feel of the car through the butt, the way the car rolls when cornering, etc. are aspects of performance, though harder to measure and therefore more in the subjective category. You could say that these are really part of 'enjoyment', but then things like sound of the car and even comfort could also be considered part of enjoyment, though they have little to do with performance.

Ultimately, evaluation of a car is multidimensional, and we all put different weight on various factors, so hopefully there will be enough 991 variants to cover nearly everyone's wants.

On another note, I should add that, since I'm definitely a manual guy, the fact that I drove a PDK may have diminished my enjoyment. That was certainly my experience when comparing manual vs PDK versions of the 997, Boxster, and Cayman, so a manual 991 could still be a winner if they didn't mess up the 7MT.

 

I have a 2012 GT-R and a 2006 997S and you guys are absolutely right. The GT-R is much faster than 997s, 991s, etc and requires very little effort to drive. And for that very reason I still love to drive my 997 because I feel connected, the car feels more raw and natural. I don't think the 991 is for me either because I have the GT-R.

 

You guys have given me the courage to confess that I might take a GT-R over a (PDK) 991 as well (but not over my 997). In some respects, the 991 moves the 911 into more direct competition with the GT-R, and arguably the GT-R is the unbeatable master of its own game.

For anyone who hasn't driven a GT-R, I urge you to do so - that thing is crazy!