What's a purist ?

[timbo999]

IMI A said:

Someone who's into lightweight RWD cars. Manual gear change , steering with feel and normally aspirated engines...

And therefore buys a Lotus.

HTH

[Roundm]

timbo999 said:

And therefore buys a Lotus.

HTH

Or a Noble, Caterham, Atom etc

[craigjm]

n4aat said:

IBut for me a pure driving experience is one where you live or die by your own inputs and talents and not those of a computer quietly and imperceptibly admonishing your mistakes, which also means that you never learn from them and improve your skills.

Wont be able to learn much if your mistake kills you

[Porsche911R]

Slippydiff said:

I very much doubt the real purists will mourn their passing, they were the result of some inspired tinkering by the engineers at Stuttgart, but hardly the stuff of legend you'd have us believe, and certainly nothing close to the focused flyweight original 911R.

The GT4 is step in the right direction, but the chocolate front turrets and hopeless gearing show there's room for improvement still. If they produce a GT4 R/RS with another 35hp, decent gearing, put it on a proper weight loss program and use a bodyshell fit for purpose, it might well be considered a car for the modern day Porsche purist.

Let's see in another 30 years on these cars you dislike so much :-)
Having ran my R selling and buying another and still owning a GT4. The R is still a nicer car to drive.

So it depends what you mean by purists as they are the bearded matching numbers air cooled crew.
Then you get a strong GT3 crew
Now we get the new owners trophy car crew.
we get the 911 or nothing crew.
And last of course you get the classic crew which are now telephone number money and take a lot of looking after.

The Cayman R crew just like driving a great car , and it does how have a noticed following at last.
With many ex gt3 and many ex 964 owning coming to it.

For driving in the UK the R is hard to beat for a modern car. The gt4 cannot match it at double the price.

[IMI A]

Roundm said:

timbo999 said:

And therefore buys a Lotus.

HTH

Or a Noble, Caterham, Atom etc

Or a Macca F1

Personally I think low weight is very important for this type of car. A Dodge Viper SRT is an analogue car but it for sure aint a purists car more so a heavy brute of a car. Nether are bog standard 993 C2 or 964 C2 purists cars as they are far too heavy and soft. Yes they are analogue cars but the low weight in their RS cousins has an almost disproportionate effect on the heightened feedback you get back from the car. I also think the power unit and the delivery of the power has quite a bit to do with what a purist likes. For example the 964 RS and 993 RS in my opinion do not have as exciting power units IMO as say the 1972 2.7 RS probably because the free revving almost inertia free nature of that engine is exaggerated disproportionately by the fact the first RS only weighed in at 960 kgs.

I think size is important too. Interesting Gordon Murray used the 993 as template for size of the F1. It only weighs in at 1140kgs. Surely the ultimate car for the purist?

[IMI A]

Oh and no electronics like stability control or rear wheel steer etc. Will just about allow ABS!

[Roundm]

timbo999 said:

And therefore buys a Lotus.

HTH

Or a Noble, Caterham, Atom etc

[Sparkyhd]

A purist is a person stuck in an arbitrary period of time. Some regret starter motors, others synchromesh. It's all arbitrary and there's nothing pure about it. No opinion or belief makes sense or is justifiable.

I'm sure if Ferdinand could have got his hands on a cost effective turbo when he originally hacked the VW parts bin he wouldn't have wasted time upping the engine to 6 cylinders but because of historical necessity some believe 6 is 'pure'. This is how religions start.

[craigjm]

Sparkyhd said:

I'm sure if Ferdinand could have got his hands on a cost effective turbo when he originally hacked the VW parts bin he wouldn't have wasted time upping the engine to 6 cylinders but because of historical necessity some believe 6 is 'pure'. This is how religions start.

Exactly this.

[ORD]

Rubbish. Anyone with half a clue knows why 6 cylinders are massively better than 4.

[Orangecurry]

craigjm said:

Sparkyhd said:

I'm sure if Ferdinand could have got his hands on a cost effective turbo when he originally hacked the VW parts bin he wouldn't have wasted time upping the engine to 6 cylinders but because of historical necessity some believe 6 is 'pure'. This is how religions start.

Exactly this.

Almost everything he said there is wrong

Mezger designed the flat-six, and that was from his experience as a race engine designer - I believe his first race engine in the 1950s was a flat-eight for F1.

[craigjm]

Orangecurry said:

Almost everything he said there is wrong

Mezger designed the flat-six, and that was from his experience as a race engine designer - I believe his first race engine in the 1950s was a flat-eight for F1.

I dont care whether it was Ferdinand, Mezger or Fritz who designed what or what not. The point is that as an engineer someone like Ferdinand Porsche would have used the best technology available to him at the time to go as fast as he could. If PDK gearboxes and turbos had been available just after the second world war do you think he would have passed them up?

[Sparkyhd]

ORD said:

Rubbish. Anyone with half a clue knows why 6 cylinders are massively better than 4.

I'm not arguing that either way. But if someone argues one is more pure than another they become a religious zealot. The title of this thread is "what's a purist" and not 6 or 4. Please stop claiming your 6 religion is the only path.

[Ozzie Osmond]

In Kabbalistic Judaism the number 666 represents not the number of the beast but the creation and perfection of the world. The world was created in 6 days, and there are 6 cardinal directions (North, South, East, West, Up, Down). 6 is also to be the number of cylinders in a fine engine. (Well, wither that or the numerical value of one of the letters of God's name...)

[Sparkyhd]

Ozzie Osmond said:

In Kabbalistic Judaism the number 666 represents not the number of the beast but the creation and perfection of the world. The world was created in 6 days, and there are 6 cardinal directions (North, South, East, West, Up, Down). 6 is also to be the number of cylinders in a fine engine. (Well, wither that or the numerical value of one of the letters of God's name...)

I can see you've thought this through. I now accept 6 cylinders is the kosher option.

[FrankCayman]

mollytherocker said:

I see a purist as someone who craves the unfiltered simplicity of the original Porsche DNA.

Its not just about lightness, its about being connected to the car and road as directly as possible.

Its about your actions having a direct and proportionate effect on what the car does, no matter what the outcome

Its certainly not about having your inputs monitored, managed and altered within a set of safe parameters!

......but how far does that go....a 911 GT cup car??

[FrankCayman]

Must say, the terms 'purist' and 'enthusiast' I find a bit arrogant and pointless ....I particularly find the phrase 'sports car' a little childish. They are just empty descriptions used to form a pointless argument.

[CarreraLightweightRacing]

I think it is a great question. The problem is there are infinite subjective answers. To me, "what's a purist or pure?":

-Perfect
-Clean, free of impurities
-Unmixed, unblended, uniform composition
All of which generally relate to scientific definitions.

There are few road cars that get close to these interpretations of pure. Mac F1, CGT & Zonda perhaps.
S1 Elise, Caterham... also fit this description but I have deliberately excluded these cars as they are so one-dimensional.
For me the closest 911 to fit the 'purist' title would probably be the ST.

IMI A and mollytherocker pretty much sum up what pure means to me in terms of what and how a pure car should deliver.

[n4aat]

craigjm said:

Wont be able to learn much if your mistake kills you

Ha. Yes. But there are always opportunities to experiment in relative safety.

[Slippydiff]

Porsche911R said:

Let's see in another 30 years on these cars you dislike so much

Straight back at you David, but substitute the 996 GT3 (in all it's iterations) for the CR.

Porsche911R said:

The Cayman R crew just like driving a great car , and it does how have a noticed following at last.

And the same was true with the 996 GT3 8-12 years ago. It also follows that when/if CR prices rise and they get old, they too will end being wrapped up in cotton wool in de-humidified garages or sold on.

Porsche911R said:

With many ex gt3 and many ex 964 owning coming to it.

Means nothing, as there comes a point where lots will get bored/fed up of driving 11-16 year old cars (or in the case of the 964 owners you refer to, older still) with all that entails (from a cost perspective).
I know it will come as a massive shock, but even the CR will start to wear out when owners/multiple owners start piling the miles on them (be it hard road use or heavy track use), and your fabled £10k rebuilds will then become a necessity to keep them fresh too.

Just as with the 964 RS, 993 RS, 996 GT3 and 997 GT3 that needed money chucking at them to keep them fresh, so too will the CR. Rest assured, from this perspective history will repeat itself.

Of course they'll be the likes of your CR driven frequently (and pampered to within an inch of it's life) some leggy cars that are kept in reasonably good condition, and they'll be utter dogs too. All will need money throwing at them to enable them to drive as their maker originally intended. And just as plenty of 996/997 GT3 owners did when those big bills loomed, CR owners will sell/trade their cars for something more modern/different or modify them.

Porsche911R said:

For driving in the UK the R is hard to beat for a modern car.

Quite possibly for you yes, but for hundreds (nee thousands) of other Porsche drivers, I'm afraid that's just not the case.

And for the record, unlike you I don't dislike every other car on the road apart from one I'm driving (though I do draw the line at Panamera's and Cayennes) neither do I dislike the CR, I just don't rate it anything like as highly as you.

Of course, if you'd take the time to write a eulogy to the CR in much the same way I wrote one about the 964 RS, I'd be willing to read all about the subtle nuances I clearly missed when I borrowed a CR from Porsche Swindon.