Prospective 981 GT4 Owners Discussion Forum.
Discussion
mdianuk said:
Tim Burton (shmee150's) GT4 collection video should any of you wish to see it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH9m885sBaQ
Didn't realise the GT4 had no parking sensors, that may be a pain!
That's one extra I would have most certainly ticked as after 2 cars you get use to them!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH9m885sBaQ
Didn't realise the GT4 had no parking sensors, that may be a pain!
itsybitsy said:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eH9m885sBaQ
What can I say !
I,ll help you, "gay seats". ;-) What can I say !
My experience of parking cameras is don't bother. I have them on my Lambo present and previous and to be honest I don't trust it or use them. Sure you can see butt it quite limited and judging distance is quite difficult you will depend on your sensors. Ironically they're better in the dark.
Only a small car anyway and you have mirrors and some rear vision
Only a small car anyway and you have mirrors and some rear vision
Steve Rance said:
How far is it from the drivers seat to the rear PU in a Cayman?
It's all about what you get use too! Never had sensors before and never wanted them but had them in my SPYDER so got use to them and would always tick that box!if I never had them then perhaps I would never tick that box!As a Porsche GT enthusiast, today was a pretty good day. Started early, with a nice clear morning and taking my 6RS out for it’s first drive in good while (work, holidays, work, young child, work etc), was taking it get some detailing work done and decided to take the longer and more exciting route (circa 50xmiles). After dropping it off I jumped on a train to go collect my new GT4 (told you it was a good day). Was chatting to my friend, who also has a GT4 on order and he asked ‘have you ever even seen a GT4 in the flesh?”, (having not yet had my PEC day) “no” said I, “….haven’t even driven a Cayman before”, but given that the first 911 I ever drove was my GT3RS, then I wasn’t too worried about this.
Arrived at the OPC, where they had a few nice piece of metal around (997.2RS, 991GT3, 911GTS, CaymanGTS), but couldn’t spot any GT4’s. Met with the salesman, who I had been hounding every day for the last fortnight for updates and the first thing he says “Do you want to see it” – “Hell yes” is my immediate reply. We walked through the show room and through the glass I catch a glimpse of a shiny black spoiler, the grin on my face is immediately incontrollable. At first sight I am smitten, I wasn’t sure originally about the black paint, but as soon as I see it in the flesh I’m sold, it will be a pain to keep looking nice but looks stunning, works great with the Ti coloured wheels and with the curves and wings on the car gives it a stealthy Imperial Tie Fighter look. We then start it up and if I wasn’t besotted before the spin tinkling exhaust bark on start up more than seals the deal.
So after some formalities and bit of a panic with dodgy debit card machine, she’s officially mine. Picking up the car in Aberdeen gave me great access to some fantastic roads for an elongated drive home. Being very mindful of the run in advice (keeping below 4K revs), new tyres, new brakes and the nigh on impossibility of replacing it if it gets binned, I take it pretty easy through the Aberdeenshire countryside and out towards the Cairngorm national park. One of the main reasons I picked this route was to drive over the old military road that takes you past The Lecht ski centre and down toward Tomintoul, this must be one of the most stunning pieces of road in the whole country. By this stage in the afternoon the sun is out and as the road rises sharply and through a series of sharp and hair pin turns, I get more feel for the cars handling and ride. I have tried the two different suspension settings (Sport and Normal) and over this varying and undulating terrain I am becoming more and more impressed with the ride quality and handling. In ‘Normal’ the car feels very natural and whilst you would never describe it as luxurious, it never feels uncomfortable and always compliant, whilst body roll is always kept in check, the most impressive thing I found was that at no point did the car or even individual wheels feel disconnected from the road surface, always glued and always communicative. In terms of communication and steering feel, I don’t think the car is quite up there with the 6RS, but in fairness that’s like comparing someones ability to run fast to Usain bolt, or tennis skills to Rodger Federer. There appears to be a very, very slight vagueness/hesitation to the steering just off centre, but that’s me really struggling to be critical and it was running brand new tyres, so we’ll see how it’s like with a few K on the clock. My only other observation with the handing is that, despite not pushing on, I definitely got the impression it would understeer way before oversteering, but I think this could be easily changed with some ARB monkeying and I wasn’t about to try and force the tail out too much on my first drive.
So from the driving Nirvana that was the Old Military road bathed in Autumnal sunshine, we reach the opposite end of the UK driving scale and hit an A9 splattered with 40-mile an hour average speed cameras. Thankfully this doesn’t last long and we are onto the A86 towards Fort William. Along this swooping road that snakes along the banks of Loch Laggan all radio signals etc are well lost and so I drop the window, hit the sports exhaust button and again I am very impressed with sound of the exhaust and while I think my ‘6RS makes a better ‘engine’ note with the mechanical singing of the Mezger and LW flywheel, the ‘4 does appear to have the sweeter exhaust note, a lovely throaty bark . This makes me long to open her up and see what she sounds like at the top end, but I am rigidly sticking to the 4k rev limit, this is tough as just before 4k I can hear the exhaust start to really sing and the temptation is high. Sticking to the low rev limit, it is very obvious the engine longs to rev and it picks up very quickly, making blipping the throttle very easy.
I become more and more impressed with the low down torque the engine has available, not to mention the cool ‘performance’ dash display showing where you are on the torque/power curve . Whilst not fully utilising the gearing due to my rev limit restrictions, the car happily pulls from very low down and whilst I don’t yet feel able to properly comment on the whole gearing question, this fat lump of torque is making me more confident that the car can deal with high gearing, without ruining it’s driveability. The gear change itself is definitely worthy of note, the lever being perfect positioned and requiring only a slight pop of the wrist to engage another cog. Gear changes become smoother as I become more acquainted with the clutch. I drove the car for many hours today, including through stop/start traffic and through consecutive bends but I never found the clutch overly heavy, I did find it quite long though requiring to be depressed almost all the way to the carpet to ensure an optimised gear change
Driving towards Fort William it started to rain and then as I got to Glen Coe the heavens had fully opened to the point the wipers were struggling to keep up. There was a lot of water run off and puddles in the road, but the car and especially the MSPC-2’s seemed to cope very well with it . After having some previous ‘moments’ with original cups driving through standing water I was cautious having never driven the Cup-2’s before, but they appeared to take it all in their stride, this combined with the balance of the car meant the only thing impeding my progress was the fading visibility and some very timid traffic. The rain stayed on all the way home, but after every bend my confidence in the car and the level of grip available grew and grew. I try to avoid driving the 6RS in the rain, but when I have been caught out, I’ve always found it very capable and once I get more dialled in with the required driving style for the GT4 I am very confident it will also go very well in the wet. The other thing more and more impressing me is the ‘Sport’ modes auto-blipping. I normally like to rev-match myself, and for me this is one of the (many) joys of a manual transmission, but this system appears to do it extremely well and down changes become almost sequential box quick, the blips on downshift becoming very addictive and forcing you to drive with the window cracked (even in the pishing rain) just so you can hear it. I will experiment more with doing this myself, but for the cars first ever outing the auto feature proved fair irresistible.
Will do some more objective comparisons between the ‘6RS and the ‘4, but my initial feeling is the ‘6RS is def’ more ‘special’ and trumps the ‘4 for feel, feedback and sense of occasion, but the ‘4 I believe will prove more exploitable and useable. In terms of outright pace I don’t think there would be much in it, if both on similar tyres and piloted by someone with the suitable skills to make the most of their respective attributes.
So after nearly 290miles, I made it home, tired but very happy with my first impressions of the GT4. Can’t wait to get the car properly run in and then really see what it can do and what it sounds like.
Arrived at the OPC, where they had a few nice piece of metal around (997.2RS, 991GT3, 911GTS, CaymanGTS), but couldn’t spot any GT4’s. Met with the salesman, who I had been hounding every day for the last fortnight for updates and the first thing he says “Do you want to see it” – “Hell yes” is my immediate reply. We walked through the show room and through the glass I catch a glimpse of a shiny black spoiler, the grin on my face is immediately incontrollable. At first sight I am smitten, I wasn’t sure originally about the black paint, but as soon as I see it in the flesh I’m sold, it will be a pain to keep looking nice but looks stunning, works great with the Ti coloured wheels and with the curves and wings on the car gives it a stealthy Imperial Tie Fighter look. We then start it up and if I wasn’t besotted before the spin tinkling exhaust bark on start up more than seals the deal.
So after some formalities and bit of a panic with dodgy debit card machine, she’s officially mine. Picking up the car in Aberdeen gave me great access to some fantastic roads for an elongated drive home. Being very mindful of the run in advice (keeping below 4K revs), new tyres, new brakes and the nigh on impossibility of replacing it if it gets binned, I take it pretty easy through the Aberdeenshire countryside and out towards the Cairngorm national park. One of the main reasons I picked this route was to drive over the old military road that takes you past The Lecht ski centre and down toward Tomintoul, this must be one of the most stunning pieces of road in the whole country. By this stage in the afternoon the sun is out and as the road rises sharply and through a series of sharp and hair pin turns, I get more feel for the cars handling and ride. I have tried the two different suspension settings (Sport and Normal) and over this varying and undulating terrain I am becoming more and more impressed with the ride quality and handling. In ‘Normal’ the car feels very natural and whilst you would never describe it as luxurious, it never feels uncomfortable and always compliant, whilst body roll is always kept in check, the most impressive thing I found was that at no point did the car or even individual wheels feel disconnected from the road surface, always glued and always communicative. In terms of communication and steering feel, I don’t think the car is quite up there with the 6RS, but in fairness that’s like comparing someones ability to run fast to Usain bolt, or tennis skills to Rodger Federer. There appears to be a very, very slight vagueness/hesitation to the steering just off centre, but that’s me really struggling to be critical and it was running brand new tyres, so we’ll see how it’s like with a few K on the clock. My only other observation with the handing is that, despite not pushing on, I definitely got the impression it would understeer way before oversteering, but I think this could be easily changed with some ARB monkeying and I wasn’t about to try and force the tail out too much on my first drive.
So from the driving Nirvana that was the Old Military road bathed in Autumnal sunshine, we reach the opposite end of the UK driving scale and hit an A9 splattered with 40-mile an hour average speed cameras. Thankfully this doesn’t last long and we are onto the A86 towards Fort William. Along this swooping road that snakes along the banks of Loch Laggan all radio signals etc are well lost and so I drop the window, hit the sports exhaust button and again I am very impressed with sound of the exhaust and while I think my ‘6RS makes a better ‘engine’ note with the mechanical singing of the Mezger and LW flywheel, the ‘4 does appear to have the sweeter exhaust note, a lovely throaty bark . This makes me long to open her up and see what she sounds like at the top end, but I am rigidly sticking to the 4k rev limit, this is tough as just before 4k I can hear the exhaust start to really sing and the temptation is high. Sticking to the low rev limit, it is very obvious the engine longs to rev and it picks up very quickly, making blipping the throttle very easy.
I become more and more impressed with the low down torque the engine has available, not to mention the cool ‘performance’ dash display showing where you are on the torque/power curve . Whilst not fully utilising the gearing due to my rev limit restrictions, the car happily pulls from very low down and whilst I don’t yet feel able to properly comment on the whole gearing question, this fat lump of torque is making me more confident that the car can deal with high gearing, without ruining it’s driveability. The gear change itself is definitely worthy of note, the lever being perfect positioned and requiring only a slight pop of the wrist to engage another cog. Gear changes become smoother as I become more acquainted with the clutch. I drove the car for many hours today, including through stop/start traffic and through consecutive bends but I never found the clutch overly heavy, I did find it quite long though requiring to be depressed almost all the way to the carpet to ensure an optimised gear change
Driving towards Fort William it started to rain and then as I got to Glen Coe the heavens had fully opened to the point the wipers were struggling to keep up. There was a lot of water run off and puddles in the road, but the car and especially the MSPC-2’s seemed to cope very well with it . After having some previous ‘moments’ with original cups driving through standing water I was cautious having never driven the Cup-2’s before, but they appeared to take it all in their stride, this combined with the balance of the car meant the only thing impeding my progress was the fading visibility and some very timid traffic. The rain stayed on all the way home, but after every bend my confidence in the car and the level of grip available grew and grew. I try to avoid driving the 6RS in the rain, but when I have been caught out, I’ve always found it very capable and once I get more dialled in with the required driving style for the GT4 I am very confident it will also go very well in the wet. The other thing more and more impressing me is the ‘Sport’ modes auto-blipping. I normally like to rev-match myself, and for me this is one of the (many) joys of a manual transmission, but this system appears to do it extremely well and down changes become almost sequential box quick, the blips on downshift becoming very addictive and forcing you to drive with the window cracked (even in the pishing rain) just so you can hear it. I will experiment more with doing this myself, but for the cars first ever outing the auto feature proved fair irresistible.
Will do some more objective comparisons between the ‘6RS and the ‘4, but my initial feeling is the ‘6RS is def’ more ‘special’ and trumps the ‘4 for feel, feedback and sense of occasion, but the ‘4 I believe will prove more exploitable and useable. In terms of outright pace I don’t think there would be much in it, if both on similar tyres and piloted by someone with the suitable skills to make the most of their respective attributes.
So after nearly 290miles, I made it home, tired but very happy with my first impressions of the GT4. Can’t wait to get the car properly run in and then really see what it can do and what it sounds like.
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