PH Blog: whole lotta Porsches
Brace yourself - there's going to be a lot of talk of glorified Beetles this week on PH
Coming to PH soon - the all-new 911
Porsche is launching the new 911 over in LA so the flight over was an excellent opportunity to really get to grips with the press pack. It's complex enough I've even had to draw a flow chart in my press pack to make sense of the various option combos. And, I must confess, I'm a little worried.
There is an awful lot of technology on this new car. Sure, you'll have got the headlines already - 100mm longer in the wheelbase, part-aluminium construction, electric steering, seven-speed manual gearbox and the rest. But our drive in the GT3 RS 4.0earlier in the year inspired a lot of PH chatter about analogue versus digital cars and there's no escaping the fact Porsche has thrown the gadget toybox at the 991.
911 got gadgets but has done got soul?
Such is the march of technology but when a firm like Porsche has such mastery of the fundamentals of making great cars - Cayman R, GT3 911s and all - that rely less on gadgets and more on expertise and experience it seems a shame to smother all that with an Audi-like obsession with tech for tech's sake.
Black Series promises old-school thrills
It'll certainly be interesting to see how the experiences of our 911-owning carpoolers help put the new Porsche in some sort of context too. And if you fancy your 911-shaped thrills minus the computer enhancement we'll have plenty of tempting ways to scratch the itch on the used market.
Stay tuned and, in the meantime, enjoy our post-Rally GB blow-out - from Mk2 Escortsto Chevettes and a breakdown of how Loeb continues to dominateour bobble hats remain very firmly in place!
Dan
To disgress slightly, I think the big problem Porsche have with styling is that they don't make pretty cars (even something like a Carrera GT, superb car though it is, strikes me as being purposeful rather than beautiful). The 911 shape is so familiar it'll never change, and recent generations of the car - 997 especially - look great (though IMO the rear of the car always looks more balanced with a Turbo / RS rear wing). But here's a scenario that happens most days - I'm driving along and, because I'm interested in cars, I'm always looking out for something vaguely different or exotic. So I spot a Porsche, but what model is it? From a distance, superficially, the front ends of Boxsters, Caymans and 911s all look similar, and it's only when I get closer do I realise what sort of Porsche I'm seeing - usually a Boxster, because they're everywhere. Anyone else have this problem or is it just me? I think the worst offender is the Cayman, because it's styling is so reminiscent of the 911 shape. Obviously the Cayman is a more compact car, but I imagine that many non-enthusiasts will see one and assume that it's a 911. So if that is the case, does the Cayman driver care that his car is being mistaken for the more 'prestigious' model, or - in Richard Hammond's oft-repeated scenario - does this reinforce the inferiority complex of the person who owns a Cayman because they can't afford a 911? (I personally don't buy into Hammond's argument, btw. My issue with the 911, Boxster and Cayman is their front end styling - I think that they can be differentiated easily enough in terms of their relative markets and pricing points.)
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