The 991 - first impressions of a duffer.
Discussion
I have today taken delivery of a shiny new Porsche 991 Carrera S PDK, and over Christmas I am looking forward to finding out how to drive it properly and discovering what the car is like to live with. Unfortunately, however, when I have done that it will be about time to give it back, because the car on my drive isn’t the one I ordered months ago, paid a deposit on and specced before just about anyone else. No, THAT car Porsche has for some reason decided not to build until sometime next year and they won’t tell anyone why. I have asked of course but the official response so far is “it’s none of your business”.
Now, that is a response I’d consider poor if I’d ordered a forty quid food processor from Argos, but when we are talking about a sports car costing about the same as a small house it’s dismal. My initial reaction was, as you might expect, to cancel the order but OPC Nottingham has bent over backwards to keep me in the deal and compensate for the lamentable disconnect between the hyperbole of Porsche’s marketing brochures and the reality of its attitude towards customers.
So anyway, Nottingham has generously lent me one of its cars for a couple of weeks and I plan to use the Christmas break to try it in as many situations as practical. Though not in the snow I hope.
As the title of this post suggests I consider myself to be a duffer and hence my opinion of the car is borne of my enjoyment of driving and love of nice cars, equally my complete disinterest in marketing guff, technical specifications and three and four-letter abbreviations (PDCC & PTV – WTF?).
My first impression of the car as I drove the salesman back to the showroom was that driven like a runabout it is quite happy and gives no impression that it is actually a very fast sports car. Only when I reached a stretch of dual carriageway and decided to press on a bit did the throaty growl of the sports exhaust kick in and betray exactly what it was. Noticeable too was how comfortable the car is when compared to previous 911s.
Once I was on my own in the car I was able to fiddle about with a few things and try to figure out how they work. I haven’t the slightest idea what options the car has on it other than sports exhaust and sports chrono and I think an hour or so with the manual will pay dividends. I do know, though, that it hasn’t got DAB radio and it isn’t available as an option either which is daft, frankly.
I am pleased to report that this car has the PDK buttons (not paddles) and they seem excellent to me. I am quite aware of course that this marks me out as an amateur and not one of the cognoscenti.
I would say that the 991 is immediately completely different from the 997. Yes, it is clearly from the same stable but the 991 is vastly more sophisticated, refined and technical.
Which brings me on to the steering. The one or two reviews of the car I could be bothered to read described the feeling as numb and I can see why they say that. Initially, I thought it was fine. No better than the 997, no worse, just different. Then I thought it was better because it is so immediate and it has little free play. But on a couple of occasions I took a corner and it didn’t behave as I was expecting. In fact I got a slightly seasick sensation when I anticipated 997 feedback that never came. Time will tell whether I get used to it.
Whilst I haven’t had an answer from Porsche as to why my car has been delayed there is a rumour that it’s because I elected not to have a sunroof. The demo car has one and, unless there is something very clever about the roof that is beyond me, I am very glad I haven’t ordered one. It’s a slightly curious arrangement whereby a big slab of roof slides back to reveal a not very big sunroof hole and it sort of sits there at the back of the car like a slipped wig revealing a bald patch. I have a suspicion that Porsche is trying to promote sunroofs by making most early cars with them, I do wonder though whether it might persuade people to order their car without one.
The 991 is undeniably attractive and it deals with the ugly Do-Do arse of the 997. From the front, though, it looks pretty similar to the previous car. As I waited to pay for fuel I looked out the window and without the mirrors on the doors I’d have been hard pressed to tell the 991 from a 997.
The engine and gearbox are wonderful, making the 991 a car that’s easy to bimble about in but a snarling racer when a bit too much (or just enough) right boot is applied. It doesn’t need a sport button... or a Sport Plus button but when that button is pressed oh... my... Lord. It might as well be labelled “Rocket Ship Mode”. The car takes off and screams up the gearbox with an unimaginable snarl, blipping the throttle on the down shifts. Absolutely incredible.
I need to work out how to stop the car erasing the adjustments I make each time I get it, especially the auto stop-start which I have turned off repeatedly because it’s lumpy, annoying and it detracts from the finesse of the experience. Also the driver’s seat seems to move fully back each time I get out but not return to my preferred position when I get in again. Somewhere there’s a button that will store this information.
Being a duffer I don’t tend to analyse cars logically, I tend to get a gut feeling about them. My feeling about the 997 was that it was a logical progression from its predecessors and the lineage from the air cooled cars was apparent. My feeling about the 991 is different. Yes, you can tell it’s a 911 but it has moved the game on more than the expected increment. The utter speed of the thing combined with smoothness and its lighting responses to the smallest input makes it slightly less like a sports car and more like some sort of intergalactic fighter craft. There is something about the driving experience that suggests you aren’t driving the car as much as piloting it.
Over Christmas I’ll be doing some family days out, B-road blasts and a couple of longer journeys so I should have a very good idea of whether my order for a 991 was a wise idea. I have a feeling, though, that when I give Nottingham back their demo in January I will be even more annoyed with Porsche – because the car I’ve got isn’t mine to keep and I’ll have to wait at least a couple of months for mine to show up.
Now, that is a response I’d consider poor if I’d ordered a forty quid food processor from Argos, but when we are talking about a sports car costing about the same as a small house it’s dismal. My initial reaction was, as you might expect, to cancel the order but OPC Nottingham has bent over backwards to keep me in the deal and compensate for the lamentable disconnect between the hyperbole of Porsche’s marketing brochures and the reality of its attitude towards customers.
So anyway, Nottingham has generously lent me one of its cars for a couple of weeks and I plan to use the Christmas break to try it in as many situations as practical. Though not in the snow I hope.
As the title of this post suggests I consider myself to be a duffer and hence my opinion of the car is borne of my enjoyment of driving and love of nice cars, equally my complete disinterest in marketing guff, technical specifications and three and four-letter abbreviations (PDCC & PTV – WTF?).
My first impression of the car as I drove the salesman back to the showroom was that driven like a runabout it is quite happy and gives no impression that it is actually a very fast sports car. Only when I reached a stretch of dual carriageway and decided to press on a bit did the throaty growl of the sports exhaust kick in and betray exactly what it was. Noticeable too was how comfortable the car is when compared to previous 911s.
Once I was on my own in the car I was able to fiddle about with a few things and try to figure out how they work. I haven’t the slightest idea what options the car has on it other than sports exhaust and sports chrono and I think an hour or so with the manual will pay dividends. I do know, though, that it hasn’t got DAB radio and it isn’t available as an option either which is daft, frankly.
I am pleased to report that this car has the PDK buttons (not paddles) and they seem excellent to me. I am quite aware of course that this marks me out as an amateur and not one of the cognoscenti.
I would say that the 991 is immediately completely different from the 997. Yes, it is clearly from the same stable but the 991 is vastly more sophisticated, refined and technical.
Which brings me on to the steering. The one or two reviews of the car I could be bothered to read described the feeling as numb and I can see why they say that. Initially, I thought it was fine. No better than the 997, no worse, just different. Then I thought it was better because it is so immediate and it has little free play. But on a couple of occasions I took a corner and it didn’t behave as I was expecting. In fact I got a slightly seasick sensation when I anticipated 997 feedback that never came. Time will tell whether I get used to it.
Whilst I haven’t had an answer from Porsche as to why my car has been delayed there is a rumour that it’s because I elected not to have a sunroof. The demo car has one and, unless there is something very clever about the roof that is beyond me, I am very glad I haven’t ordered one. It’s a slightly curious arrangement whereby a big slab of roof slides back to reveal a not very big sunroof hole and it sort of sits there at the back of the car like a slipped wig revealing a bald patch. I have a suspicion that Porsche is trying to promote sunroofs by making most early cars with them, I do wonder though whether it might persuade people to order their car without one.
The 991 is undeniably attractive and it deals with the ugly Do-Do arse of the 997. From the front, though, it looks pretty similar to the previous car. As I waited to pay for fuel I looked out the window and without the mirrors on the doors I’d have been hard pressed to tell the 991 from a 997.
The engine and gearbox are wonderful, making the 991 a car that’s easy to bimble about in but a snarling racer when a bit too much (or just enough) right boot is applied. It doesn’t need a sport button... or a Sport Plus button but when that button is pressed oh... my... Lord. It might as well be labelled “Rocket Ship Mode”. The car takes off and screams up the gearbox with an unimaginable snarl, blipping the throttle on the down shifts. Absolutely incredible.
I need to work out how to stop the car erasing the adjustments I make each time I get it, especially the auto stop-start which I have turned off repeatedly because it’s lumpy, annoying and it detracts from the finesse of the experience. Also the driver’s seat seems to move fully back each time I get out but not return to my preferred position when I get in again. Somewhere there’s a button that will store this information.
Being a duffer I don’t tend to analyse cars logically, I tend to get a gut feeling about them. My feeling about the 997 was that it was a logical progression from its predecessors and the lineage from the air cooled cars was apparent. My feeling about the 991 is different. Yes, you can tell it’s a 911 but it has moved the game on more than the expected increment. The utter speed of the thing combined with smoothness and its lighting responses to the smallest input makes it slightly less like a sports car and more like some sort of intergalactic fighter craft. There is something about the driving experience that suggests you aren’t driving the car as much as piloting it.
Over Christmas I’ll be doing some family days out, B-road blasts and a couple of longer journeys so I should have a very good idea of whether my order for a 991 was a wise idea. I have a feeling, though, that when I give Nottingham back their demo in January I will be even more annoyed with Porsche – because the car I’ve got isn’t mine to keep and I’ll have to wait at least a couple of months for mine to show up.
The gents on the US forums have also reported their builds have been delayed because of the sunroof.
Maybe there was mistake on the options brochures as some of the other options have "available end Q1" next to the option code.
Leaving the customers to speculate as to why is one of the worst forms of communcation!
+1 to OPC Nottingham though, shame there is no Christmas meet at the Barn this year so we can all see it
Phooey said:
Well done Manks, keep us up to speed on it.
o/t - approx 4.30-5 pm yesterday (Saturday), A52 Radcliffe (RSPCA) stretch - saw a 991 pass me in the opposite direction. Sounded much deeper than a 997. It was dark-ish so didn't quite catch the colour of it, but looked good on the road.
Might have been me on the way back to Nottingham.o/t - approx 4.30-5 pm yesterday (Saturday), A52 Radcliffe (RSPCA) stretch - saw a 991 pass me in the opposite direction. Sounded much deeper than a 997. It was dark-ish so didn't quite catch the colour of it, but looked good on the road.
Manks said:
I need to work out how to stop the car erasing the adjustments I make each time I get it, especially the auto stop-start which I have turned off repeatedly because it’s lumpy, annoying and it detracts from the finesse of the experience. Also the driver’s seat seems to move fully back each time I get out but not return to my preferred position when I get in again. Somewhere there’s a button that will store this information.
In Sport or Sport Plus, stop-start is deactivated.Agree about stop start, very confused at a round about!
All the cars at both OPCs that I have been to have had the sunroof fitted. I love the sunroof .. you can have it open at all speeds, and things remain calm in the cabin.
how wrong is the car car spec wise? Is it at least the same colour inside and out? Is sunroof the only thing that is there that shouldn't be? Anything that isn't there but should be?
Great to have a long term demo though.
Manks said:
There is something about the driving experience that suggests you aren’t driving the car as much as piloting it.
You say you are a 'duffer' but I think, from what I have read (Not driven yet), you may have nailed it with this statement.Sports cars have been becoming more 'detached' for some time now. As they become ever more fast and accomplished, so the necessity to control the limits for the driver.
MTR
I've just been to see one at my local dealer. My thoughts were - underwhelming, large and expensive. I expected a lot more from Porsche, the 458 (I know it costs double) really seemed a large leap in car development, the 991 seems a minor spit and polish.
I haven't driven one yet, maybe that will convince me otherwise.
I haven't driven one yet, maybe that will convince me otherwise.
SFO said:
In Sport or Sport Plus, stop-start is deactivated.
Agree about stop start, very confused at a round about!
All the cars at both OPCs that I have been to have had the sunroof fitted. I love the sunroof .. you can have it open at all speeds, and things remain calm in the cabin.
how wrong is the car car spec wise? Is it at least the same colour inside and out? Is sunroof the only thing that is there that shouldn't be? Anything that isn't there but should be?
Great to have a long term demo though.
SFO - I am unsure what the car has got on it to be honest, apart from the obvious.Agree about stop start, very confused at a round about!
All the cars at both OPCs that I have been to have had the sunroof fitted. I love the sunroof .. you can have it open at all speeds, and things remain calm in the cabin.
how wrong is the car car spec wise? Is it at least the same colour inside and out? Is sunroof the only thing that is there that shouldn't be? Anything that isn't there but should be?
Great to have a long term demo though.
How wrong is it? Well it's silver with grey leather, my least favourite wheels and the horrible sun roof. Not what I would choose.
DMC - To be fair I am not in raptures about the car's appearance but to my eye Porsche often misses the mark slightly in the looks department. But it's not how the car looks that's enthralling me.
Manks said:
How wrong is it? Well it's silver with grey leather, my least favourite wheels and the horrible sun roof. Not what I would choose.
I went into a dealers last week with a similar 991 - sliver/grey/sunroof - in their showroom.Agree it didn't stand out amongst the Cayennes, 987s, 997s. Bit bigger, but rather bland, and the sunroof has two nasty seams across the roofline.
Interesting report on the steering - I can't see why they went down the electronic/create artificial response but with no direct link to the tyres steering route... I can understand PDK - faster changes/better performance (although they should still engineer a decent manual) but Ford Fiesta steering on a Porsche..... 1 gallon of fuel saved in 2800 miles.....
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