I had to share this official Porsche video. It’s an excellent bit of filming and editing, shot on location at the Porsche Experience Centre at Silverstone, showing the GT2 RS at its wild best.
I’m posting this video for all those who insist that the only Porsche worth having is some obscure race special that was built in low volume back in the day, before being delivered to owners who drove the tits off them and sent them to the great Zuffen House in the sky.
It’s usually the case that the loudest shouters have never sat in their ‘one true Porsche’, let alone driven it. A large part of the attraction for some seems to be the unobtainability, but how pointless is lusting after the unobtainable?
The GT2 RS is another Porsche destined for this fate. All are sold out, there are no more to be built and many are bound to be destroyed. It’s just a matter of time before today’s 10 year-olds are tomorrow’s forty year-olds, banging on about how the 997 GT2 RS is the “only 911 worth having”, despite this video being the nearest some of them will ever get to it! As Jean-Baptiste Karr put it: “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose”!
I understand enthusiasm for a model, but not to the exclusion of all others. There’s something good in every Porsche, even if the best one can say is that it keeps the AG coffers full for Porsche Classic fun.
Anyway, all this rambling brings me to my point! Rare-groove snobs usually reckon that Porsche is trading on past glories and can’t build sports cars any more. To them we say: stick this mental 911 in your pipe and smoke those rear tyres, baby!
Video for the new Cayman R is currently being rolled out across Porsche’s Youtube and Facebook pages. I like the look, especially in this wicked launch colour of Peridot Metallic, which is very reminiscent of Lind Green (on the Porsche 928 below).
Cayman R is an interesting car. This is the first Porsche Cayman with a power-to-weight ratio better than a current Porsche 911. With a 10bhp per tonne advantage compared to a 911 Carrera, its slower 0-60 time is a head scratcher. It’s not putting off the younger buyers: the next generation of Porsche buyers clearly prefers the Cayman to the older 911.
I was on a road trip with Autocar magazine this week, doing a two-day feature in Wales. On day two, the photographer shared his enthusiasm for Porsche cars, and how, together with his girlfriend, he was planning to buy a Cayman S: “the best car Porsche have ever made”, as he put it.
There’s no doubt that the current crop of new Porsche cars are the best in recent memory. Thing is, stars of the classic Porsche show have dropped all depreciation, and are offered at the same money as cars like the Cayman R, that have yet to turn a wheel.
UK prices start at £51,000 including current VAT at 17.5%, more or less the same price as the 33,000-mile 964 RS I have for sale on consignment at the minute.
Say you’re a slightly younger Porsche fan with £50k to spend. What do you choose – a Cayman R or a 964 RS? There’s a line in the sand. For old boys like me, it’s an easy decision to make, but for youngsters who only see the 964 bumpers and 20 years of wear and tear?
ps: First one to take me for a ride in their new Cayman R wins an Impact Bumpers t-shirt!
I just got back from California: my third trip in two years. Before my last visit, I bought a sweet little 1980 Porsche 911 SC Coupe on Craiglist. The car had been owned by the same guy since 1989 and was an honest, rust-free 911.
Sure, the paint had weathered a few storms and the trim had seen better days. But, riding on Fuchs, with an engine rebuilt to Euro specs – new pistons and cylinders and SSIs too – it pulled like a train with a Tornado strapped on top.
I used the SC (christened The Varmint) for ten days and over 2,000 miles. Let me tell you: there is nothing like ripping around sunny California in your very own 911. I went everywhere: across the Golden Gate, along Mulholland Drive and down the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu, at sunrise and sunset.
When the trip was finished, I shipped The Varmint home. A friend made me an offer I could have refused, but chose not to. I put the money away for next time.
A few weeks before we were due to leave this time around, I started looking for Varmint Mk 2: something that wouldn’t break the bank, but could transport us in SC comfort for a week, before we sold it on or shipped it home. Shergar would have been easier to find.
In the year or so since buying Varmint, the exchange rate had shifted, the economy had lifted and the number of affordable 911s on offer had drifted away. Between the breakers and the other European speculators, California had been drained of sub-$10k 911s.
My regular trip to Essen earlier in the year had showed there was no letup in the number of 911s finding their way back to Germany from the USA, but California is Porsche nirvana: these cars are everywhere! I couldn’t believe how fast the tap had dried up.
Markets shift and money follows. Economies ebb and flow, and cars like the 911 move around the world. My first 911 lived in 5 countries before I bought it. Of the three I have now, one has been registered in three European countries, another has been though four states and three countries and the third has just left its fifth state/country, en route to the sixth. Pretty busy stuff.
When I first got into 911s, left hand-drive was the cheap option. UK dealers were buying in Stuttgart and selling in Stoke on Trent. I prefer left hand-drive, so it suited me fine, but it wasn’t long before Germany woke up to the UK bargains and took the left-hookers home. The same thing has happened in west coast USA.
Now however, the Euro has slumped to a four-year low against the Dollar, so might the USA begin buying cars back? Ebb and flow is how it goes. In the middle of it all are the shippers: making a living, whichever way the cars sail.
November 2010 is 911 & Porsche World magazine’s 200th edition, so Editor Bennett has pulled out as many stops as possible to make it entertaining. The centrepiece is a conglomerative effort from all editorial contributors, in a feature called ‘Ultimate Porsche’. The idea was we had to pick our ultimate factory Porsche, and bring it to Bruntingthorpe to run them all back to back.
My ultimate Porsche is a 917: nothing touches that car for drama and all-round Porsche cleverness. Entered via loophole and raced hard by our favourite heros, the 917 demanded king-size balls to drive quickly. Just looking at it makes me feel a bit funny, so what it must feel like to drive one at 250 mph down the Mulsanne Straight, with the lightweight body flexing and pinning your foot to the throttle pedal, I have no idea.
I tried everywhere I could think of to get a 917, but to no avail. Once I was used to the idea of not being able to bring my Ultimate Porsche, the next best thing was probably an easier solution than most people would believe.
My take was that the Ultimate Porsche beyond the 917 should be something you can get into right now and take to the Bergmeister Monte Carlo route: surely the most incredible driving ever done in a car. So it had to be something within easy reach.
Looking in my garage, I had two 911s to choose from: my Carrera 3.0 and the 964RS I was advertising for sale on behalf of a friend. Both are quick, in nice condition, both sound and smell like a proper Porsche and both are wonderful to drive. So which one to take?
964RS v 3.2 Club Sport v 2.7 RS
Picking your own car for one of these things is dodgy ground. Much as I love my C3, there is barely an as-factory part on it. I also make no secret of the fact that it could one day go to a new home, so by definition it is not the last word in Porsche for me. If I had the asking price for a decent 964RS sitting in my bank account I would buy one, no question and with absolutely no hesitation. So, red one it is then.
This choice may seem tough to reconcile with my well-known love of the early and impact-bumper style cars, but it’s not that tricky really. The 964 Carrera RS looks like them, sounds like them, smells like them but goes faster than any of them in factory guise. The one in my garage was set up by Water Röhrl and rides beautifully. It’s built like the brick proverbial. Every time I get in it, I soon find myself driving like an eighteen year-old.
3.0 RSR v 997 Turbo v 964 RS v rest
It’s a time machine, plain and simple. If you want to make yourself twenty years younger buy a 964 RS. It comes from a time when Porsche built sports cars: the world’s best sports cars. And they all looked like classics, straight out of the box.
My Top Ten from the Ultimate Porsche line-up:
964RS. Uncompromising in every positive sense of the word. A Stuttgart V-sign to all Porsche-hating motoring journos, it says: “Don’t like me? F**k you, get me a proper driver.”
2.7 RS. Think of it like Scarlett Johansson lying on a bed, summoning you with her finger. There is no saying no.
997 Turbo. Faster than a shooting star strapped to a 4wd comet. There comes a point where outright ability matters: this car is past that point.
3.0 RSR. Won’t run under 4k rpm and is too noisy to take anywhere but I’d live in it.
911 2.4S. Every inch a classic.
356 Cabriolet. The original. The one that started it all.
Cayenne Turbo. A Porsche for every day. As Fraser says: if you could only have one Porsche for the rest of your life, then….
996 GT3. I’m never going to get past those headlamps. Sorry GT3 boys.
Carrera Club Sport. Gas-filled exhaust valves do not an RS make. If they’d gone further it’d be the Ultimate, but they sold us short.
I was out with the Porsche World magazine crew all day yesterday. We were at Bruntingthorpe, shooting a feature for the magazine’s upcoming 200th anniversary.
The article’s premise will be revealed in the mag in due course, but here’s a few shots from the day. The regular contributors had never all gathered together in one place, so it was fun to hang out in the sunshine with so many cool cars and good people.
Coolest one there? For me, it was between a friend’s beautiful 3.0 RSR and the 964 RS I brought to the party. It might sound crazy but, on the basis that I drove a number of fast track laps and then got to bring it home again at the end, the 964 RS just pipped it. If the asking price was closer to £35/40k, I’d have bought it by now. It is the last word in hooligan transport and would keep me young for ever.
My first 964 RS job would be to junk all the heater controls and put manual levers in! Maybe I should just stick an RS engine in my Carrera 3.0 instead, and get Hayden to help me add ultimate suspension and brakes. Now that would be incredible.
I’ve spent the last few days thinking about my great California Porsche feature trips. The times I’ve spent out there have been absolutely magic: great weather, great drives, great cars and, above all, great friends.
Friends are key to what classic Porsche, and the Classic Porsche Blog is all about. Sharing proper Porsches with friends – and I include blog followers and magazine readers in that category – is the whole point of what I do. It’s about the mission: not the money.
I was led to this train of thought by a recent video discovery. This is two Porsche friends enjoying their 914s in sunny Southern California. The sun is gorgeous and the soundtrack perfect. Good times, no doubt about it.
Behind the joyous visual lies a tinge of sadness. The driver of the camera car, and man who posted the video, is no longer with us. His name was Howard Dranow and, if the tribute thread here and the amazing Howard Dranow forum here are anything to go by, he was an inspirational character and a good Porsche buddy to many, many Porsche people. Anyone who leaves this sort of positivity behind has spent their time on Earth well.
RIP Howard. I’ll be thinking of your video next time I’m out shooting Porsches in your glorious home state.
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