Porsche has released the first pictures of the new Porsche 911 Cabriolet (992 model). The new model’s power hood can be operated at speeds up to 30mph and completes its closed to open cycle in twelve seconds. It also comes with an electric windjammer. All good for hairdressers.
Except the 911 Cabriolet is not a so-called ‘hairdresser’s car’. I had a 911 Cabriolet and would have another in a heartbeat. I did track days and long tours in mine and treasure memories of spirited drives on warm summer nights. Commuting was cool in the Cabriolet, although really hot days kept the roof up. Soft tops can be counter intuitive.
The new Porsche 911 Cabriolet offers optional sports suspension for the very first time: a benefit of the improved torsional stiffness from a new mounting position for the engine in all 992s. C2S Cabs have been widened so they share the same body width as the C4S versions. Both models have the sexy rear light bar and all panels bar the bumpers are made of aluminium.
The new Porsche 992 Cabriolet is a good looking car, available to order now priced at £103k for the C2S and £108k for the C4S. But which to buy? Fantasy buyers lean toward 2wd 911s, but the 911 Cabriolet has never been a lightweight, so the performance difference from 2wd to 4wd is negligible: a 2mph slower top speed from C2 to C4.
The modest premium has been a small price to pay for C4 surefootedness with the curvy wider body up to now. I would certainly be a C4S buyer at a £5k premium if a new cabriolet was within my grasp. Stuttgart’s decision to widen the C2S Cabriolet and give both models the C4S bodywork should shift the sales balance and strengthen residuals for the new Porsche 911 Carrera 2S Cabriolet.
It is not easy to find out the UK sales split from Coupe to Cabriolet models. Registration data is also unhelpful. Howmanyleft shows a falling number of Carrera 4 Cabriolets (160 in 2001 to 121 in 2018) to a lower rate of attrition for 2wd models (74 in 2001 then up and down to 68 today), which seems to support the common belief that more C4 models (Coupe or Cab) are exported or broken for spares versus C2 models.
The used market views two-wheel drive 911s as the more desirable, but the only obvious data falls well short of my best guess of total 911 Cabriolets on the road, so many later cars are likely registered as Porsche 911s rather than 911 Cabriolets. This makes it difficult to know where the line is.
With the 911 C2S Cabriolet (£102,755) priced roughly £10k more than the C2S PDK Coupe (£93,110), the Cabriolet looks set to remain a supporting derivative in the UK, but it’s still my favourite everyday 911.
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Porsche has unveiled its new Cayman GT4 Clubsport, which features a small amount of natural fibre bodywork. The move is in tune with Stuttgart’s aims to increase the use of sustainable, renewable materials following a 2015 Sustainability Report which showed Porsche had increased its use of fossil fuels and electrical power through the year.
Porsche says that 718 Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport is the first ever production race car to feature body parts made of natural-fibre composite material. Both doors and the rear wing are made of an organic fibre mix, sourced primarily from agricultural by-products such as flax or hemp fibres and feature similar properties to carbon fibre in terms of weight and stiffness.
Three panels on a car doesn’t seem like much, but it’s a start. The technology obviously exists to do more, as demonstrated by Swiss firm BComp, whose partnership with the Electric GT sustainable racing project was announced back in 2017.
Bcomp’s proprietary material is a high-performance, cost-efficient product that can replace or reinforce carbon fibre and other engineering materials. It is said to cut up to 40% weight with no change in performance. The natural fibre composite bodywork developed by Bcomp can also be embedded with LED lighting to act as an information screen while the cars go around the circuit.
Bcomp’s powerRib and ampliTex reinforcement fabrics have been used throughout the sports and leisure markets, in products such as skis, snowboards, surfboards, canoes and guitars. Bcomp has also collaborated with the European Space Agency ESA on the development of lightweight space applications.
Porsche Cayman GT4 Trackday model not available in the UK
The Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport comes in two versions ex-works: the Trackday model and the Competition variant for national and international motor racing. The Trackday edition is not available in the UK.
Costing £130,000 (plus 20% UK VAT), the 718 Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport Competition model weighs 1,320 kilograms and is powered by a 3.8-litre flat six producing 425 bhp. This is 40 bhp more than the previous model, but it didn’t stop Porsche selling 421 examples of that one over the last three years.
The transmission is a six-speed PDK with mechanical rear diff lock. Suspension is from the GT3 Cup and the bias-adjustable brakes are steel discs all round measuring 380mm in diameter. Air jacks and a fire extinguisher system are fitted as standard. The car comes with a 115-litre fuel tank for endurance events and lengthy Nurburgring sessions.
The February 2019 issue of 911 and Porsche World magazine has just arrived, with a front page featuring a muted mention of the brand new Porsche 992. This seems in tune with a rather reserved reception to date for the latest 911.
The new model still has some sports cred on paper. The improved 3-litre turbocharged engine will shove the 1.5-ton Carrera 2 Coupe with Panamera 8-speed PDK to 191 mph where allowed, reaching 60 mph from a standstill in just under four seconds. The car is bristling with technology, including an all new ‘Wet Mode’ and a carbon footprint tracker.
“With the new 992 generation, the 911 has surely completed its journey from compact sports car to capacious grand tourer,” says 911&PW. “The new interior doesn’t exactly communicate unadorned functionality, either. And consider all the newly added technology that has nothing to do with what Porsche refers to as a ‘puristic’ driving experience.”
The magazine goes on to recommend celebrating the 992 as “still incredibly faithful to the original 911’s ethos given the limitations of modern motoring.” This is similar to how Autocar’s James Attwood viewed the new car following a passenger ride around Hockenheim.
“That impression is of a car that is at once a step forward, while also remaining reassuringly familiar,” notes James in an Autocar piece describing the car as “a welcome evolution”. “There’s an added sheen of comfort with the development of the touchscreens and displays in the interior, and with the addition of new driver assistance systems. Yet those systems appear to have been developed to give those who want to exploit its considerable performance the freedom to do so.”
Chassis control systems and freedom do not always make the best bedfellows, so it will be interesting to note how road testers describe the dynamics when they eventually get to try it in person. With a wider track, longer wheelbase and 55 more kilos under its belt, it’s probably reasonable to expect further endorsement of this perceived shift from sports car to grand tourer ahead of the first production hybrid 911 in a few years.
In usual reflective mood during the seasonal downtime, I’ve been looking back over some of my GT Porsche magazine columns from the last twelve months and checking where my head was at through the year. My first magazine column for GT considered the launch of the 911 Carrera T and what effect it might have on the Porsche populus.
2018 Porsche 911 Carrera T spec
370bhp/330lb ft turbcharged 3.0-litre engine as in base Carrera
Sports Exhaust and PASM as standard
7-speed manual has Limited Slip Diff and shorter final drive
PDK has no LSD
Reduced sound deadening
Thin windows and pull straps in doors
Rear seat and PCM delete (No Cost Option to put back)
Weight in standard form circa 1425kg
Many of the old guard treat new 911 models with a degree of suspicion, as it often feels like models are being released just to give magazines something to write about. This is most especially true when Porsche disinters old model designations. The 911 T was a good example.
Just 20 kilos lighter than a standard Carrera with similar equipment, the T didn’t seem to bring much to the party, but it was still likely to get a few writers excited. Most old hands were reserved in their reviews of this subtle run-out upgrade to the standard Carrera.
“Unfortunately, Porsche has somewhat mis-sold the T as a sort of hardcore, purists’ missile rather than embracing its true purpose as a cracking all-rounder in the best tradition of low-level 911s,” said Richard Porter in The Sunday Times. “It gives you a few extra tasty treats such as the trick suspension and diff that make it nicer to drive, without any trinkets you don’t need. It’s not sparse, but there’s a pleasing simplicity to it, right down to the seats that are wrapped not with leather but in cloth, striped like a 1980s banker’s suit. It’s all you need, and nothing you don’t.”
“If you were hoping the Carrera T would be a mini-me GT3, look away now,” wrote Andrew Frankel in Autocar. “But that’s not to say there’s nothing interesting going on. Before Porsche’s T-squad laid a finger on its flanks, the 911 was by some distance already the most desirable and effective performer in its category. The T is a car with just a little more edge.”
Porsche 911 Carrera T investment prospects
The 911 Carrera T rang a bell with buyers: latest UK registration data suggests that 219 Carrera T models were put on the road in 2018, with a 2-to-1 bias towards the manual.
The seven-speed gearbox in the 991 was widely viewed as inferior to the sweet six-speed fitted to Caymans, but as early reviews suggested the car was a 991 GT3 for £30k less and given the spec difference from manual to PDK, most Carrera T buyers/investors were obviously going to pick the manual. The residual premium could take a decade to materialise a la 997 Carrera GTS, but it was the one to have.
Residual values for the 911T (which sold with a cost new some ten percent higher than a standard Carrera) have yet to find their groove, but 219 RHD cars registered year-to-date does not make them super-rare amongst the 2018 911 cohort. That said, in a year-to-date figure of over 11,000 registrations up to the end of November and against a whole-life registration total for RHD 991s, 200 is a fairly small number and should help this model car to build a bit of a following.
Update 11/2/19: these units are now available to order. There are many happy new owners! Scroll to the end.
I spotted some teaser pics of the updated Blaupunkt Bremen from Evo-Sales in Hamburg on Instagram last week. Details and images are thin on the ground right now, but I thought it was worth a share all the same.
Finding a period radio for a classic car has become an expensive business in recent years, with original Blaupunkt head units particularly pricey to source. I had a nice Blaupunkt Toronto SQR46 on the shelf for my 1981 Porsche 924 Turbo, but it turned out to have no sound. I sold it on eBay and bought a fairly plain Sony unit with DAB and iPhone hookup instead.
I rarely if ever listen to music in the car these days, so what’s in the dash is not a big issue for me most of the time. When I do want to listen to something, my main priorities would be to have DAB radio for BBC 6Music and the ability to stream from the Worldwide FM app on my iPhone. Currently, I run a double-DIN Kenwood DMX-7017DABS with Apple Car Play in the CR-V to handle that or the factory Subaru (Kenwood) integrated audio in my BP5 Outback streams iPhone apps through a mini-jack hookup.
Both sound well through a custom amplifier/speaker setup, but neither is single DIN size or suitable for an old 944 or 911. The new Bremen seems to have my simple needs covered in single DIN size straight out of the box and with a retro look that will suit anyone running a late ’80s or ’90s Porsche.
Matthias Wagner at EVO-Sales tells me that there are no actual pics of the unit installed in a dashboard as yet, but the unit is so reminiscent of Blaupunkts of old that anyone my sort of age will have no problem imagining what it might look like in situ. The styling is super period and all used within the rights to Blaupunkt production, sales and marketing for car, marine and caravan applications held by Evo-Sales since February 2016.
To make it even more attractive for Porsche folks, the head unit is expected to retail at just €449/£400 when it launches later this year. This makes the updated Blaupunkt Bremen SQR46 a much nicer price than the Porsche Classic radio with sat nav, which current retails at £1,000 or so here in the UK. I prefer to use a separate GPS or Google Maps on my iPhone and that should be easily doable with this unit. All things considered, the Bremen is well placed to be a strong contender in the ‘classic retrofit’ market.
Specs are below: headline items include Bluetooth, DAB, USB in and 4 pre-outs with 4×50 native power for those who do not run external amplification.
Radio
• CODEM IV High-End Tuner
• Integrierter DAB/DAB+ Tuner
• DAB Band III/L-Band
• Service Link (DAB-DAB, DAB-FM, DAB-DAB-FM)
• Diensteauswahl nach Ensembles
• RDS (AF, CT, EON, PS, PTY, REG, TA, TP)
• Travelstore
• Comfort Browsing
Bluetooth
• Bluetooth 2.0 mit EDR für Freisprechen und Audiostreaming
• Profile: HFP, PBAP, A2DP, AVRCP, SPP
• Integriertes Mikrofon und Anschluss für externes Mikrofon
Media Player
• Wiedergabeformat: MP3, WMA
• Wählbare Anzeige Modi (ID3-Tags, Ordner, Datei)
Datenträger
• USB 2.0
• SDHC (bis zu 32 GB), SD, MMC
Eingänge
• Front USB (Standard A-Typ)
• SDHC/SD-Kartenslot
• Front Aux-In
• Eingang Steuerung-Lenkradfernbedienung
I received an email from Matthias at Blaupunkt advising me that these units were now available to pre-order. He has sent no other information other than this so do not shoot the messenger!
Dear Ferdinand,
The BREMEN SQR 46 DAB has passed the long-term test very well. The devices are now being produced and will be delivered in March / April 2019. If interested persons want to pre-reserve then here: info@car-akustik.de best regards,
Matthias Wagner / Blaupunkt Car-MULTIMEDIA
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Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
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