petee1997

I find the whole discourse .1 vs .2 amusing. I read the same thing from the 997 guys when the 991.1 came out. "Porsche ruined the car by lengthening the WB by 4". It will never handle as well. The car is too big. It's a GT. I don't like the styling of the rear. Why would they change something that was perfect?"

It turned out the 991.1 was the best 911 ever....... Well, until the .2 came out. Now the naysayers are the .1 owners saying basically the same thing. It's understandable. You spend a lot of money for the best and shortly after, a superior product appears from the same company that told you there was nothing better.

You can put your head in the sand and say the .1 is better. Porsche only brought out the 3L turbo to satisfy the Chinese market. However it's not true. They could send the 3L to China and keep the 3.8L for North America. They didn't, because they knew they had a better mouse trap in the turbo.

I say this because I had 997 .1 and .2 and 991.1 and now the .2. and guess what? Porsche already knows all the advances that will be in the 992.1 and that will really **** off the 991.2 guys.

Johnny5Alive

I can't understand why there can't be a reasonable discussion of preference?

I'm probably one of the only people that went to the dealer and test drove back to back two BRAND NEW 911's one 2016 one 2017, both C4S. To all the naysayers, make no mistake, the 2017 is definitely faster. Is it a lot? Well depends on your perspective I think. I ride fast motorcycles on the racetrack all the time, so to me they're both slower than a bike. In comparison, I think the 2017 feels faster than it might be because the torque comes on strong so soon. But the 2016 has a certain theater to it's sound and a rush that comes with the revs. Running up to redline in the 2016 is a dramatic experience the 2017 couldn't replicate, but the instant kick in the backside the 2017 gives couldn't be replicated by the 2016.

In the end, I chose the 2016. My preference is for high revs, and make no mistake about this-- the NA motors definitely sound better, even than the 2017 with PSE. I actually bought a non-PSE car over the 2017 with PSE, and it sounds still better than the 2017 PSE, but I will end up changing the exhaust eventually. I think if you keep chasing what's faster, you'll never be happy. At the end of the day, they're largely the same experience. Nothing wrong with preferring one over the other.

If you're a track rat, something to think about is if choosing the 2017, you will be better off with PDK. If I recall correctly, the new car has a slightly lower redline by a few hundred RPM, and having to make that extra shift could mean all the difference. PDK alleviates that issue I'm sure, but something to keep in mind. I think if you want a manual, 991.1 is a better choice.

jimbo1111

You must have missed this little tidbit where the fleet average mpg must be 54.5 or greater by 2025. https://www3.epa.gov/otaq/climate/do.../420f12051.pdf

Dewinator

1. They don't have to comply. Ferrari, Lambo, MB don't. They just pay the penalty.

2. The whole thing is complete bull****. The tests are completely gameable and the actual fuel savings are mostly imaginary. I bought an AWD Nissan that's supposed to get 30mpg and it gets 22mpg in actual driving. Smaller engine with a turbo doesn't get into the boost in the low demand situations, but when people actually drive it, they don't get the savings. To make matters worse, the low speeds involved in the test don't really get into the regime where air resistance matters much, so SUVs with small engines look like they get almost as good the equivalent sedan, so people buy the SUV, drive it on the freeway, and burn way more gas then they would have if they got the sedan. It's WAY bigger than just the VW diesel emission thing.

Dewinator

What is it about the .2 that makes it a "superior product", other than being a little bit faster? Because if that's what matters, you can just go out an get an ACR Viper that will crush a 991.2, a 992, whatever comes after it, or even a 918 around the track, for the same price.

http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/news/a27254/the-dodge-viper-is-going-out-on-a-high-note-setting-13-track-records/

jimbo1111

Do you honestly believe that the industry whole move towards turbo charging isn't a gas saving strategy? Lets forget sport's cars for a moment. Cars like the mb entry level c class and bmw's 3 series are prime examples of an interim turbo charging effort designed to reduce fleet gas mileage. I'm using the word interim loosely because the next generation vehicles are mostly set to be hybrid. Take a look at the 2018 Lexus 500h because in 5 years time most vehicles will be just like it.

Turbo charging is an interim move that will be incorporated with hybrid technology in the very near future in an effort to comply with the EPA standards that are set. I'm sure most manufacturers that want to survive will in fact be forced to comply. What the alternative? When the fines start to eat into there profits and threaten there survival they will be have to comply or go out of business.

Dewinator

I believe it's a EPA-mileage increasing strategy. Which do you think a manufacturer cares about more... the number in the window, which not only influences the buying decision but also they amount of penalties they have to pay, or the amount of gas you burn once you're already given them your money?

Don't you remember the Prius vs M3 gas mileage challenge on Top Gear? Economy ratings and gas mileage are two very different things. The EPA knows their test is very gameable, but they don't care. They know the ambitious numbers targets they've been given by politicians aren't going to be met otherwise without a wholesale switch to electrics.

petee1997

No doubt what you say is true. It's also about performance. Case in point, the 918. Expect to see small displacement turbos, gas electric in the 911 in the not too distant future that will outperform everything we have seen to date.

Also expect to pay more. Performance with fuel efficiency will have a price.

strumbringer

I actually believe it's a mix. Would you want a V8 911? Probably not. V10? 6.2L engine? They're getting close to the limits of NA power at this point, and if they want to increase power and torque, they have to go with FI (for gas engines) and/or hybrid powertrains. Probably both. By moving to FI, they have years of potential power gains ahead of them. And, whether we like it or not, power continues to sell sports cars. And, yes, to get that power with NA engines would mean seriously low mileage ratings even if they could squeeze those engines behind the rear seat.

So lets not be naive enough to think they have a single motivation here.

Also, FWIW, the Prius vs M3 test was rigged to have the prius operate outside its efficient range and the M3 well with it. So obviously the Prius won. Show me someone who DDs a Prius and someone who DDs an M3 like normal people and let's compare the mpg they get. It won't even be close (not that I would ever drive a Prius). The same definitely goes for cars that build turbo engines that never operate in their efficient range. I can guarantee you that DDs will get better mileage out of the 991.2. Whether or not you care is up to you

Dewinator

Porsche didn't use turbos on the 918, which is all about efficiency, and it's getting beat by the old school NA ACR Viper: http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars...track-records/

If it's about a car you're driving on a long commute, you can always get a Tesla and have both.

That doesn't make it "rigged", it just makes it show a point, yes, about each car having an efficient range that it's designed to operate in. And unfortunately for us (and atmospheric CO2), that range for almost all cars is what they face on the EPA test, not where they're going to actually be used.

You'd be hard-pressed to actually get better milage in an M3 daily driving, but the difference is going to be less than the EPA numbers suggest. However, the Prius is very slippery and so manages to actually get decent numbers on true freeway driving. Other manufacturers have been able to build cars, particularly SUVs, that have wide disparities between "EPA highway" and true freeway milage because they 47 MPH test they run can't even begin to show the impact on milage a less-aerodynamic body shape will have at 80mph. Remember that air resistance increases roughly with the square of the speed.

As far as better mileage DDing a 991.2 vs a 991.1, I don't know that it would be as clear-cut as you think. On the freeway, or around town if you don't accelerate like a grandma, it would probably be fairly evenly matched, and if you're enjoying twisties or on a track, the .2 would be so far outside of it's 47-mph optimal efficiency zone that the 991.1 would burn noticeably less. Remember the EPA test uses accelerations that are so slow that the Prius we talked about earlier can not only make them, but make them in it's optimal efficiency range and get mind-bending numbers that are near-impossible to replicate in the real world. Those are the accelerations that the 991.2 has been designed to look like a fuel-sipping rockstar on. Any faster, you get into the turbos, and that goes out the window.

jimbo1111

Well said Strumbringer. ^^ The N/A crowd is more interested in what's bin lost rather than what can be gained. The nostalgia of hearing that engine rev to redline and feeling that exhaust note down your spine can't be replicated. It heightens those senses and adds greatly to the expierience of driving. Those things are definitely lost to a good degree with the change to FI.

Archimedes

You guarantee that even though independent testing has shown that the MPG test regimens don't mimic real world commute driving in a turbo and real world mileage is actually materially lower than what is typically claimed for a turbo car? You guarantee that the .2 will buck the laws of physics where other manufacturers have not been able to do so?

I expect that the .2 may get slightly better mileage than the .1 in identical real world driving. But it won't be anything like the window sticker claims. But then, who buys any of these cars for gas mileage.

Gus_Smedstad

This is both true and false. But mostly false.

EPA tests aren't at "low speed." They're stationary. They're done on a dynamometer, the car never moves. The EPA isn't comprised of idiots, however, and they know full well what air resistance is. Figures from the dyno are adjusted for drag ratio. Which isn't nearly as good as a proper moving test, but it's also not remotely the way you're painting it.

With that caveat in mind, the drive they're testing is hardly "low speed." The US06 test brings the wheel speed up to 80 MPH, and tries for a 0-60 time of 7 seconds, or whatever the car can manage. This cycle is why the EPA includes gas usage in the Panamera's SeH's electric driving mode. The car has no trouble keeping pace with traffic on just battery power, but to get the 7 second time you have to engage both drivetrains.

It's not "way bigger" than the Diesel emissions issue. It's not even in the same ballpark. If you're aggressive, you can certainly use more gas than the EPA estimates, but even twice as much would be pretty extreme. The VW Jetta emitted 30 to 75 times as much nitrogen oxides in real-world driving as they did on the dyno, 15-35x the legal limit.

What real world testing? You mean like AAA, which found that real-world gas mileage was actually about 10% higher than EPA estimates?

Yeah, the EPA tests used to significantly overestimate gas mileage, but testing changed in 2008. If you're seeing significantly worse gas mileage yourself, that's more about driving habits than EPA"s current methodology. I know my personal experience was in line with the AAA report.

Now CAFE standards are another matter, and complicated. By law those still use the old methodology, but they also include a set of peculiar, tradeable credits which skew the values well away from EPA numbers.

strumbringer

TBC, I expect that on the track the .2 will be indistinguishable in terms of MPG than the .1. Heck, it will probably be slightly worse driven at 10/10ths since it is producing more power and torque at the limit (but not much worse than an equivalently powered NA producing the same output). However, cruising at 2-3K rpm on the highway (or anywhere else) it will be consume significantly less gas than the 3.8 engine, because you'll be using zero boost and less displacement. It's simple physics. Again, you may not care about gas mileage, but that doesn't make it untrue. So yeah, I can guarantee you that anyone other than "pedal to the metal all the time" types will get better gas mileage with the 991.2 than 991.1 when DD'ing. I would not say the same if it had a 1.5L turbocharged engine, because they'd be on boost all the time. But a 3.0L? Heck yeah, I'll put money on it.

And I notice you ignored my other point about getting more power and torque, but that's okay.

Yeah, I know. And that's a completely valid opinion. It's okay to want a slower but more engaging car, and I hope Porsche finds a way to build them. But let's not make up stuff to further justify our preferences.

Archimedes

Like the Consumer Reports test. Like multiple magazine tests. These low power turbo cars don't get anywhere near the claimed improvements in the real world. The delta is ever bigger in Euro where the tests are an even bigger joke. As long as you poke around like the test regimen calls for, you'll see those window sticker numbers. If you drive normally, good luck. Then again, who really cares. If you really care about gas mileage, you're buying the wrong car.