RSUV

Hi all, I am a serial supercar owner whose foray into the world of really nice cars began with a 996C4S Manual. I loved that car. Since then, I have been through Aston (DB9 and DBS), a McLaren 12C Spider and numerous Ferraris - a brand I have loved since a boy.

I have owned a 360 spider, 430 spider, 360 CS, California, FF and currently have a Speciale, 488 Spider with a Lusso and 812 on the way. I also have something of a passion and relationship with Subaru and currently have a couple of Imprezas, having had many over the years.

I discovered a few years after selling my 996 and deciding I ought to try and buy a 911 again, as a car that is great to drive but could be taken to some places the Ferraris cannot, that in the UK market these cars were not depreciating. To buy a similar car back, with double the mileage, was significantly more expensive than I sold my car for some years earlier. So instead I bought a newer, one owner, low mileage 997 GTS Cab manual, which I planned to keep.

I'm not very good at that it seems. I got the itch earlier this month and cutting the story short, have an Ultra Violet RS arriving with me later this month. It will be the first time I have paid over list for a car but I suspect I did ok on the deal - time will tell. Since I don't buy new Porsches but have a good buying history with Ferrari, I don't see the opportunity to get a GT3 or RS at list either now or in the future so I decided it might be worth paying a bit extra to see what all the fuss is about! The test drive was reasonably spirited and I'm a fairly quick/safe driver with now a lot of experience on long fast road trips as well as track. I could immediately see that the RS has less torque and shove than my Speciale but has massive grip, bulletproof solidity and a real feeling of purpose about it - I'm looking forward to discovering more. Ultra Violet is also a brilliant colour. I'm not a shouty guy but is that colour ever amazing?!

Any tips/advice welcome, otherwise, hopefully any heated discussions I might get into can be forgiven in advance - I'm a Brit, feel free to conclude we don't know any better!!

hughp3

Good for you! Best color too. I cannot compare to F cars so no help there. I grew up always wanting a Porsche

GT3RS

Your fist RS Porsche, I hope you enjoy the car.
Take it to the track, a great way to explore the potential and see what he fuss is about.

race7117

Harder to get the rear of the RS to rotate than the 458/speciale but still very predictable. Brake a little earlier and get on the power earlier in the corner with all the aero and rear engine, again not better/worse just different. I found the Speciale to be a more twitchy car but controllable and predictable,the RS can be a bit deceptive it feels very stable at the limit, but when the RS bites it bites! l I would love to own a Speciale easily my favorite car other than the RS

JG 996T

Grape ape. Nice. Welcome to R'List.

GolfTango3

Welcome aboard!

TRAKCAR

Welcome!
Excellent taste

motorwerksgroup

Great ride...great color

Lapis

Didn’t happen unless pics.

needmoregarage

I’d say we can give credit for his avatar pic.

To RSUV:
You, sir, have superb taste!! (I might be a bit biased).

Welcome, and enjoy for many kilometers in the very best of health!

From a little photo shoot this morning:

RSUV

Car comes Friday, i’ll post pics after that. But if I post them too quickly after, everyone’s been lying about how good the car is

RSUV

ok, so i’m Interested in your comment here - I am imagining the in-phase rear steer above 50mph keeps the rear from overtaking the front unless you are stupid. I do a lot of fast road driving where it is absolutely quiet with no-one around. I also like feeling the edge of adhesion, however, with such huge mechanical grip this will be at pretty high cornering speeds. Are you saying the car will get spiky at that point, even with the RWS? The Speciale is oh-so progressive on the edge of grip and, so long as you’re concentrating, the car is so playful but also friendly on the limit and always rewards even averagely good inputs to the major controls.

A couple of other general questions about ‘Porsche people’ (sorry if that is a silly description). Do GT3 and 4 owners automatically respect the GT2 way of doing things, despite the fact it is very much a turbo car, or are there ‘3 people’ and ‘2 people’? I only ask because I have one friend who can get a 2RS and I think he may not have really enjoyed the 3 as much as he would have expected - he is an excellent driver and missed the power against his other cars from the 3RS. I on the other hand don’t care about that and am not really a 2RS kind of guy, though I would certainly buy one if offered, which I won’t be.

Also track days. Does everyone here take their own cars to the track? I know this is what the car is designed for (sort of, because I think it is really still a road car that can do track well enough) but these are valuable things and regular track action must surely bring its own cost come resale time. Or is the market relaxed with that and not care - in other words, you get fair value for the history and condition of your car?

race7117

No the RS is still a rear engine car when compared to the speciale. The axis of the Ferrari allows it to pivot very easily and predictably. The rear steering you won't really notice, but if the nannies are off you will get more oversteer with throttle modulation or trail braking much more than the Reg GT3. Easily corrected but if you lift the rear will come around. A lot of the newer cars make you forget about the storied past of rear engine, the RS gives you that feel back in a modern way.
I think most people respect the GT2 and many of course want, but in general I think most of us prefer the NA high revving cars to Turbo. That being said there isn't a person here who wouldn't take an allocation! IMHO

irish guitar

Congratulations! They're wonderful cars and you got the best colour. Enjoy it!

Vivian

RSUV

Friday saw the arrival of my Ultra Violet RS. It will take its place in a small array of wonderful cars which I feel more than privileged to own. These include a Speciale and 488 Spider among others.

Perhaps typical of an insatiable petrolhead, and despite having never owned or (prior to my test drive) driven a Porsche GT product of any description, I am already a YouTube expert on this car. Such is the way the world works now that with a bit of reading between the lines and imagination you can gain a very good impression of what you are going to discover, even before a new car arrives. The day after its arrival I knew I would be heading to Tokyo for a business trip, giving me exactly one day to experience what I already knew from all those happy internet people - that the 991 GT3RS is a great car. Not expecting to be able to add anything sensible to that narrative, I thought it a good idea to compare my new arrival with an existing car I have in my garage, and my favourite, the 458 Speciale.

As an aside, I have read and sometimes been involved in plenty of forum comment about cars I have never driven. I have discovered that for direct comparisons between various vehicles, simply by considering and digesting comparison reviews from other people, you can indeed get to a position where there will be validity to comments you make. I will not entirely follow the line of thought that says “unless you have driven the car, shut up” in future. The RS is 90% as I had imagined and gathered from the countless reviews I watched. I knew about its personality before ever turning its purple key.

Instead, what you gain over those reviews by driving a car properly for yourself is the last ten percent, those little details that seem too insignificant for most critics to mention but subtly influence your impressions one way or the other. And, of course, our reaction to those ‘ten percent’ details is entirely personal, meaning that no amount of forum conversation can be conclusive. For example, judged in an entirely logical way, this car is illogical. The transmission makes odd (meaning not especially pleasant) noises from very low speed that seem to have little to do with going faster or even inspiring you to drive better. The brakes at the rear can be heard to make a rubbing noise at low application pressure that sounds a bit like running a paper bag down a blackboard. Not exactly inspiring stuff. But a simple detail like the dashboard changed how I felt about that. In a 991 RS, different to my old 997, the perceived level at which most things sit is raised, making you feel, along with those lovely (and comfortable) buckets, sucked into the interior in a way that the 997 does not do. I like it. And more than that, a focus on making me feel part of the machine, I felt, gave context to some of those illogical elements of this car and instead made them seem completely purposeful. It’s a detail I have not really read about but helped me feel comfortable with and connected to this car quite quickly. Part of that ten percent. I get the questions about increased size and moving away from the more traditional interior but for me the 991 is a much better place to be and its ampler interior suits me well. My wife also thought the seats and interior a comfortable place to be - more than the Speciale because there is no 3-point option on our car.

I should offer a caveat to my thoughts here; there were so many other road users on the 120 or so miles of B-road I drove that opportunities to get into a flow were few and far between. I have not been on track nor had a blistering road drive with steaming tyres in warm temperatures, but I know that this car will come alive under those circumstances - that’s its character. The day was also intermittently wet, although that did allow me to gauge the car in wet conditions - with little standing water but thoroughly wet surfaces. The MPSC2 tyres, which I really like on the Speciale, felt familiar, especially in their wet weather response. Temperature was in the 11-14 degrees range. If you don’t ask ridiculous things of the chassis and tyres, this car is perfectly capable of good and sensibly quick wet weather progress. Early on I feel that I have a good understanding of how this car wants to go about its business.

You already know, if you have done even a little research or better still, have some seat time, that this car is great. In fact exceptional. But what is perhaps a more interesting commentary, is how it compares to another exceptional car, the Speciale, and even the 488 to some degree. In the context of these more expensive machines how does the RS fare? Why does it deserve a place in my garage and is it too much of an overlap to warrant a long-term berth?

Ostensibly, both the RS and Speciale do the same thing. They take excellent and characterful roadcars - with long lineage, that have used technology to keep the process of improvement going but without trying to lose their fundamental character - and interpret them for the track. The obvious technical difference between the two is the location of the engine, and perhaps that is the root of where the character differences lie. Being a mid-engined car, the Speciale is more balanced, more delicate. The RS cannot excite as much at lower speeds as the Speciale, it doesn’t have the same level of chassis subtlety or mobility. The RS is harder riding, though never harsh or ‘crashy’ and this is one of the things that contributes to the RS’s character, more of which later.

The Speciale is the more enigmatic driving tool overall. It is louder, less mechanically grippy, with less aero but more mobile underfoot. It goads you into going quicker, just like the RS, but its balance and wonderful throttle and rear suspension work beautifully together. As you enter a bend, the weight transfer in the chassis begins to assist the steering of the car, with the on and off-throttle (if you are using it properly) allowing infinite adjustment to the way you want to drive the bend. It is such a lovely, rewarding feeling this mid-corner weighting up and it makes you feel fully in control and able to express your will on the road in a perfect flow. It is invigorating. It makes me feel better than I really am and I can get really good speed out of it (I know this because I have driven it against many and varied friends’ supercars over thousands of road miles). I gelled with the car very quickly when I started driving it, over two years ago now.

The RS is different. In some ways I could save a lot of typing (and you’re boredom with the length of this post) by summarising the RS in three words. Sound, sound, sound. Everyone talks about it, but honestly, this is one thing the videos can’t properly convey. It is like an orchestra, even from the middle of the rev range. It reverberates around your brain and lures you into some sort of petrolhead trance. I’m struggling to contain my enthusiasm for it, but let me try by saying you have to go to the Ferrari V12, an engine I consider to be aurally the best in world, to find its match. And maybe, just maybe.....no, I can’t bring myself to utter the words! With the Ferrari V12 the sound outside of the car is better even than the sound inside it. With the Porsche, the sound inside the car, the one heard by the person who has paid for the thing, is even better than outside it. Compared to the Speciale’s exhaust-dominated sound there is just so much more depth and richness here.

The Speciale encourages you to push on with its volume and its chassis balance and subtlety, the RS just draws you into its domain by literally singing to you. All the time. And in such a wonderful voice. The RS has many other attributes but they all seem to serve this one. It is a track car whose laptime I care not about - I told you it was illogical - because the noise, mated to the unburstable feeling of the powertrain makes you want to go again and again. Round we go, 7, 8, 9,....wheeeeeahhhh! It is not as feelsome as the Ferrari, it does not dance like the Ferrari. But does it ever keep you coming back for more and more. It is like an insistent dog, a Jack Russell or something. It punches above its weight, doesn’t know when to quit and demands you get up and do something. The GT2RS will be quicker but I doubt it will inspire like this does.

The powertrain also contributes heavily to the character of this car. The DCT in the Ferrari feels more organic, as though there is some thought given to making it feel like a manual shift that is being automated - very quickly. The Porsche’s change bears no resemblance to a manual change whatsoever. I kind of like that, especially in this car, with that singing, rev-happy flat 6 slung out the back. It makes indulgence of the car’s sound easy-as-pie, literally no effort. The change is much more seamless than in the Ferrari and, as I said, seems to play a supporting role to that noise - who wants to wait any more milliseconds than you need to hear it again? The PDK ‘box plays this supporting role very well indeed. There is more torque than I had initially recalled from my test drive and even though the Ferrari is the more powerful car - the 488 even more so - I never felt like I needed more power in the RS. It is supremely accurate and precise. I haven’t really found the limit of adhesion yet, but I know it is high. Some say that it can lose grip quickly and you need to be on your mettle. That is no surprise - the mechanical grip is so high that by the time it lets go there would have to be so much energy trying to tear the car from the tarmac. I’ll be careful to explore that when warmer and drier drives beckon.

Despite immense grip, beautiful quality, an endless rev-range, towering accuracy and undoubted track speed, it is the sound, and what it brings out of you, that is left as the number 1 reason to own this car. For me the number 2 is the rear-engined thing, which makes you think about the car’s relative handling advantages and disadvantages and adjust your style accordingly. This I think makes me a better driver because it forces me to think about where the weight is and how it moves. All the other elements, funnily enough, seem to take a leaf out of the McLaren book in that through them the car is trying to dominate the tarmac - that crazy aero, the impeccable precision, the massive front and rear track and those huge tyres. The sum of these items is not more appealing to me than the Ferrari. What they do though, is provide more of what you need to allow you to become a part of that sonic performance. This car is Pavarotti - he sang a variety of different arias, but in the end it was his voice that was the point and whereas you thought you were going to hear Turandot, what you actually heard was him.

I told you it was illogical. Why should the noise a car makes give it such purpose? I don’t have a great answer for that, other than to say few of us will ever possess ability like Lewis Hamilton, so outright speed and performance is not completely relevant. What the RS will provoke in me is the determination to get better at driving and it will provide a scintillating reward for opening its door and turning the key more often. That eureka moment when you knew you did the right thing by spending all that cash, comes when you link a series of bends together in the Speciale - you get into your flow and feel that inherent balance working with you. This is something the Porsche can’t really match. But its moment comes when you realise that it has immense reserves of performance and cornering ability and begins to sate its own appetite by whetting yours.

As for the more mundane things, the RS is more usable than the Ferrari, it is less dramatic in appearance....marginally....it has a harder ride (if the sound and driving experience ever get ‘old’ this could become a problem - it is already my least favourite thing about the car). It looks wonderful to my eyes and I love Porsche for doing these fabulous colours - especially Ultra Violet. Given its scarcely believable retail price, It is full of exotic materials and race-bred engineering and it evokes a golden era in pure motorsport - the 1970’s and Steve McQueen are imbued in this car like no other (what has a Mustang got to do with anything?!) Really, it is irreplaceable. Except, I suppose, by a 991.2 RS. But I won’t be getting one of those. I don’t think it matters either - there are various flavours of ice cream but they are all ice cream first and foremost. I am still very much a Ferrari man, but even in the most ardent of competitor garages, this car finds it shockingly easy to make room for itself.