I'm Here To End The .1 vs. .2 Arguments Once And For All...
 

:D Of course I jest. As long as there are benches there will be bench racing. And as long as there are dicks...

But after popping a bucket of Reddenbacher and keeping up with the 991.1GTS vs 991.2 S thread (along with a host of others over the years) I think I can boil it down for us all.

Here's a synopsis of the points:

"The .1 sounds better and has better "feel" to the power delivery."
"Bahhh... the .2 is much faster in a line, around a turn, around a course, in the mountains, on the plains, in the magazines, downtown, uptown, midtown, in the country, in the suburbs..."
"But the .1 has more soul, more 911, more hearty, throaty non-linear old school thrills."
"It's just antiquated. The interior is dated, the Apple doesn't CarPlay, the steering wheel lacks a knob."


And on and on. Basically, the .1 adherents keep saying their car has more feel, more excitement, more of what makes a 911 special.

The .2 guys keep saying theirs is faster in every metric. So much faster that a base .2 keeps up with an S or GTS .1, and an .2S keeps up with a .1 3RS.

To which the .1s reply "We don't care about speed beyond what's in the .1."

To which the .2s reply "This construct of yours that it's all about noise and power delivery is just nostalgia and wishful thinking."

And eventually it devolves into:

"You're just too newb to get the specialness of NA power delivery and sound. You can't drive well enough to exploit the quirks of 911 NA power delivery and chassis setup."

"Oh yeah? You're just too po to afford a shiny new .2, so you're trying to sour-grapes your way into believing yours is better."

That, gentlemen (surely there are no ladies so desperate as to actually be engaged in this conversation?) is it in a nutshell. Can I get an amen?


So, as a proud 991.1 owner, a man who, in fact, moved a planned purchase forward when news of the upcoming turbos was confirmed, a man who has owned two Turbos and specifically wanted something else from his Carrera experience, allow me to stipulate:

The 991.2 seems to perform better in all measurable metrics than the 991.1. Whether or not it bests rival 2017 cars today as well as the 991.1 bested rival cars in 2012 is immaterial; it is a much better performing car than its predecesor. (I've not driven one; going on the near universal testimony of those who have.) While the definition of "much" in the preceding sentence is open to debate, the rest of the sentence is probably universally accepted. Additionally, various creature comfort features that apparently bothered some owners of the 991.1 have been addressed in the .2, successfully it would seem. I don't have those complaints, but if one does, then this could be important.

By the same token, the 991.1 delivers its power differently, and makes different sounds while doing so, than the 991.2. To some 991 people, that difference is a hugely favorable one in the .1's favor. To these people it is the most important element of this divide and cannot be gotten past. (To be fair, I count myself in this group.)

To other 991 people the difference is there, and they may prefer the .1 in these aspects, but the greater performance and ergos of the .2 overwhelm that preference.

And to a third group of us, the differences are real but not even favorable to the .1; they find everything about the .2, including sound and low-rpm-torque, to be preferable to 991.1.

The problems arise when either of these groups tries to argue the other groups to their position by using the arguments that favor their car, while ignoring the fact that the other camp discounts those arguments in favor of the argument that favors their car. And so the wall of noise arises as we yell back and forth the equivalent of

LESS FILLING!!!

TASTES GREAT!!!

Part II to follow.

Part II:

I was around and involved when the 993 morphed into the 996. Everybody in the .1 camp brings that up. It’s not actually a fair comparison because the 996 was aesthetically challenged, and we all felt it in 1998. It was slab sided, where the 993 was curvaceous. It had the ugly headlights. The interior broke new ground but it wasn’t particularly handsome ground to most (I personally always loved the 986/996 interiors when executed in full leather.)

But a reasonable comparison is 993 to 997; both were very well received upon release, throughout their period of being current, and have continued to be loved after leaving the scene. Even in 996 guise the new chassis and new waterpumper proved a far more capable car on track and on the road than the 993 was. Similarly to the new .2S vs the .1GT3RS, the base 996 Carrera produced 300hp out of the box, a number that was reserved for the uber-rare and highly sought 993 3.8RS just a couple years earlier. The lap times were 3-4 seconds faster in the 996 than the standard 993. A lot of parallels to today, and of course this delta is even greater with a 997/993 comparison.

And yet many, many people cling (and have always clung) to the 993 as the pinnacle of air-cooled development, and hence the most desirable standard-production 911 ever made (not me, but that’s another diatribe for another time.) Despite the clear performance advances with each generation of waterpumper. And this is precisely what the .1 crowd is saying: “We get that the .2 is faster, is in fact better by every metric. We don’t care. We like the NA character, and we believe the 991.1 is the greatest development of the water-cooled Carrera concept – a truly great street sportscar that can acquit itself handsomely on the track, all while gracing its driver with a heady mix of modern reliability and efficiency mixed with old-school roughness and uncovered sound.

This is pure gold to some (the 991.1 devotees.) It is recognizable to others, but not particularly important (the middle crowd). And it is not even recognized as important at all, or even meaningful, to the third group mentioned above.

The future will decide whether the .1 gets venerated as “last of the NA 911s”, believed to deliver some sort of mystical connection between man and machine that is worth tens of thousands of dollars more than otherwise equivalent 991.2s. Who knows? I don’t particularly care. I’d have to say if I was a betting man I’d suppose the ’16 991.1 will bring a premium over a same-miles ’17 991.2 in six or seven years, but not tens of thousands of dollars. But by the time the 991.1 and .2 are both way out of date, when 992.2 or 994 has hit the streets with electric hovercraft and VTOL capabilities, when our old cars are all merely weekend playthings of people who own other cars for the daily slog, I imagine the last of the NA cars will be more desired.

But again, who knows? I could be completely wrong about that.

Cheers!

Deep thoughts from a deep thinker. There are words in what you say!!

This is the main reason we should of created a separate forum for the .2 group! I'm tired of hearing all about it! Kinda like the election. Trump is the Prez. Let's move on! Plz!

Great post! Thanks for sharing your opinions, and I'd have to agree with everything you said. Very well put. :cheers:

Many. :cheers:

I often wonder whether any iteration of current cars will be desirable in the future. It seems that much of the younger generation could not care less about cars compared to older generations; and also put more of a premium on having the latest evolution in technology. But they will be the buyers of the future. People now who are seeking out older gen cars are also probably fairly mechanically inclined too and don't fear maintaining the car themselves. I think this is a trait that is slowly disappearing. But who knows, maybe 20 years from now, buying antiques like the 991 will be the only way to 'unplug' from the matrix.

You make great points. I opted for a 2017 C4 model over a low mileage 2015 C2 because the 991.2, to me was a better car for daily driving. It is quieter, smoother, better PDK, better steering but most importantly has a better ride.

For many, none of that matters; as you point out the main point for the 991.1 group is the sound and the power delivery.

But on my journey to own a Porsche, I found out that I'd never be able to live with the 991.1 C2 base (albeit that car was without PASM) on a daily basis and it would have ended up a garage queen.

So for me, the 991.2 was the answer to the question of could this car be a daily driver. The answer, from my limited time spent in the seat of a 2017 model - YES!

So, thank you Porsche, for the 991.2. :)

I admit, I'm too poor for a brand spanking new 911
but my "old" car is better, don't ask me why, it's just better in many ways

OP - may I recommend some scotch, in addition to the popcorn? Hoping that the ensuing result is more sarcasm and succinctness.

We bought a .1 GTS as that's all we could afford! :evilgrin:

The wide body, induction noise and sports exhaust note had EVERYTHING to do with our fine-to-us choice!

There are 2 components of this that are affecting value.

1. Is that in the old days, everything was mechanical. Electronics become obsolete much faster than anything else in the world. Hell, a phone becomes outdated every year. Progress with regards to electronics happens more rapidly than ever before and it is not slowing down in any of our lifetimes.

2. Cars grouped by the most nostalgic and highest value when eliminating outliers are the ones that either our parents drove or we dreamed of having as kids. Look at any collectable.... Kids these days won't give a damn about an original Buck Rogers toy. It's before my time but old people with money become nostalgic about that stuff and are willing to have something from their childhood. Anything like that with high value is essentially quantifying emotional value in monetary terms. When the emotion literally dies, the value goes down. These collectables are priced cyclically.

So stop fretting about your car and drive the hell out of it!!! :)

Should have taken pictures... Drive it for errands today.... including picking up a giant refinished chair. Talk about a utilitarian car. Top down and chair back in the back seats, feet up. Done. Try that in a coupe! :cheers:

It's as if they should make a .2 with a NA engine so you could have all the noises and the carplays in the same package. :)

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