dflowerz

Thanks for you first impressions. Nice write-up. I have had my 991.2 C2s for a little over a year now. I never had any issues with the PDK. I agree that the whole Porsche connect thing is very confusing. I am now paying $10/month with ATT for a data plan for the car. I use an iPhone so am happy with CarPlay but really wish there was a bluetooth connect option. I think the Porsche system connects via bluetooth to my phone and maybe it can only do one connection at a time? Most of the time I use CarPlay for music but the Porsche Google maps for navigation. I also like to use Siri for some voice commands using CarPlay, but feel the whole voice command concept has a long way to go. I bought the car for performance and handling and it has exceeded my expectations in a big way. I leased the car because it was my first high end sports car and I was not sure that I would want to keep it after the initial thrill wore off. After a year, NO WAY am I thinking about getting rid of this car. I love it. Still two more years to go on the lease though. Current thoughts are to pay off the car at lease end, but who knows how I will feel in two years, and I am sure Porsche will have some new goodies to tempt me

Needsdecaf

Wow, you had a lot to say!

Regarding your comment about the 991 being bigger and having real back seats, I say hell no. This is a sports car. Not a sporting coupe based on a sedan platform. Yes, you can track an M4, but it will get trounced by a 911....which is no surprise since it is a sporting coupe vs a pure sports car. Most cars in 911 category have no back seat at all (Corvette, Jag F Type, Merc GT), the 911 just has rear seats because it is rear engined. Even the Cayman / Boxster have no rear seats.

So sorry, no, that would be a horrible decision for Porsche.

droidfan

@dflowerz, thank you a lot for sharing. You may know that already, but Porsche has a "pull ahead" program that allows you to get a new car after just 24mo in the lease and thus waiving 12mo out of it for a 36mo lease ;-)

droidfan

@Needsdecaf I really hear you ;-)

I think it is just a matter of about 5 inches so that the rear seats can be more usable and practical. You don't even have to change the dimensions of the car actually. I would personally trade a bit of the front trunk to get that.

mb1

Thanks for taking the time to write your review. From reading your review, it's not clear to me that you made the right decision when you bought the 991. It seems that you're more concerned about the "bells and whistles" than you are about actually driving the car. Admittedly the electronic interfaces may be less than ideal, but those issues are way down on the list of importance for most car enthusiasts that I know. I can't speak for others, but when I took delivery of my car I bolted out of the delivery center ASAP to get on the Autobahn. I had no interest in hearing about the electronics.
Adding 5 inches to the rear seats? Wouldn't change the overall dimensions? You lost me. Did you consider a Panamera? Not meant as a criticism. Different things are important to different people.

droidfan

@mb1, yes I confirm I made the right decision by buying a 911.

The Panamera is way too big. I used to have a M5 and I did not like the weigh and dimensions of the car after a while.

Nope, you are not correct. Driving experience is key for me and if you carefully look at what I said I took a ride at 11pm up to 1am just for enjoying driving the car. That part is awesome. I also drove it for 2h on the highway just after getting out of the dealership to bring it back home.

I am saying after one week of usage that the PCM and online service associated wth the car should be on par with the competitors and also that Porsche USA should not try to "milk the cow".

I am also saying that it would be great if the exterior dimensions could be kept and the interior dimensions could be tuned so that the back seat are more practical. That means probably to make the cabin length 5 inches more long and change the way the cabin is positioned in regards to the car axles. You could easily imagine to have a more "forward cabin" like it is done in other sport cars.

mb1

Fair enough on the driving side. Only you can decide how important the driving component is to you.
On the size issue, I think you're in the small small small minority. After reading years worth of posts, I think that you may be the first person to want the cabin reconfigured to offer more rear seat room. It seems like the most vocalized opinion on this board is that the car is already too bloated. Your suggestion to keep the overall size the same but increase rear seating would change the entire character of a car that's been around for >50 years. I don't see that happening any time soon.

kyrocks

You should be happy the 911 has any of those electronic bells and whistles. Porsche has come a long way in that department. The cars used to be only about driving experience. It wasn't too long ago (997) that the 911 didn't even have auto headlights!
Nowadays, the car is a superb sports car that can be used daily with some electronic creature comforts.

droidfan

@mb1 I hear you.

If I want a real tight sporty 2 seater I can get a Cayman GT4, right ?

The whole situation of the 911 back seats is sort of strange to me. Either you remove them (and there are good "sport" reasons for that) or you just keep them and make them a bit more practical without sacrificing the sport character of the car.

Moving forward the cabin on the front axle by some small margin is done by other sport cars today and would probably benefit the overall handing of the 911 and give you a more "into the road" experience and also that bit of more space for the rear seats.

As I am sure you know very well, the 911 has quite evolved in size during the life of the car and this would not be a crazy idea.

droidfan

@kyrocks, yes I am having an awesome driving experience and I am also expecting a better dash / online experience. Those are not incompatible. The competitors are still ahead and deliver good free stuff so Porsche needs to react accordingly.

BTW, if you have noticed there is a different treatment from Porsche Europe and Porsche USA on some basic features and this point is barely acceptable.

cug

The 911 is definitely not a compromise free sports car. It's probably the best compromise between a sports car and a grand tourer, which makes the penny picking on the electronics / infotainment even worse. The infotainment of a 911 has just now become roughly equal to an Audi A6 from 5 or 6 years ago. That's a car from the same corporate entity. I wouldn't have wanted the 991.1 infotainment as I consider it sub-par compared to my 2012 A4.

While people who use the 911 as a weekend fun toy might share your opinion, the vast majority of 911 owners I personally know (not that many, 10 or 12 or so) drive their cars daily. If performance was the only thing that mattered, there shouldn't be all the luxury stuff on offer. But if it's there, it should work properly and comparable to similar cars in a similar segment. Porsche is neither particularly bad nor particularly good in that, it's the whole segment that sucks in that regard. The curse of low production numbers. But even then I would say a company like Porsche could pull technology like infotainment from Audi, re-skin it to their liking and have a very good system that should have everything included at least for 5 years or so.

Again, you have your opinion and others have different opinions. That comes due to the fact that the 911 (at least the non-GT, non-R models) plain isn't a no-compromise sports car.

Yep, exactly.

That is easy to explain when you look at what stands behind that. Siri and the Google equivalent have probably more money each year behind their features than the development of a completely new 911 model. What you can "purchase" is either Car Play and Android Auto or rather simple technology stacks that need to be optimized for in-car use. It's not that simple.

But I do agree, there is no excuse for Porsche to have a sub-par offering, especially as they can share components, software development, and so on with Audi and VW. And for the infotainment I'd say that would be a massive gain!

Again, it comes down to numbers. Porsche needs to make much more money per car than BMW does and it does not compete in the same space. They don't have to, because buyers don't demand it. I can't complain as I paid (grudgingly) for these things as well, but at least I want them to work.

Exactly. Then why do you claim that "most people don't care about bells and whistles"? Just because the people you know don't?

And regarding Panamera, I also find it kind of ironic to bring up a car that weighs close to 400kg more, is 60cm (24 inches) longer and 4 inches wider when someone asked whether it would have been possible to get 5 inches more leg room in the rear seats to make them actually usable as such. I personally don't mind, I think I could have easily lived with a little bit longer car and therefore more usable rear seats, but I could have also lived with making this area a pure luggage space and keeping the car shorter and more compact. The 911 is pretty fat as is ...


I think even that is a split opinion. There are the ones that can't get tires wide or *** fat enough to have "that powerful stance".

Personally I would have loved to get a 964 style with a slightly elongated wheelbase, but otherwise mostly identical outside dimensions with all the modernization, materials, suspension, engine, etc. of a 991.2 (with the option of an NA engine to keep that argument out of here). The 991 series is 6 inches wider and 9 inches longer without adding too much in inside space. It's still a 2+2. Optically it gained mainly in a fatter and longer rear end without much more usable "living space". Sure, it is a bit more roomy in the front, but I don't feel it's that much. I think that's what's a little disappointing – the car has grown over time and has become "bloated" in your words, but it hasn't gained much practical space in the interior.

droidfan

@cug, you are the man. Thank you a lot for your feedback and responses. They all make sense to me ;-)

cug

Thanks – I know that I'm, probably like you as well, in the minority on a board like this, but one has to consider the overall 911 owners group that while enthusiastic aren't as crazy for performance as the folks here. A forum always represents only a small part of the overall owner spectrum and just the name of the site would turn away half the 911 owners I know ...

droidfan

@cug LoL

Valvefloat991

cug, I agree with most of your comments, but neither Apply CarPlay or Android Auto are necessary for a decent navigation system with voice activation. I spent a lot of time in a 2013 Audi S7 in which both systems were superb. The Audi never missed a voice-entered address. If Porsche had only purchased that system from its corporate sibling, the 991.2 would be in much better shape.