That is a great question and I get asked all the time even from Porsche fanatics why I have three Porsche sports cars. But I didn't say I didn't like it, I said it is my least favorite Porsche. I still love it. Porsche makes such good products. The C4 is a 2018 which means it has that low end turbo torque that can be intoxicating. The quality is outstanding and it is a great DD. My Boxster is a weekend fun car and the GT3 a track weapon. I only got the C4 because of the wide body that came with it for the 991.2 generation. All the 992s are now wide body so I would never get a 4 today.

More importantly, I can't get rid of my Porsches. They are very emotional to me. I picked up my C4 in Leipzig and drove it through 13 countries (all the way to Romania to the Transfagarsan Highway and to Dracula's castle). The memories are unbelievable. They are like children to me. lol. My avatar is with that car in Vienna.

And for the record, I prefer driving my 981 over all the rest. Flame suit on.

 

You mean your 3RS driving suit. Lol

 

Nah....I will just keep the windows up. I don't follow rules anyway. lol

 

I completely understand. Once we take delivery of the C4S, we'll have 9 cars, 6 of them Porsches. We have an 8-car garage, so you see the problem. I'm struggling to pick any car I'm willing to sell or trade in, I'm attached to all of them, lots of experiences in all of those cars except the two bought this year.

One thing I appreciate in the 991 over the 992 is having real gauges and plenty of buttons, almost seems old school now. But I've yet to drive any 992, and my first experience with one may be the Turbo S tomorrow!

 

I just was on the configurator and noticed more options have been added. You can now chose a bunch of deviated stitching colors, the option to wrap your car with 2 different wrap choices. The option to have door jams and hinges wrapped, and I’m sure I’m missing something else. IMO the wraps look horrible and are almost as pricey as going with PTS….I’m happy about the stitching options. Very cool.

 

Quick tell the Ferrari guys. We have a car they can spend $65,000 on for paint /wrap. They'll come right away.

 

This is only one of many videos that I have found over the years thats part of the justification as to why I always go for ceramics if it’s available on my cars (2 Murcielagos, 488, Viper ACR and my 992 turbo s). I’m not here to tell you how to spend your money but I always “happily waste mine” on ceramic if available…

 

If we all care about lap times and improvements of the dynamics, the unsprung mass absolutely is a real thing to improve.

 

its less about unsprung mass to me as even back then my roaster lamborghini Murci’s clocked in at over 4000lbs, and while I totally get that this weight savings (rotational) at the wheels is exponentially more valuable then saving it as ‘static weight’ elsewhere on the car, I care more about consistent brake feel/performance on those mountain road where I clearly chose not to follow the speed limit guidance signs and find myself in rapidly approaching sharp turns that I can nail the brakes and then hit the gas time after time. What I am saying is I can induce break fade even off track on some higher end sports cars running steelies and I have never achieved that in a ceramic car. Are steelies dangerous? Nah… Do Ceramics just give me comfort in their consistency… absolutely…

I will say one bad thing about ceramics, but even this they seemed to have mitigated a good bit (probably with pad compounds) earlier generations you needed to get heat into them… else you definitely could feel less bite. My 992 TS, stops very well when cold and a smidge better when hot.

 

I mean, it's either a mathematical improvement or not.

Regarding my subjective opinion I also like the look more.

Win win for me then? I will take the risk that something bad happens to them. Hasn't happened on my 992 GT3 yet.

 

I assume you actually watched the video right? Its a pretty impartial test, it shows that after consistent hard breaking the pccb’s clearly shine.

I too love the color, the notably less dust, and even the lack of rusty rotor look that cars with steelies get after a wash. Also on my gtrs the pads and rotors always rust bonded after a wash and the next day when id back the car out of the garage I’d get this POP as they broke free.. horrible sound to hear.. but after owning 6 I got used it… no such issue with pccbs.

 

Your You Tube video guy is leaving a lot out of of his analysis. Brake fade has much more to do with brake cooling systems/design than CCM vs Steel. My Ferrari 458 had Ceramic brakes and had massive brake fade at Sebring (because there are no brake cooling ducts put on any street Ferrari's). The Ferrari 458 Challenge (track version) has no brake fade even with steel brakes....because the Challenge version (track version) has brake cooling ducts.

I drive IMSA full season and all our race cars use steel brakes, including in the 24 Hours of Daytona. It's not about steel vs CCM, it's all about the design of the cars braking system, air flow and cooling to dissipate the heat.

My ceramic brakes lasted 2 track days on my street Ferrari before they had to be replaced at a cost of $40K due to over heating the ceramic discs (it destroyed the surface and made it rough even though I had 93% wear left). I race cars, track cars, and have many street cars. I do not recommend CCM's for tracking/racing. Way too expensive to replace, easy to damage, and no noticeable improvement. In fact they take considerably longer to get up to temp than steel and your braking performance sucks until they are up to temp. So you can arguably say they are bad for a street car... but they sure look good on my NFGT, 458 Spider, 488 GTB, F8 Spider, Porsche 992 TTS Cab and incoming 992 GT3RS.

Note all of this from first hand experience after 1000's of hours on the track.

 

Now that we are in November….. we can count down the days until US allocations drop. My SM said his Porsche rep confirmed US allocations drop in November… which is why I am on this thread.. I’m in line behind all the “wales” and so I hope after they are fed, a little minnow like me stands a chance… and yes, I will order pccbs :]

 

Certainly wasn’t requiring your street credibility to have an opinion, but I will point out that your argument seems to say ceramics are bad because u cooked a set on a car that didn’t have proper cooling. So lets say you have IDEAL scenarios where the cars have proper cooling, identical except for Ceramic vs steel and you dont give the nod to ceramics? Interesting and we will just have to agree to disagree, and that’s ok, fortunately porsche doesn’t require us to all agree… and therefore they provide options.

In the interest of fairness because I certainly am fond of learning, show me a video where steelies win, if adequate cooling is there and its not about “cost of replacements” or the fragility of them (neither of the two I have encountered). My list isnt as cool as yours but here are the various CCB cars over the years 2010 ZR1, 2006 Murci, 2009 Murci, 2018 488, 2017 ACR Extreme, 992 TS Cab. I have a far more substantial list of “steelies” but my small samplings of CCB’s converted me to a believer.

Again, no ill will, I’d like an informative video that shows me I am wrong based on an appropriate sized application/use of CCB’s vs Steelies…. (I probably still will prefer ccbs BUT I’ll likely get a better understanding of why there are SUCH divergent views on the topic.

 

Surprised not to see this posted (and if it already has been, whoops):


There is an accompanying write-up on The Intercooler, which is behind a paywall. I highly recommend a subscription - no ads, no listicles, no politics.