rk-d

And, for good measure, drive an old school turbocharged car and know what lag truly feels like. I think a lot of people get confused by throttle response delay, boost threshold and/or old fashioned transmission kickdown vs actual lag.

991.1 Guy

I agree with you that there is more going on than just turbo lag. My Z06 was supercharged but had a discernable lag that related more to the electronics catching up to the driver input. The waste gates had to close and the injectors had to fire, etc. which created a small delay from input to reaction. The absolute best throttle response I've experienced has been in the 991.1. I assume the GT3's are similar.

sweylo

Great review, but what about the pen that came in a different font?

TheGreatJ

Thank you for the review! One question for the sake of comparability though: Which mode are you in, when experiencing the turbo lag; Normal, Sport or Sport Plus?

Captain P

About turbo lag, read here that there might be more to the delayed response than turbo lag, like throttle response or gear kickdown, I’m happy to be wrong here. Won’t pretend I know all the inner workings of a car.

So I drove it again in manual mode where I did the gear shifting myself. No discernible lag. So it looks like it’s gear change + I’ve been spoiled bad by electric instant torque.

dhirm5

i was going to say this. the tesla’s squirt when you depress the throttle makes any ice feel laggy as hell.

when you care, just keep your porsche in the right rev range by manually choosing gears and problem solved. i think this is why 7mt folk never complain about lag.

aggie57

Yep, we have to go looking for it. It's there but in practical terms no different to NA generation 911's.

mrmichaelsankey

In normal at 40mph in 7th gear in a pdk…. It has to dump into 3rd, a on the same shaft (probably) so it’s a lot of dicking around mechanically to do that.

Go manual and it’s a non-event as you will probably be in 4th and it’s a very quick drop to 3rd, whoosh off you go.

Having spent 7 months in the C4S, it’s a very easy beast to live with, just know your mechanical limitations, sport and sport+ do what they say, normal is not for pushing on with high revs and snappy changes, high rpm. My little chase with a G63 today required sport and he was a tub of lard filling my windscreen, in normal it would of been a lot of “hurry up and wait”.

SF_

As someone who has had both, I'm curious if you think there's any merit to some journalists prefering base over S? Other than price, is there any reason in your view to choose the base over the S?

smiles11

I’d say the main attraction for a base over an S is having a car that provides 90% of the experience without having to pay an extra $13k. Same reasons why some prefer the S over the GTS. It just comes down to how much value you put into the options you’re getting in exchange for the extra $$.

My choice to opt for a C2S was for three things, none of which were because of the bump in power.

1. LSD
2. PTV+
3. Sport PASM

The extra power is just the icing.

If not for a bit of bad luck with my first 992 (long story) I might still have a base C2. I had the choice of the last available MY20 allocation for a C2S, or a MY21 C2 allocation which would have to sit at port for two months waiting on CARB. I went with the former.

Gentian21

The base is a terrific car. But if price isn't a big issue, the S is better in many respects. Even if the increased power and torque are of no interest, the S is the gateway to RAS, PDCC, SPASM, torque vectoring, better brakes, and larger tires and wheels (and, of course, a manual gear box if that is desirable). Even the price differential isn't that great if you concede that the S is going to be worth a good bit more on resale. And, even if that resale differential is only half of the premium price for an S (say, about $8000) that means that over a four year ownership period the cost of driving an S is about $2000 a year. I'm not sure I understand the bias against the S that I detect in Rennlist over the past several months. I would presume that those who buy 911's-- particularly enthusiasts, are genuinely gratified by performance, and there is no way that a base is going to outperform an S-- on the track, or on the street.

SF_

My guess is that the bias has something to do with the fact that it's so hard to test drive a base and S back to back these days, and therefore we lean a bit more on auto journalist opinions (or others on RL). Some of these guys say the base is the pick of the bunch. Perhaps they are considering value, hard to say. I've only driven an S pdk and thought it was amazing. Before I bought my Cayenne, journalists mostly said get the base, you can barely tell the difference. I drove a base and S back to back and the S had a much better motor, well worth the $13k for me, so I went that route. I'm waiting on a 992S but always interested in hearing from those who have spent a lot of time in both.

manual_laborer

My guess is the YouTubers all got access to the S at launch since it was the first available, thought it was great, got access to a base model next, and needed something catchy or controversial to say about it to get people to watch. I love car YouTube, but it’s a system.