simsgw

I've been having trouble with in-car vibration transferring to my spine at a compression point. I asked for advice in a thread I can't seem to locate and then hied myself to a Premiere dealer to test the solutions offered. Auto Gallery north of Los Angeles has one of the largest selections in the country and being designated 'premiere' means they get some sort of priority in grabbing cars inbound from Germany. I never inquired closely, but as long as they had all the examples I wanted to try, it didn't matter.

We had other possibilities suggested (including a GT3 RS 4.0, which sounded plausible to me if not my neurologist), but the consensus advice seemed to be:

• Adaptive sport seats
• Cabriolet chassis rather than coupe
• PDK rather than manual
• 991 for the slightly longer wheelbase

Naturally, the first car I was given to test was the one they most wanted to move. Nothing wrong with that and it did have the adaptive sport seats. In Berkeley, owning those seats would leave you open to charges of sexual harassment. The car was a 997 Turbo, which is merely my own car with an extra hundred-odd horsepower. When I said I loved the seat, but wanted to look further, the salesman assured me "We could chip it for you!" I actually laughed out loud and had to apologize. The idea that a shortage of horsepower would be the reason for turning down a Turbo just caught me off guard. The truth is the vibration spectrum was just exactly like my own car. Isolated by the seats to some extent, but still my car. I could recognize it in the dark.

I had promised -- purely in the spirit of objectivity -- to test a GT3; and my fallback position to avoid buying a Jaguar or something else depressing, was a Panamera GTS. But honestly, my back suffered from the fifty-mile drive to the dealer followed by a Turbo test drive down Topango Canyon. So I skipped those possibilities and jumped to the consensus sweet spot: a 991 Carrera S Cabriolet with adaptive seats.

I have to say the seats didn't feel as nice. Inquiry into part numbers disclosed that the Turbo had "Premium Package with 18-way Adaptive Seats" while the Cabriolet merely had "14-way Adaptive Sport Seats." Hard to see how my spine could tell the difference since my brain still hasn't found 18 ways to adjust a seat, but the proof is in the pain. The seats in the Cab hurt. What can I say?

But the test drive... I've heard a lot of complaints about the change to electrical assist in the new models, and I'm a design engineer. I know exactly what the challenges are in providing the same feel with hydraulic or electrical assist as compared to a fully mechanical steering arrangement. And electrical poses challenges that don't exist with hydraulic assistance. I knew all that and was prepared to feel that I was 'settling' by accepting a 991 for the sake of my back. Nope. I realized halfway down the same canyon road that I was having fun. My sober engineering evaluation went out the window. I was just having a damned good time driving that Cabriolet. The steering is quick and responsive, and you feel like you can place the car anywhere you like. For personal reasons, 'fun' is a lot more important right now than dramatic earthshaking power or ultimate track performance. I was hooked.

And this is the kicker for an unreconstituted fan of manual transmissions: I liked the PDK. I don't mean I tolerated it. No, I liked it. It was fun as well. I always double clutch my downshifts. Not for any particular reason, just too many years on tracks and it becomes second nature. The damned PDK Cab was doing the same thing but the designers have added a spritz of fuel I suppose. Hard to be sure from sound effects, but the result is it blerts when you ask for a downshift. Maybe I mean it bürps. How unnecessary is that? Purely done for the fun of it. And it works. It is fun. I was boated.

The acid test was my back of course and I wish I had been trying the 18's in that Cabriolet instead of the 14's, but I have to say that the vibration spectrum in the 991 Cabs is much more pleasant than a 997.2. Mind you, the 997 never bothered me until this problem arose with my spine. It is by no means a case of 997=bad and 991=good. It is just different and also that significant bit smoother in the 991 Cab. I only kept it running the canyons for 45 minutes (heh heh), but I fully expect that with the 18-way adaptive seats, a 991 Cabriolet will solve my problem.

So I've put a deposit on a 2013 C2S Cab in white on brown, "premium package with 18-way Adjustable Sport Seats", PDK, PSE, Sport Chrono, and espresso natural leather. Other stuff I forget. Its status is "On Vessel" inbound. I paid extra for shipping by closed van to California after arrival.

Does this mean I have to change forums? I checked and they're boring over in the 991 forum.

Gary

okbarnett

I find the adaptive sport seat hard to get into, because of the 'wings' and side bolsters, the plain electric seat is alot more usable

utkinpol

Gary, i am very glad you found a car that works for you well, good luck and all the best!

alexb76

Glad you found the right car for you... please report back after delivery on your daily impressions!

KeninBlaine

Nice writeup. As a fellow engineer, I appreciated your objectivity and balanced descriptions. As a cab lover, that new car sounds absolutely wonderful. Looking forward to photos when it arrives. Congratulations.

yemenmocha

why no link to 991 forum under Water Cooled?

Mike in CA

Gary, congrats! Knowing you, your background, and how logical and objective you are, your observations on the steering, PDK, etc. carry a lot of weight, IMO. Anyway, I'm really glad you found a 911 that hits your sweet spot. Don't hesitate to post in the 991 forum with others of us that cross-post 997 and 991. Maybe you can help raise the level of excitement over there! Can't wait for pics of yor new car....should be gorgeous.

ADias

Gary: Congratulations on your new car. I wish it will be all you wish for and more.

DGrayling

Gary, I'm glad you found a suitable P-car that does not bother your spine. Please continue to post on the 997 forum, as we enjoy your opinions and observations. Your writing style reminds me of Dennis Simanaitis, an engineer from my alma mater, who wrote for Road & Track for many years.

Hella-Buggin'

Congrats Gary,

I'm glad you were able to find something that keeps you in the Porsche family. Your knowledgeable, in depth, perspectives are always welcome in the 997 as far as I'm concerned and you'd better not abandon us.

Edgy01

Porsche engineering knows a lot more this then we do and thus the reason that the suspension tailoring in the cabriolet models is much more suitable for the rigors of a daily driver--without compromise.

David in Talent

Gary, so glad you found the right combo for your back and for your psyche. As a long time M/T Porsche driver I was intrigued by your loving of the PDK. I have driven the PDK (briefly) and found it to be missing something. Maybe I am just an old codger (69) and unwilling or seemingly unable to learn new "tricks" ! Can you comment ? Many thanks for your input and I think that your color combo and options on your new car are spot on........

Dave

scotsskier

Gary, sounds like a great choice, especially in white. Always enjoy your inputs, the style reminds me a bit of that incomparable writer, LJK Setright

simsgw

Yes. You're barely middle-aged. I was born in the same war.

Oh, you were looking for comments about the PDK... Sorry.

I'll be happy to expand on that result if you'll bear with me. I haven't tried to explain it to anyone yet so this will be a little meandering.

I had driven the Boxster Spyder with PDK for a review, and last month when I had the dealer install some new items in my own C2S, they loaned me their 2012 C2S and that came with PDK. I had to drive it across the LA Basin to my home town in Orange County and then back the next morning when they finished the work sooner than the couple of days expected. I didn't like the PDK. Quite possibly because I was starting to suffer badly from the new symptoms from my back and the pain colored my perception. Also, I had to learn new tricks while navigating one of the busiest freeways on planet Earth. But the bottom line was that I was very glad to make the return drive in my own C2S with the manual shift.

I think my subconscious was mulling those experiences, but I know my engineer's analysis bone was tweaked. I had been thinking about my manual transmission. Using it is a sensual pleasure. No doubt of that. A perfect four-three downshift with just the right double clutch action is a delight. And in traffic, the car is always in the right gear for the situation because I anticipate in ways an automatic cannot. So I smugly decided I was right along. PDK is for people with atrophied (or admittedly missing) left legs.

But then I began noticing how seldom I shift at all in normal driving. With the torque of the DFI engine in the C2S, I left it in third gear for essentially the entire seven hours when we did a group tour of the canyons between here and the Sequoia National Park. Once in awhile I'd put it in fourth to laze along a straightaway, and I'd shift down at stop signs of course, but essentially, it's a third-gear car on winding roads. On freeways, I keep it in sixth when there's no significant traffic and when I drove that same route backwards on the same busy freeway, the car stayed in fourth almost the entire sixty miles because I needed the control of the mid-range. If shifting is such sensual pleasure, I sure wasn't acting like it.

Maybe part of the charm of the manual transmission was how little it shifted -- uh, had to be shifted I mean. Shifting is so intuitive, I rarely notice myself doing it. When I need torque, I automatically keep the tach needle visible in my lower vision while I'm driving. I don't think about it, I just do it. If traffic slows and the needle moves too far left, I downshift. If traffic opens up a little, I change up a gear. Mostly, the needle just stays around the 12 o'clock position for long stretches. But an automatic... Sheesh!

An automatic is up and down all the time trying to stay in the highest gear possible, and the PDK irritated me that way in the first ten miles in that busy traffic so badly that I started second guessing it. It was not in sport mode, you see. Didn't occur to me. Also, I didn't know it well enough to trust myself in full 'manual' mode and in automatic mode it distracted me finding the right gear when I had other things on my mind. Very annoying. Anyone who knows the 75 mph maneuvers we call 'busy' traffic on a California freeway knows you don't want to be reaching for an owner's manual.

But... well, with all that evidence that I wasn't really shifting more than a few times an hour on freeways, and not at all on the fun roads we seek out in Porsches, I began to think I might be doing the PDK an injustice. If I don't know how to use any tool, it always feels awkward. And in the last few weeks, I have been motivated to give PDK a chance. I got a disgusting diagnosis about my back, and here on the forum, someone pointed out correctly that even though my leg has sixty years experience depressing a clutch, it still puts a torque on my lumbar every time I do that. My damned lumbar dates from that same war, and as one of the other pilots mentioned, my spine has pulled a lot of g's over those years.

This time, I read more about the PDK before that test drive. I wanted to know how to use it properly to give it a fair test. I still would not own an automatic, but with the car in Sport mode, which is the way I drive anyway, I found that the PDK pretty much anticipated the same shifts I would, so it doesn't distract me in situations where I want the right gear now. Several times -- since I was changing modes a lot to test the car -- I would think I was in manual mode and I'd select a gear myself. The PDK (in sport mode at least) would leave the car in the gear I chose for a significant period. Essentially as long as it takes to execute some evolution and then relax back into cruising mode. It would feel like manual control for as long as I needed it. Then it would revert to the mode of seeking a higher gear. Even then, it wasn't aggressively shooting for Prius mileage. It may well do that in normal mode, but in sport mode, the car was always in a good choice of gear, not sixth or seventh. And if I asked for more power without triggering a shift myself, the PDK showed good judgment in using the current gear or shifting down first. That is the worst mode for a conventional automatic and the PDK passed the test superbly.

All of that means that unlike conventional automatics, the PDK is programmed acceptably to handle affairs on its own when I'm preoccupied, and it let me shift gears the way I choose when I choose and it doesn't argue with me at such times. At least, not now that I've read the manual. Ahem.

When I care to, I'm still timing my own shifts. The only part I"m not doing is the clutch work. Yes, I still feel a small surge of joy when I double clutch just right and it's true that a PDK steals the pleasure by doing it for me, but as a driver the important point is that it does do it. And it does it right. It isn't like a conventional automatic that's always a crucial couple of seconds behind my reactions.

It will be heresy to many PDK owners, but I did not like the paddles. I'm used to pulling back to rein everything from horses to airplanes, and I'm used to flying an airplane with one hand on the yoke or stick and the other hand operating any controls that aren't on the yoke or stick under that primary hand. I like to drive cars the same way. Even on track, my right hand pretty much relaxes near the gear shift on warm-up and cool-down laps. I admit I didn't read the manual pages on the paddle option, but it seems to demand that I use my left hand to shift down and my right hand to shift up. I suppose that's great on a race track at nine-tenths where I use both hands on the wheel, but on the race track I'd put the PDK in Sport Plus anyway and save my attention for more important issues.

You always want to make the most of the car you're given, and a PDK is definitely as good on track as I am with a manual, so moving my attention to other chores will create a faster lap. In fact, I might as well offend another part of the audience by saying that you cannot shift a manual in a road car properly and quickly on a race track. You have to abuse the drive train unless you opt for modifying the flywheel. A road car's transmission has a rhythm created by the time the engine/flywheel combination takes to give up 800 rpm between gears. Shifting faster works, but it hammers the drive train and always makes me... well, let's say it isn't aesthetically pleasing. I do it when I want a fast lap, but it isn't the way the car wants to shift. A PDK is bloody fast at changing gears with that double-clutch arrangement. I would need instrumentation to analyze what it is doing to dissipate the surplus kinetic energy in the flywheel and the engine's rotating masses, but a quick guess is they use a lighter flywheel as we do when race-prepping a car.

Well, that's all beside the point. The bottom line is that on the freeways and back roads, it would be a pain in the *** to have to use my right hand to shift up. So I ordered the conventional PDK controls. They lie under my left thumb and make perfect sense to me (and surely many old timers). You pull back to go to a lower gear and push forward to go... forwarder, if you'll permit me. I think this is a very personal intuition, not a right/wrong thing. I'm glad Porsche offers both ways, although I'd certainly be annoyed if I preferred the pull-back-to-go-faster notion but still wanted to use only my left hand. You'd be stuck in the middle of two paradigms.

My conclusion was -- once I bothered to read the manual -- that a PDK is as natural to my style of driving as ... well, remember the transition from a manual typewriter to an IBM selectric that had no carriage to throw? That was the precursor of these modern keyboards we're both using of course. And throwing the carriage on a manual Underwood was satisfying -- sometimes even cathartic -- but it was not the essence of typing. Nor is clutch action the essence of shifting a car at the right time to have the right gear for the right control of a car.

I'd probably be using a three-pedal car for the rest of my life, if a compressed spinal cord hadn't forced me to do an objective test of the PDK. And I still could not tolerate a conventional automatic, not even the various computer-controlled clutched models in other cars that are programmed less successfully than PDK. But I honestly felt like the PDK in that Cab gave me the best of both worlds: rapid precise shifting when I called for it, and discreet calm changes of gear for those relaxing times. In my experience, an automatic never did either one, but the PDK felt like an extension of my own skills, not a hindrance to them.

And you can't ask more than that from a tool.

Besides, it was fun driving with the top down and listening to the PDK bürp everytime I shifted.

Gary

Chaos

Congrats and thank you for the excellent write up. A pulled lower back and numb left quad left me in a strange problem last summer.