pderover

You're brilliant!!!

pderover

Replace the Carrera badge w/ 911 and get the dual exhaust tips (or PSE or other exhaust) and no one will know the difference. Add CAI or gundo hack and your non S will sound like a beast.

love2drive

Putting flame suit on...

Oh I know! Get a C2 and put the GT3 wing on it and paint your calipers yellow.

Oh shh.. many C2S owners do that too. Lol, sorry yall. I'm just messing around.

MaddMike

Don't forget the decals!

zirrah

First response had it best lol. Base car is a helluva lot of fun to drive :-).

Facepalm

Do not stick an s badge on a non s car. A 911 in any form has absolutely nothing to prove. It's a 911. No need to pose.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/4338...3104573463471/

Little Green

I own an 05 base. Bose, pasm, dual powered seats etc. I absolutely love my car. I would venture to say I drive it harder than most folks drive their 911's. Unless you are a track junkie (and I love to put her on the track) you 1) can't use even a base cars total power, handling and braking capabilities on the street 2) regardless of how good you think you are you can't drive a base 911 to within 90% of the car's capability.


Not knocking anyone's driving and sure there are some spots here and there where you can flog her but at the end of the day if the base car makes you happy, buy it.
It's not about power it's how you and machine use that power and the cars capabilities.

If my choice was a turbo or a gt3 it's a gt3 every time even though the turbo has more power. If all you want is power go grab yourself a hellcat. That way everyone knows you are the man.

mk85911

+1

vbb

Ask yourself this... how often will you be driving the car above 9/10ths in the areas where having the extra HP and Torque is really going to make a noticeable difference? Coming off of turn 6 into the back straight you might want that extra oomph, but unless you're being reckless, you probably won't get to use that power anywhere on the street.

Like most car guys, I've always had the tendency to want more power. I've modified practically every car I've had, and I'm always trying to make it just a little bit faster. When it came to stepping into P-car ownership however, I had a budget I was willing to spend, and more important to me was getting a clean car (and I really wanted a .2 with PDK) than a faster one, so I ended up with the car I currently own. I can't use half of my 997.2 C2's performance on the street unless I want to risk getting a ticket or worse. I thought I'd want to get a GTS or Turbo shortly after settling in to the C2, but I haven't felt that urge to upgrade.

Driving a slower car fast can be a LOT more fun than driving a faster car slow.

Blu311

We've been through this debate before, and you are correct, its not an 'automatic transmission' its a manual with two pedals that shifts automatically. (lol, can you tell I drive a manual?)

Yup

Macster

You'll get all kinds of responses.

Best advice I can offer is test drive examples of both and decide.

The base is plenty fast. Its acceleration/top speed numbers put it near the top of cars in terms of performance -- ignoring the mega-millions super-cars/exotics.

One thing you have to remember is there is always a faster car. But also speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?

I like to point out the base models are the best buys. They (obviously) cost less and are less expensive to own/operate. With the smaller engine the engine/drivetrain are less stressed, which suggests a longer/trouble free service life. (My 'base' Boxster has almost 300K miles on it. Still runs great. Would an S model have covered that number of miles?)

Let's look at the numbers: The new Carrera lists for $89.4K, the 4 for $96.3K. Do you need AWD that bad? Bad enough to spend an extra $6.9K on a car?

Looking at base vs. S, the base lists for $89.4K, the S lists for $103.4K. Is the S really $14K more car than the base?

And at the "top" of the Carrera line: The 4 lists for $96.3K while the 4S lists for $110.3K. Is the 4S really $14K more car than the 4?

Carmichael

I have a base car.

It's the lightest of all 911s, even the GT3.

The base and S models I test drove felt pretty similar, but to me, I could feel the difference in power between the two. To me, the larger brakes, standard PASM and more power is worth the extra expense.

I have an FSI 3.8 in my car, but I wish I had the 330x34mm brakes and S/Turbo front uprights so I could easily upgrade to six-piston calipers and 350mm rotors. I also have PSS9s on the car, but I wish I had PASM instead. It's tough to care for coilovers on a semi-daily driven car, especially in the winter, here in the Midwest.

The only options my car came with from the factory were Bose, HIDs, and heated seats. I typically seek base model cars out, since they're the cheapest, lightest, simplest models in a range, and I couldn't care less about 14 way adjustable seats, full leather, or embossed crests in headrests. They are nice, don't get me wrong, but if it adds weight, I don't want it.

My base interior is pretty drab, but it's nice enough. Could use some GT2/GT3 bucket seats, though ... Pretty sure that will get the car to sit under 3,000 lbs by the curb ...

Oh, and the factory 18" Carrera IIIs are lighter than any of the OEM 19" wheel models. Yes, you can feel a difference in acceleration between them, too.

Crester

What? How?

Lvt19672

IMS, bore scoring, premature water pump, etc etc more often reported by the 3.8, search the threads if you don't believe it.

Petza914

Not exactly true -

1. IMS - in '05, which is really the only year to worry about unless you're tracking your car, more base model cars received the smaller IMS bearing than S cars. The upside to that is if you have a smaller bearing '05 that hasn't started to fail yet, you can install the IMS Solution and not worry about it again.
2. Bore Scoring -this may be more prevalent in the 3.8 than the 3.6 but really is much more prominent in cars that are driven in cold weather where the different metals in the engine warm and expand at different rates during warm-up. Also, people in these climates sometimes start their cars and leave them idling so they're warm when they get in. That causes 2 problems, first the fuel enrichment routing that's based off coolant temperature is injecting more fuel into the engine and this can cause cylinder wall washing which means it's removing the protective oil coating by the fuel washing it away. Second, the highest load on the IMS bearing is when the car is at idle. When you start the car, drive off and let it warm as you drive
3. Water Pump - I believe both cars use the same pump. Water pump failure is related to time in service more than mileage. The impeller and the bearing are sitting in coolant all the time, whether the car is being driven or not. That's why some pumps in less frequently driven cars are failing at low mileage, like 30-40k, whereas others used as DD are lasting until the 80k mile range and above - both are failing at roughly the same time interval - it's the mileage that's different. It should be preemptively changed every 3-4 years regardless of mileage.