99Gdzra

991 TTS for the win!! Drive one and you'll want to make the switch. I own an 11 TTS and the newer ones are waaaaay nicer and faster and more refined and... Or for me, I'd make the leap to a 458! 😬

Ibanezgod

Dennis, more pictures of that house! WOW!


As for me, a 991TTS would be on the list. But that will take 10 years since I have other financial responsibilities. So I will drive my 997 and enjoy her. Just hit 40k so hopefully she stays healthy for the long haul.

Dennis C

I would be interested to hear more about your thoughts on this. Why is this change important to you? How does it dilute the sports car experience to activate/release the parking brake with a button instead of a lever? I don't use the parking brake when I'm driving, so it doesn't impact the sports car experience whatsoever. I never felt any great sense of "sports car satisfaction" when I set the parking brake in my 997. I suppose you could argue that electric windows take away from the sports car experience compared to old-fashioned window cranks, but I don't have any desire to go back to manual windows.

I can more easily see the argument for dilution of the experience in the new turbos as they have moved away from a manual transmission. I simply don't understand the issue with the new parking brake.

Dennis C

That's my neighbor's house across the street. It's a nice place!

996pp

Im am Less is more type of guy. Coming from a 996 to 997 already adds a few more buttons and electronic controls. Also any sports car that doesn't offer MT will kill the deal for me (just a personal preference) I know the PDK is so much faster and precise but i would have to have a 3rd pedal. My second 996 had a glove box and cup holders and that was a big step up from my previous one LOL, i was so stoked my wife started calling me a dinosaur.

Twinturbom3

At which point are we fully satisfied and close our eyes and no other car interest us?

Internet, youtube, social media,new cars, new models, and other factors speed up the thirst for a new car.

There is no "end" no "thats the car of my life" unless you know how to be happy with what you own.

Its not only about money, its about being happy with what you own. Even if you so called upgrade to a more expensive and newer car, you will start looking for alternatives 4-6 months later.

cdk4219

Amg gts

vettenomore

My 997.1 is probably it for me. Realistically, I've always wanted to get back to a 911 - my car has the mods I want to give the performance I need and design is timeless as far as I'm concerned. In addition, I'll retire in a few years and I probably won't have the means to spend $150k - $200k on a car. I've had my 997.1 approx 13 months and its the first car that I thought fit me (attitude, what I want as far as looks in a car, performance, etc). It's possible I might see something affordable for me that catches my interest, but pretty unlikely.

acf

In the car world, it's easy to always want more! Even the 991T will only satisfy you for a period of time until the next new thing.

CodeRed

So much better having a hand brake than electric...that goes for the hydraulic steering too.

993MAN

OP, I still think your car looks amazing.

Yes these third world problems are a worry for sure

I was thinking about the same thing, well, I never stop if the truth be known.
Lately I was considering a McLaren MP4 12C but just can't bring myself to do it.
The extra money that I don't have, plus the unknown and cost of ownership.

The damn problem with Porsche is they are so close to perfection which is why I won't change. Not yet anyway.

vbb

The 911 has always been my dream car. After having several sports cars in my 20+ years of car ownership, I finally got one. I had it for a year before I sold it and got my current 997.1TT. Having now owned the top trim (outside of the GTs) of the car I always dreamt about, you'd think my wandering eye towards other cars would stop. It hasn't, but then again I don't think it ever will. As a car guy, I'm always looking at other cars. It's fun to do.

That said, I've got the title for this car and am about to do some pretty extensive preventative engine-out maintenance work to it, and also some aftermarket work (springs, DSC box and spacers), and all of those things are reasons to keep this for many, many more years. I like the 991.2TT and the GT4 (in that order), but neither enough to justify the expense of a trade.

996tnz

As mentioned, I love most of the tech that's finding it's way into new 911s. I reckon we have Nissan's GTR to thank for accelerating the arrival of much of that, as its well sorted software systems really took the fight to the 997.1 Turbo. So 4 wheel steering, active aero, PDK etc float my boat as they add to the speed and handling of the car. Dynamic engine mounts, PASM and selectable driving modes all make sense to me, particularly in a multi-purpose road going sports car.

Less so innovations that take away from handling and feedback. Yet to drive electric steering in a Porsche so can't comment there, but the on-off switched character of it about the neutral mid-point in a Golf GTI puts me off (though I love the GTI Performance Pack's active torque vectoring). For holding the car in place when stationary, any button, pedal, pull, or lever will do in my book - but then again - like you say too - stationary cars don't excite me.

Maybe it's partly because we call it a handbrake rather than a parking brake here and we have a decent number of gravelled roads, but I'd been using a proper handbrake on the move for a decade or so already before first joining the Porsche world with a 928. One of my most memorable trips in that car was over a gravelled road winding over a mountain range, and a handbrake is an on-the-move safety feature there which also allows quicker controlled progress by adjusting the attitude of the car.

Off gravel too, the handbrake has seen use in everything from grass and tarmac gymkhanas, to autocross, to club races. On a fast (100MPH limit) 3-day closed-roads Targa Tour full of exotics on R-Comps - but with us on 300 treadwear roadies - the handbrake provided assurance that we wouldn't understeer through any grit strewn tarmac T-junctions. In the event, I only needed to use it once for that, but I was primed and ready to use it at quite a few such places if need be as we were taking racing lines across both sides of the road and such intersections were unsighted and unswept. Another use on-road is as an emergency understeer killer when doing a fast, tight, U-turn in an AWD or FWD as it sure beats hitting a kerb, though this was more of a consideration in a nose-heavy Audi allroad.

On track it is obviously not essential in a RWD or rear-biased AWD but it can help initiate a rescuing drift without adding the speed and weight transition that comes with flooring it, or it can facilitate a J-turn for instance. I have also raced FWDs on track and in a rallycross, and even on track the handbrake gets a lot of use with those, as it again helps tighten the line by killing understeer, allowing faster cornering.

In other words the handbrake's main uses on the go for me are:

1. Attitude control for cornering on loose surfaces or low grip hard surfaces.
2. Tightening cornering on hard surfaces by killing understeer (primarily for FWDs, front-biased AWDs and symmetrical AWDs, but I find the briefest of dabs can sometimes help a RWD turn in crisply too, by moving some weight forwards while letting the fronts devote all their grip to turning).
3. Only slightly on-the-move, but for helping hold the car along with the foot brake while spooling up to launch in races or autocrosses, and helping control wheel tramp on the launch.

Pretty much all road cars (including 911s) leave the factory with an understeer bias, and a handbrake allows the driver to pull that back towards a rear bias whenever desired, for speed or safety. I have also variously used it on the move for:

4. Sliding a car through 90 degrees on loose gravel to park neatly between other cars (mostly in my younger, funner, days, but even the wife's proper handbrake equipped MPV can do this). Very satisfying, and always incident free, but not recommended of course.
5. The odd traffic-free 180 or J-turn on loose surfaces, grass, or skid pans.
6. Damping front suspension bounce for a trip back home after the allroad's front air suspension died suddenly (just applied moderately each time for a few seconds to calm the front after pavement transitions and bumps).
7. Extra braking while travelling backwards at speed to restore appropriate brake proportioning (the default front-biased brake proportioning is based around weight and brake force shifting to the vehicles front axle as it brakes more heavily, which is the opposite of what's needed when braking in reverse - but maybe stability control systems with e-proportioning have that eventuality covered now). This helped protect my family after a towing car threw itself suddenly into our lane, pushing us sideways over a kerb, bursting our front right tire and breaking the right rear lower control arm. We were headed downhill towards a bend but the ABS system immediately pulled almost all braking power (probably due to the instant flat tire throwing it into ice mode), barely slowing the car at all with the foot brake. Throwing the crippled car hard into the turn brought her around and the handbrake was much more effective in scrubbing off almost all our speed in reverse before we glanced off the armco and came to rest a few feet further on.

I swore I'd never buy another car without a proper handbrake after selling my BMW E38 750 some years back. I recently fell for a cheap Cayenne S, but only after first confirming that it was capable of being modified to have a proper handbrake (the competition spec Cayenne TransSyberias had a proper one factory-fitted). Still on my to-do list actually, but I have confirmed that the cable system is there to plumb it into, that it works the way it should (only operates on the rears), and that I am allowed to fit a 'disability assistance' handbrake to a road vehicle here so as to keep it legal.

I do realise that I am in the minority in using a handbrake on the move, but boy I miss it when it isn't available. European fuel economy laws and the ubiquity of stability control systems appear to be the main drivers behind the button mania. Drivers only had 6 control points as it was (OK, 5 in an auto), and Porsche have taken one away...

Dennis C

Thanks for that detailed response! I get it. I've used the hand brake/parking brake (I actually tend to call it the emergency brake, which makes my kids laugh) plenty of times while driving, but I guess I really didn't do that in my 996 or 997. Even those cars had enough electronics that it didn't seem to have as much use, except maybe starting off from a stop on a steep hill. In my old 1979 Alfa, I used it much more! I appreciate your perspective.

Steve 96C4S

Interesting responses so far. Thanks for the ideas, strong opinions and reality checks. I don't plan on driving a 2014-15 Turbo S since... I really just don't want to know how much nicer they are (and I don't want to lust after a newer car as I shouldn't spend the money now).

I find the whole parking break thing pretty interesting. I never, ever set the parking brake in an automatic, only my 1988 and 1996 manual 911's. I also don't live in San Francisco or in a place with EXTREMELY steep streets.

In any automatic car I've ever owned, I've rarely ever set that parking brake. Never had an issue with it. Hope I haven't been screwing up here.