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Porsche is a company with a huge following, but there's also plenty of people who don't like Porsches.
Their complaints are typical, the cars are overpriced, they have a horrible horsepower to dollar ratio, and they're expensive to repair, and these claims are all fairly accurate, but I've always found arguments against them. I've always said, yeah the Porsche 911 is expensive and doesn't have much horsepower for the money, but the 911 is a true drivers car, they've got that old school feel, they're lightweight, and you can still get one with a manual transmission and a naturally aspirated engine. I have a 993, which is the 911 that was produced between 1994 and 1998 and it is one of the most soulful and fulfilling cars I've ever driven.
But cars have changed a lot over the last few years, some for the better - and some for the worse.
The 911 carrera is widely believed to be the best sports car ever made, and the latest version was revealed just 1 month ago, but you wouldn't know it today, based on the complete lack of people talking about it. There is talk about the hybrid, but the carrera is the one we were all waiting for, and now that it's been revealed, no one seems to care.
And I think even Porsche is unexcited about this car - normally when they reveal a new 911 they have a huge grandiose spectacle to show off the new car. But the reveal event for the latest 911, if you can call it an event, was surprisingly underwhelming. And the event mostly focused on the Hybrid GTS and didn't say much about the carrera.
The new 911 should have been the most exciting car reveal of 2024, but instead it was the most underwhelming reveal. The C8 corvette debuted exactly 5 years ago in July of 2019, and people still won't shut up about it. The new 911 carrera should be the most talked about car in the automotive world! So what happened?
Well, over the past few years, the non-GT 911s, you know, the ones that the car dealerships will actually give us allocations for, have been stripped of all the 911 qualities we love, generation by generation, for the past 12 years.
With the 991.1, Porsche made the 911 huge and heavy, and you could no longer see or access the engine.
With the 991.2, the naturally aspirated engines had been replaced by turbo charged engines, the car was a lot more digital, and the beloved 5 analog gauges had been reduced to just 1 analog gauge.
And with the latest 922.2, we no longer have a manual transmission, it's almost completely digital, it's got a power to weight ratio of .1 horsepower per pound! and that last single analog dial that was clinging on for dear life has been replaced by a cheap looking digital screen.
Today, Porsche does not produce a single 911 with a manual transmission or a naturally aspirated engine. The only new 911s that porsche is currently producing are the carrera, the GTS hybrid, the turbo and the turbo S, all turbocharged, all automatic.
Now I love porsches, I own porsches, I'm always looking for new porsches to buy, but when I look at this car, I hear porsche saying "this is the 911 for peasants. Those who have purchased many, many cars from us in the past, and those who are millionaires, they may have the manual transmissions and the naturally aspirated engines, everyone else can drive *this*".
The newest 911 has a base price of 120 thousand dollars, and from a car enthusiast's perspective, you're not getting much for your money, especially once you start comparing the 911 to much cheaper alternatives.
Because while Porsche has spent the last 12 years taking away the things we love from the 911, companies like ford and chevy, have been giving their cars more of the things we love. In 2019 Chevy made the Corvette mid-engined and gave it a rather striking redesign. It also costs half as much as the 911, has 100 horsepower more and is a full second faster from 0-60 and it has a higher top speed - for half the price. I used to say, sure the C8 corvette's got some great qualities, but it doesn't have a manual transmission. Well, now neither does the 911.
And I can't believe I'm saying this, but for a third of the cost of the new 911, the new Ford mustang GT is a significantly better option. The mustang GT has a naturally aspirated 8 cylinder engine that produces 486 horsepower and it has a 6 speed manual transmission with rev matching. And get this, it weighs 500 lbs less than the new 911.Talk about a car for enthusiasts!