I just wanted to share this past weekend's experience at the Evo School at Devens Airforce base in Mass. The event was run by the Boston BMWCCA, but don't hold that against them!!
There were many Porsches in attendance, including a 1970's Targa, a Yellow 997TT, a 997.1, and five or so Caymans. The administrator of the event, commented to me that there were more and more porsches every year and many of the BMW club members choose to bring their P-cars to the events. (Not surprising!)
I also had the opportunity to meet up with Utkinpol (I am not sure of spelling!). It is always a pleasure to meet a fellow board member and connect a face with a Sig. We were in different groups, but from what I heard, his car looked good and he was FAST!
I had a unique opportunity to contrast my 997.2S with my E46 M3, since I ran the same events with that car a year or so ago. The difference is pretty amazing. All I can say is that the 911 makes me want to be a better driver. My usually ragged driving style immediately became a drawback. Just a note on the Evolution schools: if you have never done one, you owe it to yourself. They are the best run schools around, and the average instructor is a multiple national Solo champ! I was lucky to have david newman, a 911 specialist as an instructor. He started his talk by saying he won nats in the "best car in the world, the 911". He often repeated this opinion, much to the chagrin of the other make's owners. (he was only poking fun, not being mean!)
In regards to the 911 chassis, I had a steep and difficult learning curve to find the fastest way around the courses. Naturally, david set a clean and blazing run on his first go-round. His time would be hard to beat.
After his set of 'tips', I got the hang of the rear-engined chassis and started to see the brilliance in it. That light nose can get you into some great cornering positions. You have to be careful, however, that the nose doesn't write checks that the tail can't cash!!! Haha!
The brakes are pretty insane. In solo, you only max out at 70mph, but all of your braking is brutal and there is the need to 'trail-brake' everywhere. You also use the brakes to rotate the car into the tight offsets and slaloms. Several instructors noted that the 911 had the strongest brakes in the field. These guys all get to drive your car, and their opinions are usually pretty solid.
I noted that my E46 M3 had quite a bit of understeer, and would never quite balance to a neutral position. It would scrub into a turn, and go "dukes of hazzard" on the way out. Several instructors mentioned that it is a trait that they never liked about the E46 M cars. It made the cars seem reactive, but it was a bit hairy and slow. The M's brakes were pretty good, and the steering was light, but offered reasonable feel and good accuracy. The only place where I felt the M was better than my 911 was in slaloms and other pendulum-type performances. The M would 'set' and transition almost automatically. The 911 can do that, but does not like to. Instead, you have to 'thread' the slalom. Done right, you go very fast. Done wrong, see my video below!!!
Everywhere else, the 911 was far superior to my M. The steering feel was very good, but a tad slow. There was a lot of wheel turning going on! It is funny to watch guys in Mitsu Evos turning the wheel a half turn and going around a hairpin. I had to shuffle-steer a 360 degree angle on the wheel.
It was odd to find that the low speed (under 30mph) understeer that plagued my 911 was totally absent over 30 mph. At that speed, the car was close to neutral and only displayed slight on-power understeer. Oversteer was hard to find at those speeds. I had the throttle floored at the apex of the hairpins and could not get any rear tire slip. The rear tires just hook-up too well leaving turns. I don't have LSD, but no one noticed any tire spinning issues. Dave commented at the end of the Challenge School, that the new 997.2 is set up very, very well. I got the impression that he was very impressed with the vehicle overall. I also learned that the PASM's firmer setting does some great things for the handling of the vehicle. On the first day, I forgot that it was even adjustable. On the second day, Newman said to hit the button. I was pleasantly surprised. The car steered more accurately, the one-power understeer was reduced by 50%, and the slalom was a lot less hairy! I am glad porsche gives this option.
If there was one lesson about the 997.2 chassis, it was "throttle adjustable handling". No matter where you are on the course, you have the option of closing the throttle and having the nose bite and the rear step out. Maybe Car and driver mag can whine about this trait, but it is an amazing tool. It is just one more option to get the car in position. This is the part of the car that I found truly endearing.
Anyway, I will attach a youtube vid to this post, so check it out! I used the Lumix ZX3 camera and a panavise mount that Keninirvine recommended and it worked fine. (thanks ken!) Some of my best vids were ruined because I left the camera strap on the camera, and the wind blew it in front of the lens! Darn!!
Thanks for reading my mini-review and I hope you enjoy me video! Go to the youtube site to see it in 720P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsGqRYt_RcM

 

Totally agree. I did it first time - 1st and 2nd classes, on brand new set of hoosiers - got to say I was impressed how those A6 handle totally wet track. They stopped working properly only when we got complete downpour with too many deep puddles but on wet track they were very good.

As of M3 - I do see those cars quite often and usually they perform quite well IF they heve stiffer sways and shocks. Stock M3 sways way too much. I am surprised you found M3 to go faster through slalom but I believe your car at stock and mine got much more negative camber plus different rear sway, well, from what I see usually old 911 and 996/997 cars do slalom faster tham M3 cars as 997 is much better planted. Straight line acceleration is worse than M3 but again - we are able to start much faster without any tires spinning and it helps a lot. It is all very subjective, of course and most of it depends of a driver.

So just to conclude - it was a great weekend despite heavy rain on a first day and I do highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know his car. There were a lot of people in class 1 who never drove auto-x before and everyone had a great time.

PS. It was a pleasure to chat with you, pity we did not have much time for that. Schedule was quite intense. As of me beying fast - well, it was just becouse most of folks in my group were first-timers, so, there were no real competition there in exception to father&son combo on deeply modded civic - they were quite good. There were also a guy on a brown racing cup M3 car who bought it to learn to drive it - it was a painful sight... Even instructors had problems driving that beast. but it was quite fun to watch that car going into spin on a straight line on 2nd gear acceleration when turbos did hit in full force. it probably has close to 800 horses I would guess, crazy car - 285/18 hoosiers in front, do not even want know what he had in rears. But it was spinning its tires at start too just as all M3 cars do so I still was starting faster.