I have wanted a Porsche since the 356 was current, and I fell in love with the 911. It was my all-time favorite car, though beyond my budget, back when the S variant was sold as "not for the novice" and regularly killed a buyer or two each year who ignored the warning. That probably spoils any surprise factor in this note, but so be it. Fair Warning: I bought a 997.2 as the best current compromise between stupid political initiatives and real driving, but it may be the last Porsche I want. German design trends are creeping into my favorite sports car, and it concerns me:

1. Automatic headlights. Half-assed engineering. They annoy hell out of me when they work completely without my attention, because they aren't as smart as I am and they get it wrong. When they have a three-position switch with off-on-auto, that objection is satisfied, since I'm aware it only costs 20% of the MSRP to keep the weight down to only 1.5 original 911's with all these gadgets being added (and that's a small price to pay for saving a twit a year) but perversely I'm still not. With a three-position switch, we have drivers who think they are in auto (or possibly prefer not to think at all) when actually they are in the manual setting because that's what the "significant other" driver prefers. Next you'll be changing the setting according to the memory seat position chosen. One more gadget. Stop the insane slide into Lexus land.
   
2. Other Automatic Adjustment. Automatic leveling of the lights with load changes is not really sports car like, but it is good engineering. I won't complain of that one. Automatic adjustment of the rest of the car to each driver is for... I don't know who it's for. Personally I love my wife. Have done for fifty years. Adjusting the seat and controls away from their position for her petite form is a piquant reminder of her petite form. It's like noticing how ridiculously small her panties look hanging over the shower bar. Possibly they cause a delay in using the shower (or the car) but it is not by any means a life problem that I asked you to solve. Not in a sports car. And if the sports car is strictly a personal car, my own car, then I'd bloody well want to know it if someone else got in and fiddled with the seats. Of course, I consider a five-dollar tip to "leave the car where I put it" to be part of the cost of ownership, so valets don't drive my cars. Could you leave out the cost of installing memory seats and instead ship a bunch of five-dollar bills for that line item?
   
3. Sound effects instead of listening to the power train. Yes, I've heard the argument: handling needs big tires, big tires create annoying irrelevant noises, so after sound suppression techniques are used, the relevant noises need help to reach our ears. Okay, I get it. I might even accept the analog mechanical technique of the 991, because it lets in real engine sounds while blocking road noise. But it also has this little geeky switch that shuts off those sounds for people who don't like engines. I don't want a synthetic car and I don't want people who do want one buying my car. See below. Clear case for a MetroPorsh.
   
4. Pretending to be a Computer Console. I am a computer geek. I must have spent a third of my professional life (and more sleepless nights than I care to remember) in front of some sort of computer-input device. I started with keypunches and teletypes and if you spend as much time as you should studying cars, then you're never going to learn as much about computer interface design as I know. Damn it, my car is not a computer. Don't try to match my computer with a gearshift thrown in. You can't. I don't want Google for my car, and I don't even like the silly misnomer of PCM. I don't need a Porsche to manage my communications, thank you. Give me a bluetooth connection because local laws require it many of the places I want to drive, but while you're at it send somebody to microphone school so the resulting connection is two-way. It would be better if my family didn't suspect a heavy breather of making crank calls when they pick up. And my clients might send an armed response team, so I refrain from calling them over your current system. I might suggest you donate the cost instead to the public phone system. We could install jammers on all roads and substitute little parking places where the cell phones actually work. I might suggest it, but I realize most of us who can afford a Porsche also have professional obligations that demand we no longer consider our driving time to be a refuge from those obligations. I understand. Okay, calm down, but screw the rest of the Nissan Juke nonsense and just install "Porsche Bluetooth" or some such name. And design a decent mike.
   
5. Botox bumpers. Yes, I know this should be addressed to the German government or the Euroking or possibly governments worldwide. But since you're handy, I'll tell you: I absolutely hate the look and even the entire concept of front ends designed to save pedestrians I run down. From the one perspective, it's insulting. Please consider that I am not homicidal. I've been using guns since the age of ten or so and never yet killed anyone with one. Neither my kitchen knives nor even the table saw have drawn the blood of strangers. It never even remotely occurred to me that I might want to run them down with a sharp-edged Porsche as a substitute for those better-suited tools. From the opposite direction, it just pisses me off. I don't want pedestrians feeling safe to step in front of my car. In fact, when driving in certain cities around the world the idea seriously appealed to me of mounting a Texas Longhorn rack on the front or, better yet, scimitars in the same location. And granting this squishy look is a Government mandate, do not consider installing a hologram gadget to project the crisp lines we enjoy on the original 911 models. No more gadgets! Although I might consider it -- strictly as a no-cost option -- if it had some arrangement for projecting scimitar images. And maybe meat hooks below each headlight. The impression of circular saw blades in lieu of chrome wheels? No, no. Stop now. No more gadgets. But I do hate this pillow prow.
   
6. Active stability control. Yes, I've heard the argument for this one too. Stop. Don't bore me. Save the design money and use it to provide driving lessons for the first three owners of each car shipped. The fun of doing it right is the potential for doing it wrong. I guess I really want you to get back to selling cars "for experts only" and a willingness to accept a few lawsuits about dead twits every year. Stick a red warning notice on the key like those wonderfully useful warnings about airbag manslaughter. Maybe that will fend off the Trial Lawyers Association. Then build a car I have to learn how to use properly. If the car can drive itself, then why am I wasting my money and its time? Ship it somewhere and let it have a good life driving itself. I'll stay home and watch old videos or take a bus.

I know all this is frustrating to Marketing, what with trying to increase sales to non-traditional buyers. Maybe you could buy stock in light rail? You know, those subways and trolleys that provide the fully un-engaged transport experience these people crave? If the investors in Porsche *really* insist, you could offer a MetroPorsh, driven by computer, with sound effects playing through the stereo system. When a quondam driver presses the throttle you could play "vroom, vroom" noises while quietly imposing the more considered judgment of the corporate-policy computer. Visit a BMW dealer for ideas. Then build a limited production sports car for people like me. You could call it a 911.

Just thought I'd mention it.

Gary, more in sorrow than in anger

 

Gary,

I see a new Morgan three wheeler in your future. It perfectly meets your engineering and marketing specifications. Unfortunately, if it wasn't for all the compromises that you pointed out, there would be no Porsche today. I agree it's a sad state of affairs, but I'm not likely to live long enough to see the pedelum swing back.

 

Gary,

Upon further reflection (code wording for the fact that the particular brain synaps just fired), check out the Singer 911. Do a search on it as pasting the URL in this lousy IPad browser is a PITA I can't past a link for you. It's exactly the 911 you're looking for, but at a price point that will knock your sox off AND blow your hair back.

 

I want more amenities. And still a sports car. I want a visor that adjusts back for tall people, like in my Passat. In the side position, it lets you pull it down the rod, toward the back, to block the sun on the side for tall drivers. Also, I want the seatbelt warning suppressed like in all my other cars, when the seatbelt is removed while operating at a very low speed or stopped, such as paying a toll.
Back up camera
Love my heated seats
Super glad there's a sunroof delete option now.

However, I'm not in the market for a new car for financial reasons, so my opinion isn't worth much of anything...

 

Alright. Shazam:

We've agreed what I am. Now we're just negotiating a price. Wait! Gotta check that website. Will they install my scimitars on that leading edge?

Gary

 

The Singer Porsche is the best of both worlds, old world charms and sounds with new world functioning AC. Now I have to start saving my pennies.

 

Air conditioning that works. Ah yes.

I have to admit that I'm considerably older than the last time I used a sports car as a daily driver in our Sonoran desert. About forty-five years older, come to think of it, so I probably have to endure the insult of being coddled in order to use a 911 as a daily driver. Ah well. I do roll down the windows when I make mountain runs. (In Spring and Fall, he muttered softly.) Alright, it's also true that I don't roll them down, I button them down. And with the arthritis in my hands, it's probably better that the 997 has electric windows. There's the eventual fate of the heroic 911: to become an old man's car. A GT. Sob.

Gary, who saw "Le Mans" a few nights ago and just loved the 911 McQueen drives

 

Here in Vancouver we can easily survive without AC, but definitely need something that can operate in a shower and is algae resistant.

I've also watched the Le Mans movie a few times lately, that 911S is pretty nice. This is the sound I'm looking for and it appears the early 911s are unique in this respect.

 

I'll add one I forgot about:

A friggen clock that can take advantage of the GPS and auto-set the time AND adjust for daylight savings time. It can be as bullet/legislation-proof as having a DST submenu where the owner programs the DATE that DST starts, the DATE it ends, and by how much to adjust during that time. Done. Works every where in the world, and will always work.

 

Though my start of this thread suggests I'm opposed to adding gadgets, I have to agree. A clock is not a gadget after all these decades, so much as one of the conventional set of instruments for any car. That being the case, it should be a matter of professional pride to do it correctly, like the other instruments, and the features Minok describes are merely routine measures.

As an engineer, I would consider it inexcusable that Porsche provide a time display so obviously dissociated from the seriously accurate time information in a GPS receiver... I would except that I find a certain consolation in knowing they are such completely devoted car engineers as to make fools of themselves when it comes to that geeky computer stuff that hides in their center console.

I'm sure the top-level design team manages the weight and space budget, but the results we see have to make you wonder if the car engineers ever get anything but a vague briefing on the functions of the center stack.

Gary

 

I agree with this too. If someone offered me an aftermarket exhaust that reproduced that sound, I'd be sorely tempted.

Gary

 

I have a rental car today. It annoys me its a Crown Vic. Absolutely no controls and functions, to the point it's amazing. I understand it's done in the Crown Vic and in older Buicks to keep from annoying the pants off the buyers with new changes that complicate the few functions they want.

I used know every word of every manual and how to do every function on every electronic device I owned. For example, I learned how to program my HP 12C and created a program for the Black Sholes pricing model on it once I found a normal distribution curve alogrithm for it.

Now? If it doesn't work out of the box, I'm frustrated.

So I'm half way there brother, but be assured there will always be more technology in each new Pcar.

 

I know, I know. My HP-65 was a delight and a prideful tool in its day. I impressed hell out of people by pre-programming all sorts of launch scenario analyses and I had a special case for the programming cards. My HP-15C has survived decades into my retirement and still balances checkbooks without wheezing. I do love a gadget in its place, especially well-executed examples of the breed. But...

It honestly feels to me ... well, two trends actually.

First, Dr Jekyll and Hr Hyde have come to enthusiast driving. In the early days, no streetable car went anything like as fast the simplest race car. The engineering goals were too far apart. If you bought an example intended to push the bounds of "street legal" you fully expected it to be lying in wait for its chance to kill. The civility was no thicker than a layer of paint and an incautious throttle twitch could put you in the hospital -- or at least embarrass you for weeks driving the wife's bug to work while your Superhypermonster V-10 was repaired. Now, the computer (my damn computers if I'm honest) create a true civility with the push of a button. Actually, for legal reasons, the default position of that button. And another button gives something very close to the performance a race driver could extract. It wants only the ***** to press on hard enough to get that speed, because the computer in a modern supercar need only read your intention from the control movements. It can -- if permitted -- do all the rest for itself, even to the point of maximizing the performance of each wheel/tire individually. It can be fun, but it's closely akin to riding a roller coaster. Exhilarating, but without my having any role in the process once I strap in.

Second, legislation with goals of safety and emissions limitation have pushed makers of our sort of car against the wall. A 'natural' solution to those goals results in a car not far removed from a Smart4Two or whatever they call that creation. To provide the feedback, the sense of potential carefully leashed, of ... well, muted excitement in daily travel, the designers use computers again. They create modes of behavior that almost amount to synthetic cars. The one shows up (default mode that is) at the emissions testing site and carries the car in a sedate socially responsible ride through the compulsories, like a skater doing those exercises they never show on television. Mandatory proof of eligibility for the real competition that culminates in the free style we all watch. The other car shows up when an enthusiast pushes the S button. And maybe not even then, because many on-board computers today monitor our use of the controls to decide how to respond for all love. If you push the magic S button and still operate sedately yourself, the car will make certain gestures of stiffer ride and so forth, and it will create the sensation in other ways of being a tightly-reined steed: "Okay, I hear you boss." Then it makes vroom-vroom noises through the stereo. (Well, Porsches don't do that. Yet.) In fact, it won't push on to serious levels of control response and chassis balance until you do certain things to make it clear you know what you want and you really are asking for all it can give. Porsche calls this 'splay' and I was angry at hell buying a car like this that drove like an Impala -- until I figured out what was going on. Fewer lawsuits, still fun for those in the know. Nothing wrong with that... exactly. Just a little ... well, synthetic. As I said before: The fun of doing it right is the potential cost of doing it wrong. It isn't exactly like playing a video game, because the g-loads are real and... and... well, I'm not sure enough other things are real these days.

Honestly, I can live with the gadgets because they really are so efficient these days, pumping out so much horsepower and so much low-end torque, that they get outrageous performance despite carrying the extra weight around. And the efficiency extends to the chassis and bodywork. A current Porsche is half again as heavy as its counterpart in the seventies, but omigod, if they'd put all these requirements on the design in those days, it would have come out weighing 6,000 lbs. Modern computer-aided design and manufacturing are wonderful in that sense. And I really don't want a Morgan Three-Wheeler, though I admit to looking covetously on the Lotus Seven occasionally, or whatever they call that modern equivalent.

Modern computer gadgets really aren't very heavy anyway. We sweated blood to design GPS so the receivers could be made small enough to fit in something as compact as a fighter aircraft. A bloody 40,000 lb jet fighter. Critics insisted GPS never would benefit any military vessel smaller than a bomber, and commercial use would be limited to shipping. That's shipping not shopping, as in big boats with steam engines. Today, those automatic headlights and the GPS system and the seat memories and all the rest could be done in a chip the size of my fingernail. I don't know if they do yet, simply because the environmental extremes keep such designers pretty conservative, but actually computer gadgets don't do much to burden the mass budget. And because I really am an old man, I need my comforts to get through each day. I don't really mind them, I just feel a little guilty about them. Really, they're just a symptom.

It's those first two that create a nostalgia I really do recognize as old-man thinking. Nostalgia for the days when it was damn difficult to build a top-performing car.. but those days are gone. Now they can do it and the design margins are so generous they carry on beyond sanity and make it comfortable. Eeugh!

The only real limit on cars today is the rubber compound required to meet DOT rules and the weather conditions of your climate. And there's damn little limit there with the range of tires they call 'DOT' specials. In a desert climate like mine you can run around on tires that eclipse race rubber of the seventies and eighties.

Did anyone else notice how Toyota and Subaru are creating a sporting feel in that new paired design of a light fun sports car? They resorted to tires designed for the Prius. Honest. The Prius! It was the only way to get the occasional bit of tire squeal and a little tail slide now and then while driving at sane speeds on public roads.

Gary

 

Gary: Spot on. And yes, Singer is good. But I prefer the HP 41CV.

 

A fine device, but I couldn't use one. Absolutely out of the question. My brother-in-law (working at Ford Aeroneutronics) got one of those while I was still using a slipstick. When I saw his... Well, naturally I had to specify an HP-65 in my own purchase order.

Gary