[968Syncro]

One significant memory of the '82 911 was of course it's performance. I used it all the time, commuting, shopping, etc. Kinda fun around town, kept the targa top off much of the time, but also kinda painful around town. Doesn't feel all that good at low to medium speeds, nothing special. (150K miles total I put on it).



However, what I didn't know at first, the big impression: take it above 85-90 mph or more and it was amazing, it hugs the road, becomes smooth, balanced and predictable. When "normal" cars, even "sports cars" get sketchy at 90 mph is when the 911 was just getting started.



And now......ooh how mean. One could argue the current 2015 911 is more VW than any other since now VW owns Porsche!

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[Bulti]

Woehoe, finally some positives :-)



VW and Porsche have always been relatives, like nephews or something. It doesn't really matter who owns who between these two. I think there is far worse family than the VW/Audi group is there? You could end up with a Chrysler with Fiat parts in it sold as a Lancia for instance. That thing will always be in doubt between rusting, breaking down or going up in flames. Probably all at the same time, lol.

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[Kim]

"note: by definition, sports cars do not have a fixed roof or back seats."



The old "definition of a sports car" trick.

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[Ernie]

Oh my! Time for fireworks?

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[flash]

lol - yes, the 911 is a bug at heart. that was its roots after all. same design, many of the same parts, very similar lines.



the engine design itself, while compact, does not lend itself to longevity. the cylinders wear out relatively fast (though at least early ones are also relatively easy to change), and for racing, it's difficult to get revs out of it. it's designed tear itself apart. you really have to work to get 8k out of it. the motors are easy to service and lack a lot of the things that other cars have to deal with, but definitely are limited in potential. the cars themselves are also simple, and therefore easy to deal with, have have a bit more space inside for their size due to the lack of a driveline, but again, have limitations due to the lack of the stiffening the hump would provide (which is why the convertibles and targas were so flimsy compared to other topless cars).



porsche figured out a very long time ago that the cars were not generally competitive against other manufacturers, at least in club racing. that's why they started their own racing club. they were always the cars in the way slowing things down when i was racing. the crazy lines they had to take, coupled with resulting slower corner entry speeds, really made it a pain in the butt. they would often pull away in the straight, due to the more efficient power transfer, but then have to brake really hard going into a turn, take a later turn in, and then use up all of the room in the turn trying to get back on power. the rest of us had to wait for them to finish all of that before we could go side by side through a turn. all too often i would have to make an aggressive jump to the inside to pass the 911 before he dove in, which would mess up my weight transfer through the turn, and in turn mess up my rhythm.



are some drivers able to do well in them? sure. but those drivers would do well in anything. they could probably win driving a shopping cart. it doesn't change the fact that a rear engine design is not the best layout. even formula cars have moved the engine to the middle.



by the way, i am not taking shots at VW. they are probably the most successful car company in history, and the bug certainly generates more nostalgia than almost any car. i've had my share of VWs.



all that being said, i am really impressed with the new 911. i just hate the older ones. i've driven plenty of them, and to me they are rattly, noisy, ill-mannered nightmares, and i came out of british cars, so that really says something.



the older ones are definitely gaining value though. some of the prices are on the moon now.

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[flash]

back on topic about the 930 turbo, what exactly is it about that car that seems to draw people? it wasn't any different from any other 911 inside, and the handling wasn't all that different either. was it the acceleration? in its day, it did well, and compared to many other cars, was fast in a straight line, but even then there were cars with more oomph. was it just that it looked so crazy that it stood out?

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[ds968]

[quote name='flash' timestamp='1419607694' post='164703'] was it just that it looked so crazy that it stood out?[/quote]



I don't think it looked that much different than any other 911 with a whale tail on it. Ok, bigger hips, but that's about all. What looked really out of the ordinary was the 935 " slant nose " turbo. Pop up lights on a 911 must have been sacrilege to purists :-)

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[flash]

yeah - i just can't figure out the attraction. i guess when you think of a 911 of that era, you think of that whale tail, but that's exactly one of the things that always made me cringe about the car. i never liked wings, and i had probably the biggest and most obnoxious one on any car ever made. i always thought they upset the body lines, and actually breathed a sigh of relief when i broke the one on the daytona, and couldn't replace it.



the wider body does help the 930 a lot though, and the later higher power ones had decent acceleration for the day, though my SUV would outrun it today.

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[968Syncro]

[quote name='flash' timestamp='1419601066' post='164702']

.... but again, have limitations due to the lack of the stiffening the hump would provide (which is why the convertibles and targas were so flimsy compared to other topless cars).

[/quote]

Which is probably the main reason I sold my 911 Targa. Each year the Targa top was getting more difficult to remove or put back on. At the end, the top required very hard hits on the leading edge with the heel of my palm, really hard, to get the latches seated or unseated, pounding it on and off. Why? Because the whole frame/chassis was collapsing therefore making the Targa opening more and more narrow. That was not the car I wanted to invest in for the long term.

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[Cloud9...68]

[quote name='flash' timestamp='1419601066' post='164702']



the engine design itself, while compact, does not lend itself to longevity. the cylinders wear out relatively fast (though at least early ones are also relatively easy to change), and for racing, it's difficult to get revs out of it. it's designed tear itself apart. you really have to work to get 8k out of it.

[/quote]



I know this is getting off topic, but I'd never heard either of these concepts before, so I did a little research. The horizontally-opposed configuration is inherently extremely well balanced:



http://www.caranddriver.com/features/the...es-feature



The GT3 is redlined at well over 9000 rpm, and that's a very large-displacement engine. Back in the early days of the 911, no engines, other than very tiny ones, rev'd very high, probably due to metallurgical and lubrication limitations. I don't understand the assertion that the flat six inherently has trouble achieving high revs.



As far as being inherently not a long-lasting engine, I think you're referring to the effects of gravity on oiling, particularly at start-up. I dug into that a little as well, and couldn't find anything that supports it. The consensus from what I read is the the force of gravity is negligible relative to the other forces that exist within an engine. Also, Subaru's, and of course the VW bug, have been running the horizontally opposed configuration forever, and these engines are known to be very durable and long-lived, even in heavily boosted configurations. I do agree about the early 911's tendency to leak oil from every pore - totally unacceptable in a car of its price range.

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[Bulti]

To set a few things straight:



I know somebody who works on classic 911's. He prepares them for racing and knows the engines inside out. They are VERY reliable. And while nobody can deny the fact some of them had some problems (in a 40 year history that seems pretty normal), they are generally not that leaky. They are sensitive to leaking mostly when people cut corners on maintenance.



Also consider that the early ones come from an age when it was pretty normal for an engine to loose some oil. Seals where not exactly what they are now, 'controlled leaks' really weren't that much of an issue.



The competitive remarks are a joke, no need to explain: see car (racing) history of Planet Earth. Racing drivers choose cars because they have the potential of winning a race, not because they 'have limitations'.



And comparing the 911 to a formula car isn't exactly fair. The former is a street car, the latter a dedicated racing car. I'd like to see someone drive his formula car to Wallmart.



Why does the Turbo has such a large fanbase? Just BECAUSE of the design (rear fenders, spoiler, roofline,...) and the David vs Goliath potential it has. And sound wise: if you ever heard an aircooled GT2 passing by at low speed, caughing and making all kinds of mechanical noises, you could see people's knees get very weak very fast.



Struck a nerve there :-)

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[Bulti]

Just for the record (in addition to the article Cloud posted): a boxer engine is not the same as a 180° V-engine.

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[flash]

the cylinders wear out faster on a flat engine than on any other design. it's just the nature of gravity. can't be helped. fortunately the barrels are removable (at least on the early cars - no clue about the later ones). it also makes cooling much more complicated, though in small displacement and light duty can generally be handled well without external cooling, making it cheaper to build. that's why the bug became popular in the first place, and why porsche used that design. however, they quickly ran into the physics and thermal dynamics and the limitations they presented. that's why the engines are now water cooled.



my point about the formula cars is that EVERYONE knows that mid engine is a better design than rear engine. rear engine is just a bad design. front engine is easier to drive fast than rear engine. just ask any 968 owner. as a rule, mid engine handles best. there is a reason that the 911 regularly ranks among the most wrecked cars in automotive sales history, in spite of its lower sales numbers than the other cars on that list. even porsche knows that rear engine is not the best. they have moved things around in the 911 now to move the balance more forward. there is talk about abandoning the rear engine design altogether, and it's currently slated for 2018 (it was 2016 but they came out with the 991 as an interim solution).



re: competitive? not really. poke around in scca records (the largest club racing body in the states, and the only ones worth looking at). while there are some porsches as winners in there, they are not as popular as one might think. they don't even make the top 10 for autocross cars.



as for the sound of a GT2 or GT3, i still say they sound like a hoover with screws loose. doesn't make my knees weak, unless you count the sudden urge to vommit.



look - i get being attracted to an oddball car. that's what drew me to the 968 to begin with. it wasn't fast, sexy, or popular. still, i liked it. i've had and liked some other oddballs that others would scoff at too. some people like fat chicks. so, i guess there is plenty of room for people who like rear-engined bathtubs. obviously they sell fairly well (though the company nearly went bankrupt twice and has now been sold, so maybe not so successful). even i am about to buy one, so clearly there is something attractive about the car. i just don't get the attraction to the early ones. they seem like poorly built kit cars to me.

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[Bulti]

Flash, with all due respect, you clearly know tons of stuff about a million subjects, but you couldn't be more wrong on this one.



They switch to water cooled because of emissions.



The cooling is a bit more complicated, but clearly they got it worked out pretty darn well on both air- and watercooled engines. They do not overheat more than anything else. The engines are reliable and just because of that doing very well in endurance racing. There are thousands of high mileage 911's everywhere.



The mid-engine design is more balanced, but sucks for a road car. That is: if you want to use that car for doing anything else than setting a new record driving from church to the 7/11. No room for anything plus there lies a hot noisy stove in your neck.



My bookshelfs are collapsing under the weight of documented stories of a "badly designed" car winning and winning again. Choose your era, pick your place or underground or whatever. People do not invest tons of money in crap. They get fooled maybe. Once or twice. But not 40 years on end. How much proof does one need? It's like a discussion about water not being wet.



Finally, Porsche did encounter big problems when trying to ABANDON the 911. Now it is in the hands of VW because of Wiedeking tried some things out with all kinds of financial tricks that make my head spin. All I know, or at least understand of it, is that he was nearly 'there' and be a genius, but things didn't work out. The company was more than healthy, that is why there was the bold plan to take over VW. Plenty of reading on that one if you look for it.

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[ds968]

[quote name='flash' timestamp='1419699635' post='164725']

as for the sound of a GT2 or GT3, i still say they sound like a hoover with screws loose. doesn't make my knees weak, unless you count the sudden urge to vommit.[/quote]

+ 1 ( and one of the rare occasions I disagree with Philippe on anything, but since sound is subjective I'll let him slide by on this one, LOL. ) Even with the best aftermarket exhausts, all six cyl 911 engines whether N/A or turbo , do indeed sound like a Hoover with screws loose, or a Vespa / Moped in desperate need of a tune up. The stock exhaust makes them sound even worse, a Diesel engine would be easier to take ..heck, even four cylinder cars have a healthier sound . But I have not paid close attention to any recent 911s, maybe the sound has been reengineered somehow and is slightly more respectable.

On the other hand, maybe that's one of the attraction of 911s, as Bulti mentioned the " David and Goliath " syndrome - you're driving a car that looks like a VW bug, sounds like it's ill and in need of help, but manage to blow the doors off the fierce looking, fierce sounding muscle cars or other super sports cars.

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[968Syncro]

I thought I read the switch to water cooled boxer engine had nothing to do with being a boxer layout, but was because of the air cooling. It started with the 935 with water cooled heads; there was not enough room for fins (for air cooling) when they used 2 plugs. Then later as the bore increased, there was less room for fins -- unless the cylinders were spaced out some more which would have other significant disadvantages. Certainly more than 2 valves per cylinder provided the same problem. So liquid cooled had to be the answer. The 959 is water cooled as well. Maybe it was also emissions, but wish I could understand the logic behind that, is it something about warming up faster?



I would concede that water cooling a 911 boxer engine is nasty because there are 2 cylinder banks not connected with some type of "flow through" case. My Vanagon has a water cooled boxer engine (4 cylinder VW version) and it requires all kinds of pipes and hoses apparently wandering all around the engine bay. And liquid cooling a rear engine car is also not optimum, bleeding the system becomes a process not just opening a breather screw.

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[flash]

lol - i know what i've seen. there is no denying what i've seen.



as for the cooling, nope - they reached the limits of what air cooling could do. in fact, they had to rework the cooling to heat things up a bit for emissions. emissions standards like it hotter, not cooler. i've run into that quite a bit in over 30 years of doing this, and is exactly why pretty much all cars now run over 200F all the time.



are they "reliable"? i guess that depends on your definition. to me, reliable means needing no service. no matter what you say, you can't say that about an early 911. you can make excuses about them all day, and say it's "normal" but if you can't run 25k miles with nothing more than an oil change, it's not "reliable". it's not about how many miles they can accumulate. it's about how many miles between services. by your definition i could poke a new motor into a 968 every year, and say it's completely reliable.



i agree that space provision is a lot less in a mid-engine car, which is why i no longer own one, but now you're trying to defend the 911 based on space, and there isn't any in the early cars. a front engine car gives the best space. it has this thing called a "trunk". the early 911 has almost no space up front, none at all in the rear, and the rear seats are only big enough for 2 adult cats. epic fail on that point.



i have similar stuff here on my shelves touting the porsche wins too. i'm willing to bet that your "documentation" is all porsche based, so of course they will cite examples of when they won. i could match that with 10 times as many examples of when they lost. however, nobody is going to write a book about how a car frequently lost. might make for a pretty funny steve carrel movie though.



yeah - i've read all about the back and forth with porsche and VW. it was a real mess, and in the end, a huge blunder by porsche. it's not the first time they really screwed up either. like i said, that company has been in trouble for a very long time. there is a pretty good documentary being aired lately about it too.



none of this means that i don't respect what porsche did and the successes they had with the bug design. it was a hugely innovative concept. take a super simple design daily driver and make it a race car that can be driven daily. obviously it rang a bell with a number of people. i'm not denying that. i just expect more from a car, which is why i never bought one. i suppose the attraction to many is the spartan simplicity. those same people don't like cupholders either, and i can't live without 2.



porsche fans will defend that car to the death. i have to credit them for their loyalty. however, it doesn't change the car. it just means that those people are willing to put up with it.



this is exactly one of the reasons i am fighting the desire to buy one. i don't want to have to deal with the 911 owners. i really wish somebody else made a car that does what i want. i did when i bought the 968, and i do now that i want the targa. like the 968, i'm going to buy it in spite of it being a porsche, and will remove any emblems and badges that i can.



p.s. - here on this site, you'll find a large number of people who feel the same way i do about the 911. being a 968 enthusiast does not make you a porsche enthusiast, and frequently you will find that the two are as diametrically opposed as the engine locations. most of us feel the 968 is a better car to drive than any 911 up to and including all of the ones built to 95. that's why we own them.

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[Kim]

Some of us - just some - might own 968s or have owned them for no reason other than we could afford them compared to a 911 of a similar year. I certainly would have had a 911 in a heatbeat if, in 2004, I could have afforded a 1992 964 and, if I had that, I would have kept it. I, for one, don't keep track of how fast I can get to McDonald's to buy a hamburger.



I like the Porsche brand. I don't consider needing to maintain it simply "putting up with it". It's just part of ownership. When I start to worry about that it's time for a Lexus. I have had 2 Cayennes, 1 944, 1 997 Carrera 4S Cab, 2 968s, and 1 987 Cayman S. I liked them all. I spent more on my 92 968 coupe than all the others combined in terms of maintenance.



Buy your 991 Targa 4S. Don't defend it to us - just enjoy it. Take off the badges if you feel the need. It hasn't anything to do with any of us. But don't dump all over a very popular brand that happens to be Porsche's flagship. Enough people like it that it simply doesn't matter if you don't.

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[kzem1]

I have always liked the look of the 930 slantnose. I love the Whale Tail on the 911. To me, it makes the car. To each his own. I will also add that I actually preferred the look of the 928 to the early 911's. I have acquired appreciation for the 911 over time but look what I have in the garage. 968's.

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[flash]

i get all of that for sure. i understand that a number of people do not want to pay for a 911, and so they buy what they can. as i said, this is probably the wrong room and wrong audience to whom to try to tout the 911. this is a 968 site. most of the 968 owners feel the same way about the 911 for the same reasons, and don't own one for those reasons. i have been able to afford to buy a new 911 for a very long time. i didn't because there are better cars out there. i found the 911 a compromise i was not willing to make.



i feel the same way about ferrari. having to do a lot more maintenance is just a part of ownership. it doesn't make it reliable though, just because you maintain it. you are absolutely right about the decision to go with a reliable brand if not wanting to have to maintain a car is an issue. that doesn't change the fact that earlier 911s are not reliable. if you polled the early 911 owners, i'm willing to bet that half of them need work or have problems, and have their entire lives. by definition, that's unreliable. that's why a lot of people buy camrys.



i'm not dumping on porsche or the 911. i am calling it like i see it. it's all matters of fact. 911 guys can romanticize about their car and look at it through rose colored glasses all day long, but it is what it is in the end. i still think fondly about the MGB too. i feel the same way about the 968. that doesn't make either of them any more reliable or a better cars. they are what they are. there is no right or wrong about it. we all tend to feel that way about particular cars. but to deny the truth is just plain silly. like the car, own the car, drive the car, whatever, just acknowledge the realities and don't expect that anybody is going to convince me or the countless others who feel the same way about those cars that they are any more than we think they are.



i think we can all appreciate the idea that the 968 is a better car than most 911 owners are willing to admit. similarly if anybody is being honest, they would admit that the early 911 is not as good of a car as some 911 owners would like you to think it is. after all, who would want to say "yeah, it's a piece of crap, but i'm going to keep dumping money into it anyway."? i'm not saying the car is a piece of crap. i'm just saying that a fan of anything will speak more highly of their particular pet than is likely reality. hello cubs fans.

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