Porsches... No Attention?

[Blinky]

Originally Posted by Marco911

A great car is where your ass sits as low as possible to the road. A car where the steering and gearbox communicates mechanically to you and you can feel what every tire is doing. Where you can affect the balance of the car through minute adjustments of throttle and brakes. Where the engine isn't afraid to wail it's sonorous cylinder melody.

So, Lotus Elise?!

[Blinky]

Originally Posted by twitchyzero

May be I'm just too young or don't work in the business sector.

If I had the money, I could care less if I show up in a Ferrari F430 or a Chrysler 300 at an appointment. If it's a nice sunny day and want to enjoy my time getting from point A to B why should I care what others think? Are you going to stop doing business with me if I decide to bring a flashy exotic car? Besides, it's not like the appointment is going take place inside your car. No one's probably even gonna see you getting out of your car so stop thinking so much about perception or impression if it's not an interview.

I agree with your example on the charity event though.

I'm not much of a people person but I've started to learn about the power of perception in business relationships.

For a first impression, an exotic is, IMO, a poor choice. Our company was dealing with an executive of a family-held (well, at that time at least) forestry company who liked to show up to meetings in a Lambo. Whenever the topic of relationships came up with respect to this guy and this account, one of the first things that was mentioned was that this guy drove a lambo and was a bit of a playboy. In other words, it may have given others the perception, rightly or wrongly, that he was a playboy rather than a serious businessman...

For what it's worth, the company in question is no longer held by the company.

Was the company affected by exterior economic conditions? Certainly. Was the company affected by poor leadership decisions? Possibly. Was the company affected by a leader who was poorly perceived by outsiders? Possibly.

For such a large going concern, is such worth the risk?

[Shmee]

I just read this thread from start to finish... wow...


As someone that owns an older 911T, someone who is a licensed tech, someone who has worked on a myriad of cars; everything from beater civics to spending the last 5 years working on high end german cars, as someone who has built or had a major hand in some of the fastest p-cars in the LML and as someone who has worked for a professional Porsche race team i'll say this...

cars are just cars.
all cars have problems and none are without their own issues.
most guys with P-cars are just as dumb or smart as any other car owner.

the vast majority of p-car owners have no fucking clue what they are doing behind the wheel just like most other car owners from any other brand.

p-cars are one of the few cars out there that are hurt in terms of performance with aftermarket parts; most specifically when modified by one of the countless AZN-special shops that don't know dick all about the car; AJ-R, SR, etc...
i've seen TONS's of high end p-cars at the track with all the fancy suspension links and parts, hopped up on all sorts of fancy power adders and get their doors blown off by a basic stock motor NA 3.6L 996 built by someone that knows what they are doing and even in the hands of a novice driver.
buddy who traded in his "techart sponsored" 997 for a 370Z, and got faster... probably the perfect example of this. that car, modified by someone that knows what to do would have been easier to drive and decimated the 370Z in the same drivers hands.

Porsches are amazing cars right out of the box but are simply one of the easiest cars to fuck up with aftermarket parts. (an aftermarket which in reality nears, even eclipses that of Honda.) with most other cars, there is enough disconnection that even poorly applied aftermarket parts will have a perceivable increase in performance even if it's just in your head. in a P-car the right parts set up poorly, and 99% of them are set up very poorly, will make the car scarier to drive and harder to control.

set up properly, it's the difference between surgery done by a palsy-victim with a chainsaw and a world-renound surgeon with a scalpel


on a strictly German comparison, Porsche is without a doubt the best built car (aside from their SUV POS), the most involving car to drive and over all the fastest cars you can play with on the streets coming out of Germany.
Audi's are shit in every way. people that praise them have likely never owned or worked on one or are so blinded by VAG-love to have never tried something different!
Merc's are over priced bardges and are about as fun to drive as a caddy.
BMW's are very nice cars but lost a lot of their soul over the years and are becoming more and more GT's than the sports cars they once were.

that said, if i was buying a car in the $80-120k range i'm either going for a BMW 550is or a Lexus LS460L. i like the drive and the potential of the 550, who can argue with +$10k and having a ~550-600whp V8-TT sedan. the LS would be just a matter of wanting a car that has everything but isn't a nightmare to own and maintain/service for a classy DD. i love the 997s but isn't what i'd be after and the Panamera doesn't offer as much fo the same price as the 550 or 460...

as a 911 owner, i tend not to see the attention or lack there of that the car may or may not generate. it's a hard driver, not a hard parker! most importantly, i don't really care about the attention. i'm not looking to placate my ego with a bunch of beiber-hair-styled asian boys gawking at my car or filthy skanks only interested in me because of my car. my car is hardly non-descript but i built it exactly the way i wanted it, it does exactly what it needs to do... be a shit load of fun to drive. it is sort of sad that the attention i do get from the car is NEVER from girls and almost always from middle-aged men... but it's those guys that get it, even if they have no idea what they are looking at.

one cool thing i like about the car is that those that do give it attention are always blown away when they find out it's an 88, most think it's a few years old... which is a testament to the staying power of the shape and styling... maybe the condition i have it in too!

it all comes down to:

you either like that or you don't. don't waste your time trying to change minds. people simple enough to be influenced by the words of some twat online aren't likely the kind of people you need to be expending energy on anyways.
but the same goes with any other car... and is exactly why some of you drive civics and others drive celica's or... and hate on others!

style is subjective
taste is subjective
value is subjective

haters gonna hate
bitches gonna bitch
fanbois gonna dangle on nuts!

fuck it, fuck them and do your own thing!


**PHROZEN PHOTO**- Mitch's 1988 Porsche 930 Cabriolet - aka "Porker" [vid added]
^^^
My porker


[/out]

[Rich Sandor]

There have always been "poor man's Porsches" such as the 914 and 924, and 944, but since they were visually so distinctly different from the 911, they never had any effect on the perception of the stereotypical "Porsche" car, and the 911 had always retained that supercar status. Everyone went "whooooooaaaah" when a 911 turbo drove by.

Although the Boxster is a great car in every way, it has certainly contributed to the diminished exclusivity of owning a Porsche. Since the original Boxster and the original 996 shared a HUGE amount of parts, they became difficult to distinguish from one another. A $50,000 Boxster looked much like a $120,000 C4S cabriolet.

Now, if the Boxster had gone away after a few years, it would not have affected the 911 as much: But it didn't go away. It made Porsche a LOT of money, so it stayed. Not only did it stay, but every year Porsche sold more, and more, and more of them. Look at the numbers:

Porsche Group - Worldwide sales figures:
1995 - 21,124
1996 - 19,262
1997 - 32,383
1998 - 36,686
1999 - 43,892
2000 - 48,797
2001 - 54,586
2002 - 54,234
2003 - 66,803
2004 - 76,827
2005 - 88,379
2006 - 96,794
2007 - 97,515
2008 - 98,652

Porsche Cars North America Sales (US and Canada only)
Year Units
1986 30,471 - 944 turbo introduced
1987 23,632 - (October 1987 - Black Monday, start of the largest recession since 1929)
1988 15,737 - (aka: the S&L crisis - 747 out of 3224 saving & loans companies fail)
1989 9,479 - (new homes built in the US fall from 1.8mil to 1.0mil.. worst since ww2)
1990 9,140 - (Gulf war and spike in oil prices)
1991 4,388
1992 4,131 - 944 series becomes the 968
1993 3,713
1994 5,820
1995 6,078 - 928 and 968 production ends
1996 7,524
1997 13,731
1998 18,207 - Boxster introduced
1999 21,915 - 996 model 911 introduced
2000 23,698
2001 24,143 - 996 turbo introduced (Sept 11 2001.. has little affect on Porsche profits)
2002 22,511 - Cayenne introduced
2003 30,028
2004 33,289
2005 33,859 - Cayman introduced
2006 36,095
2007 36,680
2008 27,717 (HUGE US financial crisis, Porsche profits drop 14%)
2009 U.S. only: 19,696 - Panamera introduced
2010 U.S. only: 25,320

Without the Boxster and Cayenne, Porsche would not be as profitable as it is today. Profit is good, because it brings money for R&D to build even better cars. Moreso the fact that the Porsche Holdings board is chaired by enthusiasts and not just financial money managers.

If Porsche stayed with just the 911, securing the exclusivity of the model, the company might very well be dead today.

[bcrdukes]

Originally Posted by Shmee

Audi's are shit in every way. people that praise them have likely never owned or worked on one or are so blinded by VAG-love to have never tried something different!

Sig'ed and thank you!

[Shmee]

lol, no problem.

but they are... Audi's are shit cars. anyone that says different doesn't know what they are talking about. Even my friends who are Audi/VW techs and Enthusiasts concede how poor they actually are to own and maintain!

don't get me wrong, many of them are amazing to drive and between 20k-70k are decent enough cars to own. (I had an Allroad and was a very nice drive. was $87k when new in 01, we picked it up for $69k with 16k on the clock after only 8 months, drove it to 75K, shit started to go wrong and traded it in for $14.5k in 07... for those keeping score at home, that's $70+k of depreciation in 6 years! i've seen them as cheap as $6k in "decent shape" over the last few months!) but if you buy one new from the lot, expect the proverbial kick in the teeth as it drops anywhere from $5k -20k (depending on the car) in value the moment you drive it off the lot! if you buy one used or keep it past 80K, all the "engineered to fail" parts begin to go wrong. with the standard 96k service, where most of those parts really begin to fail, i have seen numerous A3/A4 Audi's with repair bills starting around $3k; averaging around $4-6k; and as not uncommonly high as $12k on S4/A5/A6s.. S5/S6 those numbers increase typically be a factor of 1.5 ! get into the RS-series cars, A8/S8 cars and R8's and those numbers can easily triple! not to mention the Electronics tend to develop issues after 100k, the depreciation is REDONKULOUS on cars 5+years old or out of warranty...


Not to say Porsches are inherently cheaper, and besides the POS gen1 Watercooled flat6 engines found in Boxsters and early 996s, they are for the most part infinitely more reliable. Aircooled's and 997's are definitely the cars to buy and Aircooled's typically hold their value extremely well. most of the older aircooled stuff still sells for similar money as it did 5 years ago. many of which are even increasing in value!

Mercs are well known for having crippling electrical issues and nagging mechanical problems from around 99-06/07. many cars spent more time in the shop than on the road... there is a reason why AMG E55's can be had for basic 3-Series money today!

Aside from the recession in the US, BMWs and Porsches are still the german cars to buy... only problem is that the recession and people fire-saling everything has artificially push the price of these cars down enough that douchebags who can now *JUST* afford these cars, buy them in the US, bring them across the boarder and contribute to the negative stereotypes associated with them... the "asshole in a Boxster/M3/S4/etc!" that is, until the repair bills roll in and the $500 basic front brake job, $800+ tires and $1500 routine service forces them to shelf the cars! :

if all you were after was curb appeal, that doesn't make you a poser at all.......





























....it just means you have a really small dick!