Quote:
W8MM said:

Porsche offers the opposite; a technically interesting and highly competent value with an attractive continuity that one may savor over long periods. Admirers find the engineering wizardry so deeply suffused that many become experts in the minutiae of the mechanical design as a way to luxuriate at a higher level over many years. There is a human comfort in not "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" to chase automotive design fashions.

My questions:

(1) Does making a delicious wine in the same manner for hundreds of years in the same Chateaux make the wine uninteresting?

(2) Are admirers of such a wine to be considered poseurs, or merely to have good taste?





There is something to be said for refining a platform to "perfection" versus chasing trendy fashions of the moment. But "perfection" isn't static, it is an elusive goal within the context of improving technology or changing culture or environment We know that if Porsche continued building exactly the same car today for the next 10 years, that 911 sales would decline.

Even the wines you use as analogy aren't static. A superb wine will stay superb for only so long, then it declines as it gets older. Many of the hundred year old wines that are auctioned for $$$ are most likely undrinkable now, they mostly trade hands for the prestige and mystique. Even a vintner can't make exactly the same wine year after year, they have to constant remix and adapt the formulation each year based on the results of the harvest that year (amount of rain, sunshine, soil conditions, age of vine, amount of pruning, etc). What distinguishes a great winemaker is their ability to deliver a great wine despite the variability of the ingredients and what distinguishes a knowledgeable wine connoisseur is their ability to detect the results by taste, not by label.

Getting back to cars then, a great carmaker builds a great car with the available technology at that instant of design and a knowledgable driver can appreciate the result, regardless of the label (in this case the Porsche badge or the 911 form).