SciFrog:
Dynamics:
Grant, much appreciate the welcome and the clarification re: GPF specs.
I live in San Francisco.
Probably like many on rennteam, I view any weight not deployed for passive safety to be the enemy of performance, stability, precision, active safety....and, ultimately, driving enjoyment.
Hopefully, weight-saving advances like the Speedster exhaust, carbon fiber roofs, carbon fiber or magnesium wheels, etc will proliferate, such that these technologies are rapidly iterated and costs can decrease via scale efficiencies.
My sense is Porsche's scale of 911 production and the possible immense profitability of these weight-saving options may represent a major potential advantage over other, competing, but lower-volume, manufacturers in coming years, as they all must engineer profitable products vs these difficult regulations to survive.
That is not Porsche way because it would reduce their margins... Marketing dictates that they do as little changes as possible from one iteration to another. They try to get away with the minimum possible. While they keep raising the prices like crazy, their margins have greatly gone up, especially on the higher end models and high optioned vehicles. This also has the huge side effect to be able to keep aside some of the advances for the next revisions.
The regular 911 is the leader in its segment because it was well engineered, fast enough and had great value. But the needles have moved a lot. Prices have exploded while others like McLaren have pushed the enveloppe with carbon tubs for example. 911 have also lost a lot of emotions due to anemic sound and sportiness giving way for confort.
GTx cars are now the real sport car in the lineup. Sadly you have to live with a huge wing, no rear seat and no PDK in some models, again all dictated by marketing. On top of it they have an atrocious allocation system for these high demand models that have disgusted even some of the most pro Porsche people around here, ala Ferrari.
Porsche is doing very well, but there will be a time where they will have to be very careful because things are changing.
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