Quote:
ADias said:
Quote:
John SF 2005 997 S said:
COME on people? How can you drive a 911 Automatic????



I have thought long and hard about this. At the moment I have an Auto X5 and a manual Z4 which gives me the perfect combination, except that having 2 cars is costing me a fortune and I don't get what I really want out of either.

I've decided to swap both for a new 997S which I should have in January. I live in central London, probably one of the most congested places in the world, but I do use my car for long road trips and I love driving a manual car.

So what to do? Put up with the annoyance of a manual in London traffic for my daily grind to the office for those seminal moments at the weekend or have the luxury and ease of an auto everyday and live with the fact that on my runs into the country I'll only get 9/10 of the real porsche experience?

Now I like to think of myself as a reasonably good manual driver. Didn't touch an auto 'box for the 1st 10 years of my driving life. But the other day the benefits of autos (esp the porsche tiptronic) was bought home to me when in real world conditions i was "racing" a friend in a boxster tip vs my Z4 3.0 manual. On paper the Box is about half a second down on 0-60 times but in the real world the tiptronic 'box is very flattering as you can really access that performance without dumping the clutch from 4000 revs.

Now I know its not all about the traffic light Grand Prix but my point is that on an average road, and average driver will get better performance from an auto than a manual and like playing Grand Tourismo in auto mode, this allows you to concentrate on all the other aspects of driving (steering, braking etc) and get those far better without having to swap cogs.

What am I going for? 997S tiptronic - after that probably swap for the DSG when it comes out.