wantone:

It doesn't make sense to convert a relative new car. Now if it was 20 yo that is another story.

Still, I don't understand car marketing. Why manufactures put such long gearing? Is it for test emissions purposes? Or to mute hard launching and accelerations.

I would convert mine instantly if I could Smiley

The gearbox in the Boxster/Cayman was sourced from Audi and developed back in the 80s/90s. As I understand it was used in the Audi models with the same model names. Porsche needed a gearbox for the 996 Boxster back in the late 90s and the rest is history.

To me, the first 5 gears are too long and the 6th gear is too short.

"The gearbox we have, don't get me wrong, it's an old one, an existing one and changing the gear was just technically not possible... We would have loved to have seen that, [the gearing] a little bit shorter, but technically there was no way." according to Frank-Steffen Walliser (WhichCar, May 2020).

It beats me how a guy in a shed (in relative terms) seem to have done what Porsche's engineers could not do. Of course I would not have expected Walliser to answer "we could not be bothered" or "then our profit margin would have contracted" or "it would get too close to the GT3", which are the more likely explanations.

Andreas Preuninger once said that the long gearing in the GT4 was due to emissions. This does sound like another excuse.

When Porsche released the 997.2 GT3 RS they shortened the ratio 13% compared to the GT3. No technical issue? It goes without saying that this greatly contributed to the better Ring-time over the standard GT3 thanks to faster acceleration.


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2016 Porsche 981 GT4 | Racing Yellow
2018 Audi S6 Avant | Ibis White