For the pro-718 advocates, get used to the idea there will be haters. Ask the early water cooled 911 guys. Stop rationalizing your buying choices. You have nothing to prove. Here’s a fact from a Porsche study (probably 911s). Almost 75% bought are bought by elitists, fantasists, jet setters, and Proud Patrons. How many of those will see a timed event? .001%? Trying to rationalize a buying choice because of performance improvements over subjective attributes for buying is a hopeless and weak argument. Of course it’s faster. Who is going to buy a slower car? In this history of all cars, I can only think of one time succeeding models were slower and that was artificially imposed by the Oil Embargo and government regulation. It was not imposed by market forces. Crowing about "my car is faster than your car" in a succeeding production cycle/generation is a pointless argument. If it weren't, they would not sell any. For most, buying a car is an emotional decision, not a logical one. Few people sit down and truly care that one car is .2 second faster than another. From time to time I quote Ring numbers because they are a standard but in the end, they are meaningless to 99% of buyers. So thinking that performance arguments will "win you something" is a hopeless cause. Emotions always win in the end for the simple reason that car buying, for the majority of auto enthusiasts, is an emotional decision and not logical. OTH, for those that consider cars to be appliances, they do get out the spreadsheets and care about numbers.
Of course, the subjective feeling of acceleration is also part of the emotional driving experience. I was all set to buy a base 981 Cayman, but I was disappointed when I took it for a test drive and found that it
subjectively felt slower than my Z4 coupe -- even though the Cayman was actually a couple tenths faster on paper.
I don't see too many people arguing that the 718 is better because it's quicker in the quarter-mile. I do see a lot of owners arguing that it's better because it has more usable low-end torque for daily driving. If anything, I think the 981 is perhaps better suited as a track car than as a daily driver, because you can keep the revs in the sweet spot on the track.
Does that make the 718 a better car? That's a subjective call.
I used to own a Honda Prelude with a VTEC inline-4 engine. It had virtually no torque before the engine shifted to the second cam profile, but once you got the engine above 5000 rpm, the feedback between increased power, increased acceleration, and the scream of the engine at redline was highly entertaining. You just had to be careful that you weren't constantly bumping off the rev limiter. I used to drive that car at 5000-7500 rpm on the highway all the time, and around 4000-5000 on city streets. You could drive the 981 that way, if you wanted to.
The sound is another issue. Personally, I think the 981 sounds much better, but the 718 doesn't sound bad to me. It's just less of a central part of the experience. Being willing to sacrifice sound for performance doesn't make you any less of an enthusiast. Consider that the Lotus Elise has a Toyota inline-4 with a less-than-memorable sound, yet it's revered among enthusiasts for its exceptional handling.
(opinion - You might want to worry more about the existential threat to these cars than squabbling about minor things. Consider the country that builds these cars. READ the PAG annual reports. What dominates it? Mission-E and carbon footprints. They even appointed someone in charge of worry about this stuff. Look at the billion dollar investment in EV. These turbos are an intermediary step. Read the report carefully. Its all there. These cars are going away as you know them.
What just happened at the G7? Did the EU representatives look real happy when President Trump did not endorse the Paris Accords? Look at the EU cities on the verge of banning ICE cars. Norway had a proposal. German sent a proposal to the EU parliament to ban diesals.
Germany's Stuttgart set to ban some diesel cars from city center | Reuters We, in America, live in a totally different world (not sure about Oz). Worrying about this, IMO, is worrying about the wrong this. As a potential new buyer, when the time comes, I'm not worried about turbos. I'm worried that there will be ANY ICE Porsche car to buy. The EU is not America and their regulations and concerns over carbon could have a bad ending for ICE - end opinion)
Well, the next Corvette is rumored to be mid-engined (with a V8, of course). So in near the future, Cayman/Boxster fans may have to decide whether they care more about the brand or the power source...
