[Dracarys]

There are plenty of threads for 718 fans to play in. There's even one thread where you're not supposed to post into if you don't have a 718. If this thread serves as the one place for criticisms, real or imagined, of the 718, what's the big deal? If one is pro-718 and doesn't like to read negative thoughts about it, avoid this thread.

 

[Dracarys]

But my enjoyment of my car does not rely on a consensus of 100% of my peers.

I know, right? I find it amazing how much some people care about other people's opinions. I literally don't care what anyone thinks about my 981. I love it. No one gets a vote on how much I can love my car.

 

[Dracarys]

...the 718 is the same but better and it is everything the 981 is plus more...

Yeah, to a deaf person.

 

[Dracarys]

I think Porsche will eventually build self-driving cars for the same reason they build SUVs today--to make money. There will come a time, maybe in 20-30 years, when most--but not all--cars will be self-driving. People buying non-autonomous Porsche sports cars will be an even smaller niche than Porsche sports car buyers are today. Porsche will either go bankrupt, become a tiny, niche division of VW like Bugatti and Lamborghini, or they'll develop a cash cow (e.g., autonomous SUV).

 

[Dracarys]

I ended up selling my 987.2 because I felt BMW made better Grand Tourer cars, if driving along country roads is what you like.

Lol, so if you're not driving on the Nordschleife, you're more suited to a GT car. Right.

 

[Dracarys]

Exactly, hence the reason I own a GT car...

I see you are "awaiting" a 718? Planning on garaging it somewhere in the Eifel mountains and bringing it out for Touristenfahrer?

 

[Dracarys]

The differentiation used to be whether you wanted 2 seats or 4 seats. Now it's 4 cylinders or 6 cylinders. Porsche achieved its goal.

 

[Dracarys]

As I've said before, a blind spot warning on a Boxster would be a big deal to me, bigger than more power. Especially at night, in the rain, on the right.

Have you tried adjusting the side mirrors to eliminate the blind spots? I've been using this method in all my cars for the last 15+ years:

How To: Adjust Your Mirrors to Avoid Blind Spots - Feature - Car and Driver

I still look over my shoulder, but I don't have to.

Edit: I realized the article doesn't go into detail into how to actually set up your mirrors. Here's the procedure. For the driver side, sit in the car in your normal driving position. Now lean your head left until it touches the side window. Keep your head there and adjust the driver side mirror outwards until you can no longer see the side of your car. Now move the mirror back inwards a tad until you can just see a little bit of your car. Your left mirror is now done.

For the right-side mirror, the process is similar. You want to tilt your head to the right an equal amount to what you did to the left previously. Obviously your head will now be about in the center of the cabin and not against a side window. Adjust the right mirror until you can just barely see your car in it. Done.

 

[Dracarys]

I've been using this method for years with great results, although it is a little weird feeling at first but you get used to it. Basically, if you can see any part of the side of your own car when in the normal driving position, your mirrors are not out far enough and you have a blind spot

Yeah, not being able to see one's car in the side mirror is disorienting at first. But it is cool how a car that is overtaking you will seamlessly move from your rear view mirror to your side mirror (with a bit of overlap) and then to your peripheral vision (again with a bit of overlap). The car is never in a "blind spot."

 

[Dracarys]

What is annoying, however, is the quips and comments from 981 owners towards the car. This is my first Porsche so I've only recently joined some of the online communities and the smugness/arrogance from some 981 owners over something that is purely subjective completely baffles me. I would never go into the 981 section proclaiming how much better my car is, yet apparently it is acceptable the other way around.

What is amazing is how thin-skinned some 718 owners are. You know, 987 owners often deride the 981, especially when the 981 had just come out. They would say things like the 987 looks better or more aggressive or whatever, that the hydraulic steering is better than the 981's electric steering, that the interior of the 981 is too luxo and not sportscar-ish, etc. It never really got under my skin. On some things, I completely disagree (I think the 981 is so much better looking that it actually makes the 987 look ugly). On some things I can't help but agree. The steering feel IS better on the 987, but the 981 isn't bad (it's actually very good). That kind of sounds like the 981 vs 718 sound/nvh/turbo-lag argument, doesn't it?

But the bottom line is I don't give a frack what 987 owners or 718 owners (or anyone else for that matter) thinks about my car. In my opinion, I have the best generation of cayman. But I certainly wouldn't have steam coming out of my ears if someone wrote something mean about my car. If there were a thread like this on the 981 chat that was mostly posts from 987 owners, I'd probably just ignore it after a while. Constantly trying to defend one's purchase makes me think "the lady doth protest too much, methinks."

 

[Dracarys]

You could also argue that 981 (or 987 owners in your example) are just as guilty of defending their purchase when a new generation comes out

Yup, and that's partly my point. At some point, one should just accept that other people are set in their opinions, and one should just move on. By continuing to bang one's head on the wall of opinion, one is just letting others control his happiness. If a 981 owner is just polluting random 718 threads with his negative opinion, he's just as bad.

 

[Dracarys]

Well that's part's true. Smooth flowing lines vs a harsh look.

Ha. That's the thing about opinions, right? We both look at a pair of caymans, a 987 and a 981. But our brains assign "smooth flowing lines" to different cars. :hilarious:

 

[Dracarys]

The mirrors will show the side of a car in the blind spot, but I find that the headlight can disappear at night and it can be hard to see the side.

I won't dispute what you see, but in my case, I actually find it easier at night. It's much less likely that a car will avoid my detection when it has headlights on in the dark. Even if I can't see the car (which is never the case with the mirrors adjusted properly), I can see bright lights on near my car.

 

[Dracarys]

If you are driving at night, can you get your mirrors adjusted so that the headlights alone are never in a blind spot? Is that what you mean? That's interesting.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

No, that's not what I mean. What I'm trying to say is that, at night, even if I can't see a car's actual headlamp in my mirror, the glow of its headlights can be seen in a much larger area. For example, if both the entire right side of my car and the road to the right of my car are lit up, I can tell there's probably a car at my 4 o'clock.

 

[Dracarys]

There is no need to argue how good the car is here. Numbers are facts. The 718S ran a 7:46 ring time, it wipes the floor with a 981S and is within 6 seconds of a 2012 991.1S car. So a car 5 years newer that comes within 6 seconds is pretty good. All cars get better over time or they wouldn't sell to performance enthusiasts.

Indeed. However, I do believe the 718 is destined to go down as the "996 of Caymans/Boxsters." The car that succeeds it will be faster than the 718. In fact, it'll be better than the 718 in every way that the 718 is better than the 981. That will leave the 718 in the "local minimum" of being slower than its successor and dramatically less evocative than its predecessor (the latter point evidenced clearly in the EVO review above).

And note, while many cars get less evocative (however you want to define that) through the generations, I'm talking about the dramatic reduction from 981 to 718, not the slight (if any) reduction from 987 to 981. I'm talking about the kind of reduction from the E30 M3 to the (US) E36 M3.

 

[Dracarys]

I don't know if this thread should be moved to the 981 section or if there should be a new thread in there for non-718 owners only. I mean there is a thread for 718 owners only, so why not the inverse? It would be nice if we 981 owners could talk about what we want without 718 owners trying to convince us the 718 is superior to the 981 for the all the reasons I didn't buy a Vette. [emoji10][emoji41][emoji23]

 

[Dracarys]

The comparison should be made to the first full year of sales which I believe is this chart and of course it is the US. It is by far the most significant sales number for these models

The only things I can glean from this chart are: (1) the 987 outsold the 981 every month in their first years, (2) the 718 had as good or better first month (Jan) than the 981 had (you can't really see the data for Jan for the 981), and (3) the 981 had a slightly better 2nd month than the 718 had.

There's no 718 data for March, but the graph biases the viewer due to the "0" data point. I'd bet anything that the March data point for the 718 will be better than its Feb data point. Whether it will be better than the 981's March data point is unknown.

 

[Dracarys]

Don't know if he ever owned a Subaru, but he did buy a Cayman. With his own money.

He famously also had a 997 GT3 RS 4.0.