Be Excellent To Each Other

Anyone who says/claims that electric steering in the 911 of all cars - absolutely renown for its steering after all - "doesn't matter" is instantly a clueless muppet as far as *I'm* concerned. I couldn't care less how many Porsches he's owned; in fact this, together with the fact the guy presents a TV programme (ostensibly) about cars, just makes it ten times worse.

You can disagree all you like and that's fine, but I've extensively driven the 991 in both cabrio and Coupe S forms, as well as all manner of previous iteration 911s (GT2 included) and NO-ONE could possibly claim that numb helm was anything other than a fucking travesty.

Look at it this way: a 911 with crap steering is like a fwd Range Rover. I'm sure it would be marginally cleaner and better on fuel, but we'd agree such a thing totally misses the point, yes? A 911 is a sports car, quite possibly the world's best, all things considered. If saving a thimbleful of fuel is your bag, buy a fucking Prius.

Yeah right, I can just see Porsche UK forbidding TG to take the 911S round the track. Like, as if.

They know it would wup the arse of most of the much more expensive competition and in so doing, would make Clarkson's whole "Porsche are crap engineers" thing look a tad stupid. It's an absolute no brainer for them. Plus, they've ranted Porsches around the track before, both Caymans and 911s, so why would they suddenly get all precious about it now, when the 991 is demonstrably much faster than all that has gone before it?

The Singer? Well, that could be a different matter, especially as its built to order. But even then I'd be surprised. Very surprised.

Don't think they don't exist.

Oh, I know that. (Not that the Evoque is a "proper" Range Rover, mind, and I own one)

The point is, though, is that you have a CHOICE. I'd have no issue if PDK was an *option* on the GT3, but it isn't. Nor is the crap electric steering either, of course.

James May was right about one thing; Porsche's diehard core user base is up in arms about it all, and with good reason. The forthcoming GT3-RS had better be offered with a manual 'box as an option at the very least, is all I can say. (Albeit even then, it would still be a 7-speed, notchy, heavy PDK with half the guts missing, rather than the delightful, slick, true manual 6-speeder that used to be fitted)

For what it's worth, I've certainly let my feelings be known to the powers that be, and they were none too pleased I can tell you.

Have you seen the reviews coming in for the GT3? Everybody seems to love it.

I have mate, and broadly that's true - but I'm reading between the lines of some of the reviews I'm more inclined to trust, most notably from Car and Evo. They all seem to talk about "positive" steering in spite of electric operation, and Porsche's attempts at reintroducing "noise"...

I'm sure it's a very fine thing on many levels; objectively *faster* than the 997.2GT3 it supersedes. But some of us - most notably actual prospective GT3 *buyers*, at least as drawn from Porsche's traditional demographic, often necessarily don't want to be the fastest, if that means some - indeed any - loss of driver interaction and feedback. If we did, we all would've been buying Nissan GTRs these last 5 years and keeping the change.

I do a fair bit of track stuff - if not actual track days myself very often, then at least spectating car and bike racing. The cars there are invariably BMWs, Lotuses and Porkers, none of which are *the fastest* of their genres, but all are true drivers' machines. The guys themselves are not super-rich either, far from it - many spend a vastly higher proportion of their worth on their car, far more so than, say, your average Lambo or Ferrari owner who has 5 other cars in his garage. For us, it is our passion, and until very recently a GT3 represented a highly competent, but raw, visceral driving experience, with its genuine race-derived engine, default manual 'box and scant luxuries. Hell, my mate had to beg Porsche to fit a *carpet* in his £100k+ 996GT2. It's all very different now.

They're supposed to be race-bred aren't they? They're certainly meant to look that way. Old fashioned manual gearboxes are obsolete in that regard. If were to they keep on compromising them in the name of some fixed in time arbitrary notion of what constitutes "proper" driving then what would they even be any more?

True enough; a sequential PDK 'box is better on a racetrack than a manual. But, whilst a GT3 always had a 'Mezger' race-bred engine (vastly more durable than the standard road car unit, which was a totally different block), it was still a road car, first and foremost. It's raison d'être was always to be as good a road-going sports car as possible, and part of that means maximising driver feedback. They were none of them easy cars to drive fast; I very much suspect the 991 GT3 probably is (especially when the auto gearbox is just left in D )

If they don't have to be hand-cranked then it's not a proper car imo.

OK Myp, I'll be serious for a moment (and even assuming you're able to read this )

I am not so much of a luddite that I don't freely admit that the new GT3, with its faster gearbox, rear wheel steer and very clever electronic driver aids/e-diffs and all the rest, is OBJECTIVELY better than the previous GT3. I concede this point, okay?

But what I'm talking about is whilst it is undoubtedly faster, more accessible, vastly more benign (less likely to kill you) and much easier to drive, the trade off is enjoyment, at least for those who love driving, and have taken the trouble to learn *how* to drive. It can't be argued that the loss of the clutch pedal (and handbrake for that matter) somehow DOESN'T equate to a loss of interaction; even Porsche's marketing men cannot dispute that. Until very recently, people at Porsche were saying the PDK would never be fitted to a GT3; why do you suppose that is, if it's just about being fast?

It's a shit analogy (sorry), but dare I say, this is all a bit 'PC vs. XBox'. I could say "the PC hardware can do x more MIPS and y more frame writes per sec or whatever else and you couldn't argue. But to say point blank that "the PC is better, the end" is BS, for a whole variety of reasons, not least usability/user experience. It really is a damn sight more complex than just looking at millisecond gear changes or a few tenths shaved from 0-60 times.

I think they're currently caught between two stools but probably correct to move forward. I'm quite sure that the number of buyers to whom heel and toe downshifts mean anything at all will begin to dwindle over the next few years. It would be increasingly difficult to sell something to these newer buyers as a fairly uncompromised speed machine if it was hobbled on track by using a gearbox that was ten years out of date.

I'd rather have one with three pedals but I think Porsche probably know what they're doing.

The next generation will have no pedals and will be controlled via an iPhone app. Mark my words.

Don't forget that electronic power steering decreases weight and improves engine performance, too. Not a lot in either case, but "some".

I'd imagine Porsche went through all of this when they started using power steering over rack and pinion, too.

Yeah, but they also have shown a propensity for making fuck awful decisions and persevering against all reason.

i.e. Engine behind the rear axle and all that

<runs>

I'm saving up for a Porsche 911 using a special account- the Backwards-Inna Hedge Fund.

Hang on a sec, are you comparing electric assisted steering with completely manual steering (like what REAL cars have), or with hydraulic power steering (fit only for overweight american barges and transit vans)?

And tractors, yo.

Do tractors even have a mechanical linkage any more, or is it fully hydraulic?

I've got a funny feeling they have to have some form of mechanical linkage in case of hydraulic failure.

Good point, it's probably a requirement to be road legal. Forwarders and such don't need to care

I assume everyone has seen this from Sunday:

Mehhhhhh

True enough though, rear engine is a crazy idea - but they've doggedly stuck to making it better in tiny increments for the last half century lol. Being fair minded about it, I really do think it's fair comment to say that the end result - from 997 onwards - is surely excellent. But how good would it have been with mid engine?

A Cayman RS with 450bhp naturally aspirated Mezger engine and 6-speed manual would be a thing to behold, and drive. They'll never do it though, sadly.

Heh. I agree unassisted rack and pinion steering is the best mate, but that's another discussion entirely

As you appreciate of course, power steering (hydraulic) had to be brought in to counter the ever increasing weight of cars, a subject I've been banging on about for 20 years. Porsches are better than most; the Boxster weighs in at around 1300kg and the GT3 around 1350kg I think, which are much lighter than contemporary BMWs, Mercs, Nissan GTR (nearly 2 tonnes) etc., but they are still porky compared to the much lighter (albeit less safe) cars of old. But of course, cars these days are laden will air bags, massive steel bars, air con and all the rest. If you want NO power steering at all, your choices are pretty much limited to Caterham Sevens, Atoms and Elises - not exactly practical motors - but they do have fab steering lol.

If power steering has to be fitted, it's certainly fair comment to say that hydraulic is better than electric in feedback/feel/driving terms - for whatever reason(s) of disconnect or whatever. The fact that NO power assistance at all is better than hydraulic is besides the point, really.

In terms of Grim...'s point about steering evolution, power steering (hydraulic) had to be introduced due to vehicle weights. It is unfortunate, but understandable - an engineering fact of life. If we want safe cars, they have to be much heavier than before, by definition. But electric steering is being introduced - even on out-and-out sports cars like the 911, where steering feedback/feel is utterly paramount - entirely unnecessarily and without any such imperative need, just for the sake of saving a thimbleful of fuel every 100km or so (or whatever it is; the saving's absolutely paltry though). I, and people like me take issue with that, and personally I think that's fair comment.

Annoyingly I didn't find out it was going on until it was all over. That is 10 minutes away from me

Nice of them to let their nans have a go of their cars.

Is it a concious business decision that Porsche have made? Abandon that segment of the market to Caterham and Atom and Noble and all those companies making seat-of-you-pants cars in that price range, and concentrate on rich men who want a fancy car to drive to the golf course on a Saturday? They don't care about levels of feedback from the steering, but they do want a carpet, and probably have more money than the sports car fanatics who genuinely do care about every last twitch and bump

But why? Both are servo-feedback systems, the only difference is that the electric one can be more readily tuned - you could make it exactly replicate the response of the hydraulic system, which has its own built in flavour and quirks due to fluid dynamics and valve response and all the rest of it. It's imperfect.

Electric assist is less imperfect. You can tune it to be more invisible than hydraulic, and it doesn't vary with engine RPM but can be made to vary with road speed instead (if you wanted), so for example you can have it fully on when stopped (for parking) and taper it off to no assist (but importantly no drag either) above 60.

As a free bonus it's lighter, steals less power and is more reliable - no cylinder seals to start leaking or pumps to wear out.

I think there may well be an element of truth in that; not wishing to be too stereotypical or disparaging, but lets be honest - your average Chinese, Russian or even American sports car buying doesn't tend to be as discerning as their 'traditional' European counterpart. They want the cachet of having a Porsche but they want luxury, split zone aircon and all the rest. Just look at the success of the Cayenne, which is just a re-skinned VW van and not actually a Porsche in all except name, but its a *huge* hit in those markets and by far Porsche's most lucrative cash cow. I daresay the marketing men think they're onto something; the purist view has been very much sidelined.

We also need to consider the fact that Porsche is no longer the proud, independent company it was, but is owned by VW (*shudder*). And as we've been discussing, of all manufacturers, they are surely reknown as having quite the most RUBBISH steering ever. Call me paranoid, but I can envisage the shadowy corporate hand of the likes of VW and Audi in all of this; insisting that Porsche follow their Corporate lead of having awful electric steering on everything? Big, posh, supposedly sporting Audis - RS models included - have electric steering, so why not Porsche? But of course, Audis are also known as having the same awful numb steering as VWs...

Personally, I can see this backfiring big time. It's all very well Porsche moving ever further away from their roots as it were, producing even more by way of urban 4x4s (another model is imminent), luxury coupes like the Panamera and sanitising their dwindling importance sports models - but they run the severe risk of devaluing or even losing the very thing that attracts all those wannabe "Porsche" SUV drivers in the first place?

By comparison, how many Range Rover customers actually NEED the awesome off-road abilities of even their most basic models? Virtually none, but they all appreciate the fact that their cars COULD do this; this gives them the credibility/bragging rights they want over other (cheaper, cleaner, more economical) SUVs and so on. In marketing-speak this is the "USP".

If Porsches become too far removed from true sports car *properties*, rather than performance (which is assured), then there basically isn't any real reason to choose one over, say, a Merc or BMW, which I don't think would play out too well for them. Once lost/damaged, it's very hard to regain a reputation like that.

I'll defer to your engineering knowledge mate. But all I can say is, every electric system I've tried, on a variety of 991s - and numerous other cars - have all been numb and horrible, honestly. I'm not 100% clear on the reason(s) *why* this should be the case, and if, as you suggest, there are ways of removing the problem, then I'd have no problem with it over hydraulic.

But seriously though, if that is the case, why can't even Porsche manage it?

Good question! Maybe it's just a new technology taking time to bed in, it's not been around for very long after all.

GT86 is electric power steering, and there's no lack of feel in that.

I've heard it claimed that it's a better installation than as in the 911, but I've not driven a GT86 (or BRZ sister-in-skin). It'd be interesting to compare that car's steering with the hydraulic set up in my Boxster, I must admit.

I'd have bought the GT86 in a heart beat if:

a) the rear-seats were useful
b) I didn't think it was mental to buy a brand new car
c) I couldn't get an M5 for less money

I like them, but personally I was expecting something rather lighter than that (given the massive hype), a bit more power and a lot more than 150 lb-ft torque though? Love the fact they're rwd and NA though, and quite like the looks too. IMO would've made more sense as a 2.5 litre, with hydraulic steering. They're a "nearly" car for me.

Quite enjoyed last Sundays Top Gear. Was nice to see the made in Britain ending.

Aye, it was pretty great. Would have been nice if it was longer and they spent less time on the bus segment, but not a bad series all in all. Certainly better than it has been for a while.

Finally watched the last one, and gosh if the end didn't make me feel proud to be British.

Shame it didn't end with a slow tracking shot above everything, though.

So here's a photo from the new Amazon series:



That'll be the hybrid McLaren, hybrid Porsche and hybrid Ferrari then.

*splut*

My friends are staying at the same hotel as the lot of them, in Portugal.

Let's hope no one gets verbally abused and then violently assaulted because the food isn't quite right.

This thread is for Top Gear. Pics of Chris Evans only please.

Okay.

He would be a great first guest.

Given that my first thought was 'where does the number plate go on that ugly Ferrari?', I'm probably not really the target audience for this supercar-telly any more.

Played for and got.

Not quite the exclusive they might lead you to believe.

Chris Harris was there with them. He's in that photo.

He's got some cool photos from the day on his Twitter feed.

Chris Harris, David Coulthard and Sabine Schmitz to join Chris Evans in new series