Porsche summons old-school cool with the 2024 911 Sport Classic | Hacker News Reader

Porsche summons old-school cool with the 2024 911 Sport Classic

arstechnica.com

42 pointsthunderbong91 comments

Never seen a 7 speed shifter knob before - row row row those gears.

Corvette now also comes with 7 cogs, but the first was the 991 in 2012

Not anymore. The c8s all have DCTs. Which… blah

No manual at all now? That's disappointing

Very disappointing. The C8 was (and frankly, still is) a fairly strong contender on my list but the lack of a manual is what keeps me from pulling the trigger. Otherwise a fantastic car.

Probably the wrong transmission for driver involvement since it feels quite a bit worse than the 6 speeds in GT cars.

Probably a technical limitation. The 7-speed is able to handle more torque than the GT's 6-speed. Probably also the reason for the Sport Classic getting less power and significantly less torque than a regular 911 turbo.

I love how the 6-speed feels compared to the 7-speed, but anyone chasing after raw tactility would probably go for a GT4/GT3 anyway. The Sport Classic seems to be targeting the nostalgia factor of the 911 turbos of old.

Quite a way to go still until we reach Fast & Furious gear counts.

With a transmission like that, can you skip gears, or must you always 7->6->5->4->3 when you're slowing down?

I skip gears in my 6 speed too (1-2-4-6 on acceleration, 6-3-2 on deceleration). I'd love a 7th gear for quieter high speed cruising but the number of shifts I do would be the same.

Cars like these have more than enough power to not need to go through every ratio, and you're not exactly buying these things to maximize fuel economy.

You can skip any forward gear in a manual trans - RPMs is the only limiting factor.

It’s so disappointing that they didn’t go with the traditional dog leg

But... Is it faster in the 1/4 mile against a Cybertruck towing a 911?

A couple additional reviews:

* https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2023-porsche-911-sport-cl...

* https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a45547693/2023-porsche-...

Honest question from a non car/Porsche enthusiast, why is this interesting and not Just Another Car -- and a (nice but) unremarkable, incredibly expensive one at that?

Same question as a car enthusiast who wish for a Porsche every Christmas.

It's a driver's car, and a collectable. In what way is it unremarkable?

911 owner here. Porsches are super responsive and in my view handle the way a car just naturally should if I abstracted the idea of a car. Or so I thought until I drove a Tesla. I am going to sell my 20 year-old Porsche and replace it with one. Even their lowest price model feels wonderful to drive. But to answer your question, this one has enormous horsepower, and would probably feel sensational to drive. Porsches also have an incredible sound, which does appeal to me.

From what I can tell, most people seem to choose a car based on its looks (even the truck drivers I interviewed when looking for a farm truck), and I don’t really respond that way, so I may not be typical. I imagine Porsches look a lot better, but that just doesn’t mean much to me.

I've never owned one but I've driven friends' 911s. They're amazing cars.

But now I own a Tesla Model Y. This is the "Mom's SUV" of Teslas, and it is in every way a better car than a 911, including being faster and more fun to drive.

For $275,000 you could buy three Model S Teslas. And of course the Model S is much faster than the Model Y.

Porsche's time of overpriced bespoke ICE cars is past.

But the only way a Tesla is in any way comparable to a Porsche is straight line speed. I'm happy with my Model 3 as a daily driver, it's pretty great. And wicked fast. But Porsche it is most definitely not.

I'm kinda/sorta working on my wife to convince her that we should replace the Tesla with a Taycan. Still electric, but drives like a Porsche.

Somehow I adapted instantly to the way Tesla likes me to drive.

But yes, Porsches have a very distinct and wonderful Porsche feel to them.

Superfastmatt made a great video asking the question "What's so great about Porsche?" It's about as long as an episode of TV and answers the question very well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdJYiRROeAc

If you don't have time for the full episode, jump to his drive of a modern 911: https://youtu.be/rdJYiRROeAc?t=428

Many car brands have cult like followers who are insanely loyal to supporting. Some of these brands like Porsche, BMW, Corvettes, and Mustangs have a long history cars that people will spend insane amount of money to buy new or restore old. The 911 if you've never drove one is just simply a fun car to drive anywhere but one could pull up to a race track for a few laps and it's a very capable car.

Porsche is really good at marketing over the past 20+ years producing limited editions of car driving up the value. The sport model here is just that with dealers adding $100k to $200k additional markup fees because the numbers produced are so low, more demand than supply. The 911 is a great car to drive, fairly reliable as a daily driver and very popular with c-level buyers. On the track it's benchmark which many compare themselves so while this sport model is more than capable for 99%, the Porsche GT3 and GT3RS models are even more expensive with bigger performance upgrades. Porsche has zero problems selling these cars as fast as they can make them.

Porsche purposely keep supply lower than demand, and you can’t just walk into a dealership and buy a new 911 or even get on the waiting list. You’d be advised to buy say a Macan and a Boxster first, then maybe they’d consider letting you pay a deposit for a 911 and waiting years for delivery.

The 911 and Boxster are built on the same assembly line, which is at full capacity. If anything, it's easier to get a 911 than a Boxster right now because they're prioritizing the capacity towards 911s.

They're expanding supply, it's just not growing faster than demand is.

But yes, buying a Macan or Cayenne tends to move you up on the waitlist. Existing owners do get prioritized.

Let's use keyboards to explain since the HN crowd tends to be much more familiar with those.

Regular cars are like regular rubber dome Logitech keyboards, EVs are like smartphone on-screen keyboards. Does a mechanical keyboard actually allow better typing than those keyboards? Probably yes, but very marginally to the point where it really doesn't matter.

But why do people get mechanical keyboards anyway often at 4x+ the cost? The mechanical switches have better tactile feedback. The materials of the keycaps and body are often better. There's significantly more customization and personalization options available.

That's sorta the same way with Porsche. You could get a mass market Corvette or Tesla that performs just as well for track times or transport for cheaper, but the Porsche will have better feedback (steering, pedals, shifter, chassis) and better customization options.

The Sport Classic would be like a limited edition collectable mechanical keyboard. Pretty pointless for someone who just needs a keyboard, but if you collect keyboards, it'd be a very special keyboard that very few others would have. Like a typewriter with usb-c.

>Let's use keyboards to explain since the HN crowd tends to be much more familiar with those.

Let me go even simpler. There's still a market for expensive mechanical watches that only tell the time, yet cost more than the most expensive smart watches, and are less acurate than cheap Casios. In short, some people just appreciate beautiful mechanical cool shit and are willing to pay through the nose for it, regardless of specs and benchmarks.

> There's still a market for expensive mechanical watches that only tell the time, yet cost more than the most expensive smart watches, and are less acurate than cheap Casios.

And the mechanical watches will still be repairable and usable one hundred years from now:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BCO1lNSw-E

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE4E6eUulhw

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaVx5LJ7t_c

>And the mechanical watches will still be repairable and usable one hundred years from now:

G-Shocks will never need to be repaired :) Just swap the battery and you're good. And if you do damage the case somehow, you can find replacements on e-bay and swap them yourself instead of paying a small fortune to a watch maker to recondition your mechanical watch.

I am probably not old enough to like this, but the aesthetic of a centerlock 20" wheel trying to look like Fuchs with a Fuchs' worth of brake disc behind it is pure kitsch.

Now that electric cars that are relatively cheap have such fast acceleration the only reason to buy a car like a Porsche is for exactly this the old school cool feel.

It’s not the only reason, the driving experience is more than just acceleration.

Disclaimer: I’m a biased 911 (992) driver - it’s easily one of the best driving experiences I’ve had in any car.

I've been shopping lately and my eye keeps coming back to a 718 Cayman GTS 4.0. I've always sorta wanted a 911, ever since I was a kid, but I'm just about in love with the 718.

If you don't have kids it's fantastic car. Even the 911 is not really a four seater but until kids are 10 or so it is manageable. Teenagers: not so much. Personal opinion: the 718 handles better than a 911 by a considerable margin.

Fast acceleration isn't the only reason people buy sports cars, and "old school feel" is a pretty reductive way to describe the other differences between a manual ICE Porsche and EVs.

I love my electric car, and it is stupid fast, but ... a Porsche is different. It makes you tingly and giggly to fling through the twisties. It's the kind of car that can give you an epiphany if you've only ever driven pedestrian cars your life. Like ... so this is what they mean by handling.

My model 3 is only comparable in a straight line. It's awful by comparison if you want it to scoot through corners.

$272,300 for a car.

It's transport.

Just a car.

If you want just a transport you don't buy a Porsche. It's a luxury item and everyone who buys one knows it.

It’s not for everyone. It clearly is for some people. Is that shocking? You probably spend more on certain things than someone random would think necessary.

I agree, I spend more on seeds so I can harvest food later in the year than most would think necessary.

You totally got me.

This isn’t built for transport it’s for enjoyment / fun, sport and art.

If it's for sport, they should not be road legal and only allowed on race tracks. As a cyclist in the Bay Area, nothing is more annoying that all the sports car owners speeding up to and on skyline during the weekends.

Lol classic cyclist comment

In over 4 decades on earth, I haven't come across this sentiment before, but now that I'm considering it, I kind of agree.

I'd be sad if all public roads went that direction, but I think I'd like the peace and safety that could come with prohibiting anything like "spirited driving" on public roads in densely populated areas.

In densely populated areas, I'm with you. But out in the sticks, on a twisty road outside the city? I don't want to live in a world where the safety nuts have succeeded in making life dull, gray, and boring... but super safe.

If the safety issue was only about the car driver itself, I would say go for it. Unfortunately this often cause troubles for others.

So your "in the sticks, on a twisty road outside the city" -> closed track for that purpose.

We're not talking about whipping through the back roads at 100mph.

I legitimately can't figure out whether it's the left or the right that is more authoritarian. Both sides really love the idea, it seems, just on different topics. I hope the great big center reasserts sanity sometime soon.

I was talking about people speeding up on winding roads, passing without visibility etc. There is nothing authoritarian about asking that to stop.

I stopped reading after "As a cyclist ..."

It sounds like your argument is more with roads than cars. Personally while I think cycling is a great thing - it's quite ableist of you to assume everyone can cycle.

My argument is with people that believe that they can take their sports cars to open roads, usually the "fun ones" and make it miserable for every other users of these roads.

So it's a toy, like a fidget spinner, for men who lack abundance in areas that money can't help with.

Just because someone has different interests or definitions of what they find to be art doesn’t make them any less valid.

> > It's transport.

It's not, a bunch of companies will also buy this thing via financial leasing formula and then rent them out on tracks for those who want to make hot laps at some 1000$ an hour, it's conveniently about the same hourly price of a nice escort in NYC /s

People fork way more cash to follow a game of their sport franchise team especially the very expensive NFL

Wow!

It's no wonder the USA is so fucked.

For a car with an outdated engine, which will be forbidden in Norway in 2025 and in other countries soon after that.

That has got to be the laziest “review” I’ve ever read. It’s as if they fed the Porsche press release to an LLM…

I swear Porsche 911 has a cult following. There’s almost always a local “911 club” every place I lived. I get they’re trying to make an ode to the classic but feels like a missed opportunity not to make this a hybrid like the E-ray. That being said, I can’t afford this car so maybe those who can prefer pure ICE but in todays EV world, 575 HP seems meh.

Edit: Interesting that people here think hybrid must mean “PHEV” or a Prius aka parallel hybrid. There are mild hybrids. Just replace the coveted Turbo model with a hybrid model that run in conjunction with the manual engine. You’ll get both the loved manual-ness and EV like pick up.

575 HP isn't meh, in the EV world or outside of it. You'll probably be limited by your tires. And that kind of acceleration gets old fast. Probably.

There’s very few luxury EVs that have less than 600 HP…If you’re paying for 250K for an EV, you’re looking at 800HP+ on the low end. I agree about how it gets meaningless after a certain point since you need to be on a sticky track to use the full power. I really like how Lucid Gravity is marketed for this, 9.81m/s^2 acceleration.

EVs can have very precise torque control and I think 4 motor EVs are inevitable so stickiness matters less than for an ICE car. The thing is the Lucid Gravity will probably in a recycling heap in 15 years time, while 911s will be wealthy peoples' grandfathered-in ICE road cars for Sunday cruises as long as some form of liquid combustible like ethanol is available.

My Tesla S Plaid has 1020 hp and 0-60 in 2 seconds. It never gets old. New plaids start at $92,000.

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted because it’s absolutely true, anything less than 600HP for a luxury EV is low.

Sure, but it's still Tesla and not a Porsche.

Yeah the base model taycan that is about the same price doesn’t even come with adaptive cruise control.

Neither does a Rolex have a built-in calculator.

ACC is an important security and comfort feature that is of course optional on the Porsche.

The difference is that a Taycan is Porsche through-and-through, and in addition to being fast in a straight line it does the good things in corners that make you feel fizzy.

A plaid goes like stink in a straight line. It has awful brakes and handles like a sled. Very much a one trick pony. Great if that's all you want from a car, but many of us want a more complete package.

You should look again. The plaid beats the Taycan in the Nurburging. None subjective things about the plaid vs taycan

* plaid faster 0-60

* plaid faster quarter mile

* plaid has more range

* plaid has faster nurburing times

* plaid costs less

Disregarding for a moment the usefulness of ring times these days, I'd expect that if the plaid is actually faster, it has everything to do with horsepower. The ring is a very fast track.

0-60 and quarter mile times are great, for some people they're everything. But while I find acceleration to be entertaining, the feel of a well balanced car in the twisties is worth the price of admission.

Essentially, plaid is the EV version of a GT-R. Super competent, great numbers, and about as much fun as racing an toaster. Proof that you can do amazing things with enough hardware.

Even so, it's still a Tesla. You guys are missing the point Porsche built its brand and following around (I don't care either way, I'm not target for either brand). There are ridiculous tuned and overpowered Golfs out there with same claims (speed, handling, whatever), yet at the end of the day it's still a Golf. There are Porsche classics for a reason, there are no Tesla classics for a reason.

The plaid has better brakes as an option and apparently a much better handling since a software (!) update.

It’s for sure not a GT3 RS on the track but it’s not that bad like it used to be until very recently.

> > It never gets old

Unlike a Tesla a 911 will be able to do it 500 times in a row, like clockwork. Again and again. You'll literally run out of tires and the car will be screaming for more.

That's also the reason why Porsche has most wins of any constructur at Le Mans 24h and Nurburgring 24h and I am pretty sure they are on the podium for most wins at Suzuka 24h and Spa 24h, Porsche also won the Dakar multiple times and the Rally World Championship a handful of times. Tesla instead never even competed once in such races, however they are the kings of the financial press and PR stunts on twitter I'll give you that.

People say the 911 has a cult following ( for example they are very defensive of the same 50 year old design vis-a-vis Italian sports car which change design language every 3-5 years) but at least it's rooted in performance over the last 50 years.

Tesla cultists instead can't even locate the fancy names of tracks I just mentioned on a map, nor they know the country they are in or where the multi-stage competitions take place.

> > New plaids start at $92,000

Any decently mantained used 500cc twin stroke bike starts (and ends) at $5000 and has the same 0-60mph time as and a 0-60-0 time (and distance) some 2 orders of magnitude better than that go kart for easily indoctrinated rich people.

911s aren't really about the straight lines. You can get a reasonably equivalent performing car for well less than half the price of the SC, so factor in that at least half the car's value comes from scarcity due to low production numbers and 911 halo effect. It's non-trivial to get these cars even if you can well afford them and they're considered iconic by many folks who love cars. All that said, this model is more of a collectible money grab to me than the car someone who loves 911s goes for -- I'm biased, 992 GT3 is more fun all day, and that's on a track where it belongs.

I run about 1/3rd of that and there is no way that opening the floodgates on that is safe in normal traffic. Other people simply don't expect you to accelerate that fast. And I don't have time (or ambition) to do it on a track.

The model in the article is slow for a 911, but I can tell you as a 911 (992) owner the acceleration is plenty fast enough, well, it’s borderline terrifying for public roads (mine’s around 3.2s).

It may not be at the level of the best EVs, but honestly I think off-the-line acceleration is a massively overrated stat because it’s not something you can really leverage, safely, most of the time - I hardly ever use launch control (it’s not even particularly useful for the track). Once you get sub 4 seconds, any faster is just shredding tyres. My last car, a Maserati, was 4.5s and that felt plenty fast enough too (and I still shredded tyres!)

Everything else is important: handling, steering responsiveness, brake responsiveness, mid-range ‘grunt’, and depending where you are in the world: top speed and how quickly you can get there. A 911 will leave a Tesla in the dirt at high speeds [1] - on a clear road I could sail up to 200 mph without any drama [2] (seriously, watch that video to see how utterly drama free 200mph is in a 911 on a public road).

It’s impossible to communicate how much confidence the car gives you, it’s utterly planted at speed and in corners. The 911 has a long history of being one of the best driving experiences, it is a true supercar with 50+ years of engineering refinement, that’s hard to beat.

Along with the badge and elegant design, that’s what you pay for.

[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a38453459/tesla-model-s-pl...

[2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bXRyy-RBuzc&pp=ygUecG9yc2NoZSA...

A 911 feels planted right up to the point where it isn't and then you better be ready for it. It can go from 'drama free' to 'lots of drama' pretty quickly especially on roads with trash or uneven moisture on them. I accidentally put one ass-backwards on the Berlin ring at night and it wasn't even over the limit. Pre-traction control though, so probably these days that would go a little better. Learned a good lesson there and fortunately no damage or injury other than to my ego.

> Pre-traction control though

You’d find it hard to do that now. I’ve had a few moments where I’ve been in Sport Mode and gone to overtake someone on a damp road, accelerated a bit too hard, and then the backend has gone out. Even then it’s trivial to bring under control because of the traction control. It’ll let go a bit, but to spin it you’d have to be quite aggressive.

Not that you don’t have to be careful with all that power, but I’d rather be in a (modern) 911 with that power than probably any other powerful car.

It’s a much more refined car these days, its past reputation as a yuppie killer are pretty much done. It even tells you to switch to Wet Mode when it’s raining :D

A friend of mine crashed a 911 pretty badly, he rolled out of a parking garage and got hit by a bus that had zero time to brake. He walked away from that without a scratch and I'm still amazed by it two decades later, by rights he should have been hamburger. That chassis is impressive, to say the least.

probably :). I do wish where I live there was a track people could use. But going fast/high acceleration on public roads is just dangerous and involves those outside the car that didn't consent to the danger.

I feel like you've missed the point of this car.

N.B. that the Turbo -- the parent model -- doesn't offer a manual. I strongly suspect this car started with "what if a Turbo but manual, and geared towards the demographic that wants that option?"

A hybrid would, for those people, make this car LESS appealing. I'm not in the market for cars that cost as much as houses, but I would absolutely react that way.

Yeah, definitely a different mindset so it’s hard to gauge for me. I’ve sat in fancy cars, probably the most expensive one is a Maserati GT. The engine noise sounds really nice but I would rather have the instant torque acceleration. But I get it, these are like luxury handbags, just owning one is fun.

On the second hand market the thing to watch for with manuals is shift misses, especially when downshifting which can easily overrev the engine in horrible ways. You can read this out though so that's definitely something to check for if you ever go shopping for stick shift 911s. On the tiptronic that doesn't really happen.

I used to have a 911, but for me the charm kinda diminished when they went water-cooled.

Reliability and emissions... the remaining 'luftis' are quite high maintenance and for daily drivers probably not the best choice. If I had one I'd not do it justice because I'd be too scared of damaging it in traffic. I like them because they're so spartan though, but for a long trip it might be a bit much.

My 993 was a daily driver for a long time. The maintenance isn't bad at all -- honestly, over the nearly 20 years I had it, it was probably one of the most reliable cars I ever had, and the cost of ownership wasn't bad AT ALL.

Pre-993 generations were pretty spartan, that's true, but the 993 was reasonably comfy, had very good climate control, etc. (I mean, I live in Houston. Good AC is required.)

I don’t own a 911 but suggest that driving one makes you get it doesn’t need to be a hybrid to be near perfect.

I think they're making the final ultimate versions of the ICE cars while they still can.

Porsche are heavily invested in synthetic fuels, I don’t think their ICE models are going anywhere soon.

> a local “911 club” every place I lived

Not an accident, the PCA (Porsche Club of America) is the first and largest auto owners/enthusiasts club. They have regions and local clubs all over the country and world. They are really nice people, happy to show you their beautiful cars or maybe even give you a ride!

The only reason I know about them is my coworkers are in them (coworkers from different jobs too). They tend to be white beards (is this still a PC term?) and they’re all super nice. They get all giddy when they can talk about their 911s. One of my jobs, we had our own landing strip, so they would race all their cars (Audi, corvette, BMW, and Porsche). I honestly thought the BMW i8 would win but he never custom tuned it and it was soft capped at 140 mph.

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