Absolutely. Porsche's own Cayman shows what the 911 should be (although in a bit smaller package). But purists demand the 911 to only be updated, not re-designed. It is their halo car and won't change it. Still, even though the design is now obsolete, the cars are still wonderful. One can jump from 911s of various eras and notice the improvements. If you drive a 930 (911 Turbo from 1975 to 1989 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_930) and then drive a 993 Turbo (911 Turbo from 1996 to 1998 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_993) you can feel the difference. The 930 is crude and unforgiving. With turbo lag measured in seconds. I remember counting to three before the turbo kicked in and slammed me into the seat back. Driving it requires cojones because the rear of the car will go around if you lift or break mid-corner. Its not a car for the faint of heart. Now, the 993 Turbo is a tamed sheep when compared to the 930. It features a coil spring suspension in the rear that absorbs bumps much better than the torsion bar version found on the 930. The 993 Turbo is a four wheel drive vehicle. The system does wonders for its driving dynamics. You still shouldn't lift or brake mid-corner, but now the car is more forgiving since the front tires are desperately trying to carve into the road. I've personally taken corners at around 90MPH on a 993 Turbo (racetrack driving) and the car inspires confidence.
If you are looking to buy a Porsche make sure to figure out what you want to do with it. if you are just going baby it and admire it with a beverage of your choice in hand then any version is fine. If you plan to drive it on a daily basis then a newer model is required (the A/C on the air cooled versions down right sucks). Performance driving? Anything from the 1999 and forward will do because its a much better chassis. Racing? Get yourself whatever GT3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_911_GT3) you can afford. All of the above? Then buy a newer model.
Turbo or no turbo, that is the question. Turbo models require more maintenance and leak more oil than regular ones (all Porsches leak oil). The power delivery depends on the year you buy, but on newer models its pretty good. The problem with the turbo is that you can easily add in more power by raising the boost (increasing the amount of air being forced into the engine). But this requires the amount of fuel to be increased as well. You can safely increase boost by a couple of pounds, but once you want to really get serious, multiple upgrades must be made. Including the transmission, clutch, wheels, and lots of support equipment. Its not unheard of to spend about twenty thousand dollars on simple upgrades. A friend has about two hundred thousand on his (800HP beast of a car). It all depends on how deep your pockets are.
Few people understand that, in a turn, the throttle is the most accurate and delicate steering control (and, from my point of view, the only one you should use). And, on a car with a bit of mass biased towards the rear it works opposite what people are used to with front-biased cars. Accelerating (or not decelerating) around a turn isn't "natural" until you understand why.
I've always found it enjoyable to understand the dynamics of these cars. If you can swing it, doing Nürburgring on anything with decent performance is an absolute blast.
> And, on a car with a bit of mass biased towards the rear it works opposite what people are used to with front-biased cars.
What do you mean? Why does the weight distribution result in "opposite" throttle/brake response when cornering? I don't think it does.
All cars behave the same when accelerating or decelerating in a corner. Throttle moves the weight to the rear wheels inducing understeer (until you overdo it and you get power oversteer) and brakes move weight to the front inducing oversteer (until you lock up and get understeer). It doesn't matter what the engine layout looks like or what the weight distribution is.
It's certainly true that the weight distribution in a rear/mid engine car feels different but only because the center of mass is in a different place. Once the rear gets sliding, it's feels really aggressive because there's more mass going (like driving a hammer, handle first) but with some finesse on the controls it can be balanced out. Most purpose built racing cars have engine behind the driver (and center of mass near the driver's ass) to allow extracting the most grip out of all four tyres, given enough driver skill.
You had it: Center of mass. Think about the forces on the front and rear tire patches as you navigate a turn with subtle throttle modulation.
I am not talking about gross control, only fine control.
It's like sailing without using the rudder to make fine course corrections. Not a perfect analogy but it is about balancing forces.
Another thinking tool: Imagine a dumbell where the weight of each disk isn't the same. One is 5lbs and the other 10lbs. It's a 15lbs dumbell but it is unevenly balanced.
Attach a cable to each disk. Now start spinning it with the heavier disk in front. Then do the same with the heavier disk in back. Think of acceleration and deceleration and the resultant torque about the cernter of mass.
"Few people understand that, in a turn, the throttle is the most accurate and delicate steering control (and, from my point of view, the only one you should use)."
His point is that by modulating the throttle you can move the weight of the chassis around. Doing so affects how the vehicle steers. The statement is a bit exaggerated but nonetheless based on facts. It all depends on the car you are driving. Sometimes the brakes do more than the throttle during a turn.
You enter the turn with the steering wheel. Once setup you control the turn with throttle (or braking) and how the car behaves is related to, among other factors, mass balance.
To be clear, people talk about "weight transfer". That is not what happens at all. Weight transfer would require masses within the vehicle to move. What does happen is that the resultant vector of all force vectors acting on the vehicle shifts to have a forward or rearward component depending on what the car might be doing. At a basic level it's about good-old F = ma. There is no weight transfer in the strictest sense (unless you have a super loose suspension with four feet of travel or a partially filled fuel tank).
So, in a very direct sense, driving is about manipulating force vector directions and magnitudes through acceleration (the physics kind, meaning in any direction).
Accelerating through a turn does not shift weigh to the rear. No significant mass transfer takes place while accelerating or braking. We say "weight shift" because that's the way it feels to the driver, but this is not what's happening.
When accelerating forward during a turn you are increasing the force vector at the point where the tire contacts the road. This results in increasing forward velocity around the path the car is travelling. Since centrifugal force is proportional to the SQUARE of tangential velocity a mass imbalance to the front or rear can have a very different effect on car dynamics.
A rear-biased Porsche 911, on deceleration around a curve will be subjected to a torque about the center of mass that has the rear end pulled towards the center of the travel arc. A car that is front-biased will do the opposite, the resultant torque will pull the front towards the center of the arc being negotiated.
Because of the square relationship to tangential velocity and the "unusual" dynamics of a rear-biased 911 people who do not understand the physics involved get into real trouble while negotiating turns at speed. If you decelerate quickly this square-of-the-velocity related torque about the center of mass will spin you in a microsecond.
Of course, there's a lot more to it, such as suspension geometry and tire patch dynamics, yet the fundamental physics are not that complex and can have major effects on what a car does during high performance driving.
The throttle is a major influence in turning because of it controls acceleration and it's relationship to dynamic forces is proportional to the square of velocity.
EDIT: Corrected friggin iPad-induced typos.
Also, to complete the story: When you exit the turn you exit with the throttle first and then the steering wheel. In other words, on a front-biased vehicle you can start to feed-in throttle somewhere past the apex to use the square-of-velocity torque relationship to start to carefully straighten your motion path while not really moving the wheel. At a certain point you start to release steering pressure to smoothly transition into a straight path. If all of this is done smoothly it feels amazing.
The Cayman is missing the rear seats of the 911, which still drive sales more than 50 years after Porsche decided that their new model would be a 2+2.
Sure the seats are small and mostly useless, but they do increase the ability to use the car on a day to day basis.
There's little doubt the Cayman can be a better car (in part because it hasn't gained mid-life flab, but also because it is mid-engined) If Porsche still built a small, nimble 911 it would be much like the Cayman. But as the range-leader, it had to grow bigger and bigger and now does not resemble the market space the original model occupied.
The AC on the 1990 onwards cars is OK, and it can be fixed with aftermarket parts on the earlier cars.
Drove the 991 911 and it was very safe. Had all the electronics turned off and had to step on the throttle real hard to provoke it to slide on a skid pan. I was not really impressed with how it drove compared to my wife's E92 M3. The Cayman/Boxster, on the other hand, was pure joy and I've been lusting after one ever since. Even though it was down in power the car was easy to get into a slide and you can hold it there for hours at a time. Definitely going to try to own one someday.
If you are looking to buy a Porsche make sure to figure out what you want to do with it. if you are just going baby it and admire it with a beverage of your choice in hand then any version is fine. If you plan to drive it on a daily basis then a newer model is required (the A/C on the air cooled versions down right sucks). Performance driving? Anything from the 1999 and forward will do because its a much better chassis. Racing? Get yourself whatever GT3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_911_GT3) you can afford. All of the above? Then buy a newer model. Turbo or no turbo, that is the question. Turbo models require more maintenance and leak more oil than regular ones (all Porsches leak oil). The power delivery depends on the year you buy, but on newer models its pretty good. The problem with the turbo is that you can easily add in more power by raising the boost (increasing the amount of air being forced into the engine). But this requires the amount of fuel to be increased as well. You can safely increase boost by a couple of pounds, but once you want to really get serious, multiple upgrades must be made. Including the transmission, clutch, wheels, and lots of support equipment. Its not unheard of to spend about twenty thousand dollars on simple upgrades. A friend has about two hundred thousand on his (800HP beast of a car). It all depends on how deep your pockets are.