First Impressions Count

Well K-day is here and I picked up the car this morning. :-) :-)

Collecting the car from the OPC was a nice efficient process, and 30 minutes after arriving I was driving out of the showroom in my pride and joy.

Some thoughts, notes and impressions based on the first 25 miles:

1. The seats looks great in Alcantara – even the ‘leatherette’ is of reasonable quality, especially compared to the lousy leather Porsche use.
2. I have to say it looks very good in white; I particularly like the way you can see the front wings as you drive. I hope its warm enough for a bit of Zymolling this weekend!
3. I graunched the front spoiler on the company car-park up-ramp, but I parked it on the roof so I can see it if I wander over to that side of the building. I’ve only done this twice so far!
4. I came up from the OPC on the long and winding road route, but there are too many slow moving numpties around to make any progress. However I did give chase to a British Gas Fiesta (!!!!) van that saw me in the mirrors and was off on a mission; 85mph on a greasy, wet ‘B’ road up from Chobham wasn’t too shabby.
5. Gears are new-stiff, but the ratio’s are nice and close
6. ‘Sport’ button really changes the car’s rhythm; you have to change gear faster – I discovered this crashing 3rd gear in front of a Ferrari garage!!
7. I still can’t believe its mine and can't get this wretched grin off my face
8. Did I mention it looks bloody good in white? AFM Guildford had it in their showroom when I arrived, just one white and one yellow Cayman in a sea of grey, silver and black Porsches
9. Ride is fine, almost gentle, even on sh*tty tarmac; this is the spec. my mate Mr S should have gone for (he didn’t; he picked 19”’s and no PASM and returned his after three weeks before it damaged his spine)
10. Cold new tyres + slimy roads + roundabout = horrible understeer + near coronary within 750metres of collecting the car
11. Driving position great. Although I did have an ‘Oh God’ moment at first. I’d set the driving position as I wanted in the car in the dealer's showroom. But driving away it felt really weird. That confused me as the demonstrator fitted like a glove & now the bloody seat is too high. Then I remember that Mrs SS7 had tried my car for size afterwards, & sure enough, she’d fiddled with the adjustments. Phew, it still fits like a glove; seat on the floor, wheel high & close, just like Mr Priaulx and I like it.
12. The engine is as smooth as a spun silk crooner in the chill out room at the Velvet club in Smoothsville Arizona
13. It feels meaty enough up to the 4000-ish rpm I’m currently using
14. Did I mention I love the colour? Even Mrs SS7 is warming to it.
15. It really feels solid; no rattles, creaks, groans or bangs.
16. I need to paint the wheels high gloss black. It’s a shame the roads are so slimey as they will be black within a week anyway.
17. The secretaries saw me arrive at work so now everyone knows I’m a rich bastard/menopausal disaster area (take your pick)
18. It had 5.5 miles on the clock when I picked it up.
19. It took a few churns of the starter to get it running this morning – presumably it had just been moved a little way last night and had cylinders full of fuel.
20. Brakes are a little spongy, I imagine they’ll come good with use
21. It whistles in 6th. Only reached 6th once so need to check this out
22. I haven’t turned the radio on yet, but I have used ‘Sport’, PASM & ESP off
23. It has the Bridgestone tyres
24. The salesman asked me if I was going to use if for trackdays as the spec. was great for that. The look on Mrs SS7’s face says “No”.

SS7

The King is dead, God save the king

My 968 doing what it's best at...

Now my obsession with Porsche’s options list isn’t just the sign of an unhealthy mind; it’s been front-of-mind for quite sometime, and there is a practical reason for my interest.

I’ve been a died-in the wool Porsche-file for quite a few years. Well, 20 at least. And it was probably nearer 30 since I covered the wall of my bedroom with pictures of cars taken from magazines. In those days the awesome 911 turbo was the boss, and my Athena poster took pride of place.

Well maybe not so died-in-the-wool actually, as that would suggest I lusted after, and had owned, a succession of “Arse-engined Nazi slot cars*”, aka ‘real’ Porsches, (or 911’s). The Porsches in my life have tended to have been the front engined, water pumping type, starting with my father’s 924, and ending recently with my lovely 968 Clubsport.

In between, there was a 968 coupe, a 944 turbo, and briefly a 911/964C4. The latter beauty I imported from Hamburg, Germany, when the pound to Deutschemark exchange rate made that very worthwhile. For 6 weeks I ran the car everyday, revelling in the performance and ownership experience, and never walking away from parking it without looking back. Then some light-fingered bunch of scumbags relieved me of the car, the Thames Valley police proved no more effective than the Keystone cops, and most of the insurance cheque went towards building our house.

Of course, the fact that I’d offered up the insurance cheque for the house fund was an excellent ‘investment’. The rising property market and the fact we’d built or renovated two houses meant that 7 years later our equity has increased more than seven-fold. So when we down-sized and moved from the Thames Valley to the West Sussex coast, there was the opportunity to cash in my ‘investment’. My car-needs had changed too; instead of local runs to school and the office, I now wanted something suitable for the 60 mile cross-country weekly run up from Sussex. It also meant that 2 seats would be enough.

I did look at the usual suspects; fast Golfs, BMW’s and Audi’s, but I really wanted a rear wheel driver, and the BMW’s I tried suffered from tragic run-flat ride quality. I’ll admit that I couldn’t see how I was going to get too excited by the thought of owning one of these good-but-not-special-motors. I was also aware that my second ‘fun’ car was likely to moulder in the garage almost all of the time. Recent heavy r and m bills had done it no favours either. So maybe if I combined the house investment funds with the sales of my current daily hatchback and the fun car the field would open up a bit….

In short, I recognised it was my once-in-a-lifetime chance to own a new Porsche – even if it was the entry model.

So I arranged for Mrs SS7 and I to go to AFN in Reading to try their Cayman 2.7 demonstrator. It was a sublime drive. In-spite of what you read on the web, build quality appeared superb and performance was perfectly acceptable – and I was in a tight new car with a 14 stone salesman next to me. Perhaps motoring journalists just won’t get out of bed for less than 500bhp, but by my more modest standards it was quick, with a superb engine howl above 5000rpm.

Now I’m pretty well-paid as things go, but I also have a young family. So even the bottom end of the Porsche range represents a big chunk of money sitting in the driveway - it represents a more modest car and a pretty good extra annual holiday for the family. The ‘Save for a 911’ merchants could do with a better grip on reality. I did try a 4 year old 911 of similar value. It had the interior quality of a KIA and felt like a fast BMW to drive.

Rather speculatively then, I put an advert on www.Pistonheads.com for my Porsche 968 Clubsport. I wasn’t very hopeful, although the car was in superb condition it had suffered some accident damage in the past and was listed as Category ‘D’. This means it’s insurers had written it off as uneconomic to repair. It also meant that a lot of potential buyers would be put off and that its worth at least 20% less than an unlisted car. The 968 market looked very quiet with too many cars available and not enough buyers around. Then in an event of pure serendipity; the guy I’d bought the car from nearly two years ago decided his Boxster didn’t really excite him anymore, and what he really wanted was another 968CS like his old one… Within 72 hours we agreed a price and suddenly I had a clear run at a new Porsche.

But I still spent a couple of weeks prevaricating and generally worrying my friends as I vacillated between head and heart.

But on the basis that life’s just too bloody short and these opportunities don’t come around very ofton I thought “F*ck-it” and called my nearest OPC to confirm my order for a 2007 Porsche Cayman 2.7. Its due at the end of the year and I can't wait!

SS7

Porsche Option Prices

Its a long story, but I've ordered one of these. In 'Carrara white'. Its a Porsche Cayman & its going to be built next month in that well known centre of automotive excellence, Finland.

Now even poverty model Porsche are not cheap. This is the 2.7litre entry level version and costs £36,200. Additionally, "discount" is not a word known to Porsche dealers (or Official Porsche Centres - OPCs), in fact I consider myself lucky to have been offered 'free' (hee hee) overmats.

In fact in the last 10 years, Porsche has recreated itself as the most profitable car company in the world. Evidence of this is the fact that they have just purchased VW - or at least a very large chunk of it.

You can see how Porsche are making money when you take a close look at the numbers on the options sheet. Now its easy to overlook the fact that Porsche obviously spend a lot of costly engineering money on the oily bits under the car you don't normally see, but a 'basic' specification car is really, really basic. It doesn't even have the sort of nice-to-haves you'd expect on a Toyota at 1/2 the price.

As a result, its very easy to get carried away with the options list, and before you know it, you've just added 20% or 30% to the price of your car. EVO magazine just tested a £36k Cayman 2.7 that had a £47k on the road cost. And they castigated it because it didn't have the (optional) close ratio 6 speed gearbox. The full size 997 is worse, someone I know added £18k to the basic £65k price of a new 'S'.

To give you some idea of what I mean; here are some choice selections from the Cayman options list:

• Metallic paint: £570
• New fangled windscreen wiper that goes on the back window (shock!): £250
• Even more fangled air-conditioning that keeps the temperature where you set it: £308
• A £300 SatNav system nicely fitted into the dashboard: £1921
• A nice steering wheel with smooth leather that has controls for the SatNav: £471>
• A little electric stop watch sitting on top of the dash and an additional bit of ECU mapping: £507
• Seats which are leather (on the facings only) and not plastic: £729
• Electrical adjustment for your leather seats: £1006
• Some heating for your electrical leather faced seats: £269
• Some more leather, this time on the centre console behind the gearlever: £563
I>Faux carbon-fibre trim around your speedo and your nice integrated sat nav: £903 >A nice stereo with lots of speakers: £859
• Saving your friendly OPC the trouble of collecting the car from the factory (for two): £960

There you go, over £9k worth of 'extras' and they don't even deliver it to you door. I'd like to point out that I didn't fall into this trap myself and was pretty restrained. I'm also pretty sure the more expensive cars in the range actually make Porsche even more money, so at least on that level my cheap Cayman is better value than a new 997 Carrera turbo at nearly 3 times the price.

That OPC had better ease my pain when it comes to hand over the final cheque!

SS