997 Turbo

[John_Ward]

ORIGINAL: Stuart Martin

Oh well, it just means there will be many more members to contribute to the turbo register and more for me to bore to death[]

I don't think you've bored anyone to death yet on the Turbo Register Forum - most users approve of your forensic skills!

 

[graham m]

In response to Tony M - why has your OPC taken your deposit? The car hasn't 'officially' been announced yet. How can they take money on a ficticious car? It's still at the LoI stage and no requests for money - that's my OPC's take on the situation. Has anyone else been asked or put money down?
G

 

[daro911]

ORIGINAL: graham m

In response to Tony M - why has your OPC taken your deposit? The car hasn't 'officially' been announced yet.

My experience with 9 Porsche to date has always been no deposit necessary or should be taken by an OPC until a model is 100% confirmed then the tills are wide open for business

 

[garyw]

Still refusing to take my money...

garyw

 

[Tony M]

ORIGINAL: graham m

In response to Tony M - why has your OPC taken your deposit?

I veiw the payment as a place in the queue for genuine buyers.

Rightly or wrongly the queue has to start somewhere and there will be a bunfight for places when the 911 Turbo is 'Officially' launched.

 

[mbrands]

I've just been told by my OPC that they are expecting to start taking £10k deposits at the end of this month. Yes, £10k. Up from £1k a few years ago- ostensibly to deter speculators. I can live with that provided it's for an early car, but if it's anything longer than a six months wait, that's a long time to be sitting on my money. In the end I am providing them an unsecured business loan at zero percent interest. Have others been told similar ?

The car itself is starting to grow on me, to the extent that I'm worried that the new look might make the 997 Aerokit look dated.

The March issue of Car magazine has a decent article on the new Turbo as well, which was more informative, I thought, than the one in this week's Autocar. In it they say that the tiptronic is actually faster 0-60 than the manual version, which would be a first []. 3.8s vs 3.9s. How did they do that ?

I also read that the 1.2 bar Overboost feature only comes with Sport Chrono.

 

[Sunil]

I agree with Marc. I'm not putting £10,000 down unless I can have the car in September. I'm happy to sign an agreement to keep the car for at least 12 months before selling it on.

I'm going to be at my OPC next week to sort out my exhaust so will query it then.

Sunil

 

[tiskev]

I guess you guys noticed it was featured in this weeks Autocar and they refer to it as "Landing this Spring" I know it will have its official launch in Geneva in March but does landing refer to launch and do they start making deliveries soon after? I think it is certainly available in Europe in Sept I will check it out on monday.

 

[mbrands]

I'm guessing all this, but I figure the Geneva show starts the end of Feb for members of the press and industry insiders. They have the show to themselves for a few days before it opens to the general public. That way they have room to take pictures, crawl all over the cars, hob-nob around and get all the detailed information packs. This is the date that I think will be considered the official launch date of the Turbo and will be the cue for OPCs to start taking deposits. Production probably starts in April/May, with first cars hitting the road in May /June. Maybe they'll do the usual launch parties at UK dealerships in April or May. So, for people with early build slots £10k is doable, but if they're promising you a car in 18 months, that's £600 of forgone interest that you could have spent on options.

The good thing is that it might deter speculators and keep the waiting list reasonably short. If supply then matches real demand this could have an improved effect on residuals, ie no nervous speculators flooding the market with cars once premiums have eroded.

Anyway, enough of the boring stuff, I'm quite starting to look forward to the car now. I wonder if there will be any new colours.

I also hope they bring out a 2WD version at some point, but this time with traction control. I think much of the problem with the GT2 (apart from the price point) was that it did not come with traction control, which in the end was probably too much of a good thing. They could always make it switchable so as not to alienate the real expert drivers out there.

 

[Guest]

I thought it worked something like this:

Letter of intent gets you on the waiting list before the car is officially announced.
No money to be paid, since the car does not exist, but dealerships want to avoid a scrum on the day it is announced.
This system is a little unfair, since if you don't act on the rumours, by the time it is announced, they could have hundreds of people ahead of you in the queue.

Car is announced, official list is opened.
In general the work on a first come first served basis, however, if you read the small print on your order, they do not guarantee to fulfill the orders in the order they were placed. So if you are a good customer, or friendly with them, your position in the queue may be looked upon more favourably.
I believe you are asked for £1K, which is refundable if you change your mind. I suppose the purpose is to show some real intent, rather than just idle speculation. Over a year you lose no more than £40 in interest, so there is no great hardship, and you can probably drink that much free coffee while deciding on the spec.

Dealer informs you of a build slot. About 3-4 months before build, they need to confirm the spec.
At this time they ask for 10% deposit. This has been the case for the last 3 years at least.
Since the cost of the car is estimated at £95K and you'll want a few options, £10K seems about right.
However, if they will want this from the end of the month, then that suggests May/June build slots for June/July delivery to me.
If you want to be first then you won't have much time to consider your spec.

Some dealers may deviate from this strategy, but this is a local arrangement and is not official Porsche policy.

Of course the position in the list is dynamic, as some will be looking to get the car in the Autumn, or when the registration letter clicks over in Sept, or after Christmas, whatever. So if you are flexible you could jump a few slots.

Some of the letters of intent will be from people who did it just in case, some from people who will have changed their mind, some from people who have decided their 996 is fine, some whose circumstances have changed.
So for many reasons, quite a proportion of those on the list will not take up their places after the official announcement.

As for speculators: many of these may be good customers, since they may have bought quite a few Porsches in the past. Chris Harris in Auto Express mentioned that he had bought 3 996TT's and sold them on at a profit.
I suspect that 10K will not put many people off.
The only real way to stop them, would be a clause to prevent you selling it on. But I am not sure they can legally do this. The way to create the same tie in, is to rent it to you for 12 months, so it is not officially your property, then you cannot sell it on. But they will not do this.

 

[Guest]

They couldn't put PSM on the GT2 (or the GT3) since it is incompatible with the LSD (limited slip diff).
Also since they are supposed to be suitable for club racing, racing does not allow traction control.

 

[mbrands]

Stuart, that sounds about right to me. It suggests that the £10k is perhaps only for early build slots, which makes sense. However, I remember that when I bought my 996 cab the deposit was £1k, but for the 997 it was £3k. So I was just curious if others had seen the same on the new TT.

I also agree that legally or practically there is not much PGB can do about speculators, however not sure that someone who buys 3 cars with the intention of flipping them is really a good customer. I'm sure both the OPC and the 3 purchasers would have preferred to have dealt with eachother directly, but the speculator prevented this.

I agree these were constraints on the 996GT2, but meanwhile the 997 has both LSD (with sports suspension) and PSM, so I guess they can overcome whatever incompatability issues there were, and also I understand that Porsche is no longer pursuing the GT2 class of racing, so I remain hopeful that a 2WD TT with traction control might be in the offing at some point.

Why do I care ? Not because I'm such an expert driver (hardly the case), but because it makes the car lighter, the steering more communicative, the handling less prone to understeer and therefore the car a bit more fun in the dry. Sure you give up some tractability on the limit in the wet, but who drives on the limit in the wet anyway ?

 

[Guest]

ORIGINAL: mbrands
but who drives on the limit in the wet anyway ?

Me. You can't get to the limit in the dry most of the time.
Not all the time of course, I'm not some nutter. But I'm not scared of reaching the limits where space and conditions allow.

The new 4wd system allows even more power to the front wheels, in fact 100% of it if necessary.
So the 997TT seems to be more 4wd than ever. On ice this might be useful, but it means the front diff and driveshafts have to be beefier. Whether this affects the steering and feel, we'll have to wait and see.
I note that the rear tyres are staying the same, but the fronts are 10mm wider.

What constitutes a good customer? Whoever buys the most cars, I would say. There's no other really good objective way of measuring it, other than by how much business they have done. People can sell privately without Porsche knowing, if they do so after delivery.

Sport suspension does indeed have a "mechanical rear differntial lock" - I had missed that.
I don't know how it works though.
I guess that the PSM only intervenes if both wheels are slipping (as measured by the ABS sensors), since if one is slipping the LSD will take care of it and put the power to the other. A couple of lines of code in the computer.
But on the turbo, if both rears slip, it is not supposed to brake the rear wheels or cut engine output, but send it to the front.
Only if all 4 are slipping should it intervene. But you'll struggle to lose traction on all 4 wheels in the dry, unless you do something daft.

 

[mbrands]

Two things stood out about the tyre sizes. One is what you mentioned; the 10mm wider fronts, which I guess will reduce understeer. The other is that the rear tyres are 295s, which is the same width as those on the 2WD narrow bodied Carrera S, and not the 305s of the wider bodied Carrera 4S. This dispite the fact that the TT and the 4S appear to use the same wide body platform. That will be the first time a Turbo has narrow rear tyres than the non-turbo version.

I noticed that you have the X50 on your 996TT. Are you going to wait for the 997 Turbo S or are you going to go with the version that they are launching now, which I figure will be the base version then ? (Assuming you are getting a 997 Turbo at all, that is)

 

[Guest]

I'm not planning on getting a 997TT.
Unless fortune smiles on me and a pile of cash appears out of nowhere, then I can't afford to take the depreciation knock.
If I was going to get one, I would wait for the 997 X50 option. The point of the turbo is power, so you might as well get as much as possible.

The priority for Porsche is to launch the turbo, then the GT3, then I guess a GT2.
The X50 is attractive since it makes money for them, but it causes problems for the GT2, since people just tend to look at the power output and keeping the GT2 far enough ahead is difficult.
997TT 475 bhp, 997TT X50 510-520?bhp, 997 GT2 550 bhp?
Then do a refresh after 3 years, up the power of the 997TT to 500 and you'll see that the GT2 is going to end up at around 600.
This is a lot for a 2wd rwd car with no traction control. You are asking a lot of the rear tyres and the average buyers abilities. (I know the CGT had that much, but on a relatively low revving turbo car, you are going to need 750Nm of torque or so to get that. While some people have upgraded 996TT's to get that, the factory has to consider the bad publicity if people start crashing them.)

My view is that they should not worry about power, but focus on lightness.
I would give the GT2 the same power as the X50 car, but have the unibal suspension, GT3RS front suspension, carbon bonnet and boot, composite wings and doors, and make it lightweight, not 1500kg, but 1400 or less.
The problem is whether enough people will buy it.

The timing of the X50 is not clear. It could be a year or so after launch.
It is possible they will follow the more approach of the other cars and have a turbo S instead, which is perhaps more likely. However, on the 996 this was used for the last year of supply only.

The plan is to keep my 996TT for the longhaul. I do 300+ miles per week.
The idea was to stop changing cars all the time, buy something that met my performance needs and stop trading up. I shouldn't have bothered with the C4S first, since I lost some money on that, but I though it would be enough. Oh well. However, the 996TT with the X50 is enough -

I reckon over 10 years, then the price is not so daft. Somewhere after 150K miles I guess I will need some engine overhaul, and perhaps a new gearbox, then I'll drive it for another 150K miles. I plan to see whether it has some sort of longevity or not.
The only thing that will stop me, is if electronic problems start becoming a major reliability issue.
So far in 27K I have had 2 engine sensors cause problems (one the oil pressure sensor, and one the engine temperatute sensor).

Once it is out of the extended warranty (and I think I will hit 120K miles in 7 years (5.5 years time), then I might tweak it a bit. As things wear out, I might replace them with something newer. So I am interested in the upgrades that the factory are making to the 997, since I reckon quite a few could be fitted to the 996.

I think the new trick centre diff may be a bit to clever for its own good, since electronics are the weakest point on any car.
The viscous coupling on the 996 can't really go wrong.

For the tyre sizes, I reckon the fronts will be wider, since they will need to handle more power, also I believe the weight distribution of the car is slightly more even front/rear, so they may need to do a little more work.
As for the rears, remember they were testing in the snow so the cars would have been running winter tyres.
I think the reporting is not accurate on this one, and at the launch they will be 305's. We'll see.

Of course, if the car can more readily apportion power to all four wheels the rears do not need to be as wide, but then they will be further moving away from a rwd driving feel. If you look at Imprezas and Evos, their tyres are not all that wide. Maybe the fancy diff means they can be narrower.

Tyre size should be what is necessary for the handling, not for show. Also the narrower ones have less rolling resistance and drag. Plus 295's are cheaper, so you don't have to worry about tyre wear.

We only have to wait a few more weeks, then the spec should be out in the open.
I just wonder when the launch will be at Guildford, then I can get a brochure.

 

[garyw]

Spoke to the OPC today. They have mentioned dates for launch more into the summer than spring [].
If I understand what he is saying, When the car is launched they will go through the letters of intent and contact those people in that order, but the list will then be put together in the order that the people then pay their £10k deposit..
So you could jump up or fall down the list...
No offers of a little hospitality at Geneva [:'(] but then again its only a car [].....

garyw

 

[Sunil]

The contents of an email I received this morning from an established importer in the UK.

[FONT=georgia ref"]Please note we can supply brand new factory order Porsche 997 Turbo models for Spring 2007 delivery. Choose your own specification and drive away the new Porsche 997 Turbo without having to wait the long lead times quoted by our UK dealers ! We are currently sold out for 2006 delivery.

You can secure the new model for delivery next year with deposit of £3,000 (paid direct to Porsche) and the rest payable when the car is built.

Deposit is fully refundable before final specification has been confirmed around April this year.

Order now to secure early delivery.

Prices and specifications to be confirmed 100% by Porsche around April this year.
[FONT=georgia ref"]
[FONT=georgia ref"]It certainly makes you think twice about ordering the car from an OPC. I think I may just put the £3k deposit down with these guys as well as who knows what's happening with the OPCs - £10k is ridiculous and that too with little idea of when the car will arrive.
[FONT=georgia ref"]
[FONT=georgia ref"]Sunil

 

[Guest]

I think I made a mistake in one of my previous posts.
The 10K is when you spec the car.

To confirm your order you need 3K, not 1K as I mentioned before.
I remembered a couple of days ago, they raised the amount to 3K two years ago.

 

[Sunil]

I was told previously by my OPC that it was £3k for an S and £5k for a 4S or TT once the cars were announced.

Sunil

 

[Tony M]

I met up with my dealer at Pennyhill Park in Bagshot as there was a 911 evaluation day organised for Customers and Potential Customers at the Chobham Proving Ground.

I was told that Porsche have upped the required Deposits to 10 k so please could I send a further 5. The dealers will apparently send the names of people that have paid to Porsche who will cross reference the names to find multiple purchasers. At present they are aware of one individual that has ordered from about 10 OPCs.

Very soon Deposit putter downerers will be asked to sighn a Porsche form, the wording of which is not revealed. I suspect this form will be an agreement to register the car in your own name.This will prevent speculators from ordereng a car and taking delivery of it in an unregisterd form on a flatbed trailer.Most people who buy from speculators (self included) would not wish to buy a technically second hand car.

Aparently Porsche will look at the order books of the various dealers and balence supply so that the waiting time for each customer is similar. In simple terms if Dealer A has 40 orders and dealer B has 10 Dealer A gets 4 cars delivered to Bs 1 car.

I feel sure that Romans, Bramley and Tom Hartley will all have Turbos for sale nevertheless.[]

ps The dealer said that he has two 10 k deposits from customers that do not require delivery untill March next year !