ORIGINAL: flat6
ORIGINAL: daro911
Do you agree with what sales keep saying refs a 981 has to be a pdk today even though the stats are very much 50/50 unlike the 991's
Have you tried a 981 stick shift I haven't as all demo cars seem to be pdk only[&o]
The question of PDK is a personal one but i'll answer whether I think the
car needs a manual option. Personally I think it doesn't. I've driven manual 981s and the gearbox is slick, but I think the only reason Porsche makes a manual is because they recognise that plenty of people
want a manual. I guess some prefer to stick to what they know, or what feels best in terms of enjoyment or what feels best in terms of how they personally drive. With the 987, the latter was my reason for staying with manual. However, i'm up for embracing change when I think it's clearly better and to me, 981 PDK is clearly better than a manual. I think it will take a while to get used to automated transmission, which isn't going to happen on a few test drives, but i'd take it anyway in the belief that I will adapt, rather than keep myself stuck in the past when the future is actually the present. We all embrace change where we feel it benefits. E.g. some happily use a calculator and let their mental arithmetic ability waste away. Some will battle with getting to grips with computers and smart phones even if it almost blows their brain, if they feel that the pain is worth the gain. Some may feel they're too long in the tooth to be faffing around with something new when they could be continuing to enjoy what they're happy with. You can't miss what you don't know.
But does the 981
need a manual? Automated transmissions are clearly quicker and more efficient in terms of performance and economy. Personally I think the GT3 was falling behind its competition and
needed PDK. To not offer manual on the 991 GT3 says a lot to me. I guess Porsche feel it doesn't
need it. Some potential buyers may want it but it wouldn't be the car Porsche wants it to be and it would have purely have been a move to cater for nostalgia. Engineers need to continue to develop their machines to try to be ahead of the competition, especially in the performance car arena. Along with their test drivers, they will have concluded that swapping gears manually was too far behind all the other advancements they had made. You could say that a manual transmission couldn't be made to keep up. I personally reckon that the only reason the 997 GT3 was manual only, was because there was a sufficient number of buyers of the right type to enable Porsche to skip developing a PDK for the Mezger engine. Now those loyal buyers feel left out in the cold because they believed that Porsche believed that the GT3
must be, or
needed to be manual. Instead, the manual went when the Mezger went. Conversely, Porsche feels that the new 991 GT3
must be PDK and has skipped developing a manual for it, which would have only been to satisfy certain buyers rather than being worthy of the product they were out to build.
] 
