Porsche: But Why?

porsche they make the best sports cars in the world or so i'm told i've spent my entire life weaving in and out of different car subcultures but i've never really gotten into porsche partly because i grew up in a part of the country where people just don't drive porsches but partly because it's always been a little bit out of my price range but a lot of people i know who are really into cars love porsches excellent drivers people who are not very good drivers but enjoy it youtubers celebrities some of the best automotive engineers i've ever worked with all love porsches but why why does porsche have such passionate fans what makes the cars so good i'm guessing it's not the back seat there are a lot of brands that people get really passionate about but there's something a little more elusive about porsche people will tell you that it's just something you have to experience but no it must be explainable it must be knowable and i will find out i talked to a lot of these people i drove some of porsha's best cars i think i've distilled it down into an explanation that can convey why people love this brand so much and what makes their cars so good so join me as i drive a lot of cars that i cannot afford [Applause] [Music] to understand porsche you first need to understand the volkswagen beetle and to understand the beetle you first need to understand hitler porsche began as an engineering consulting company in germany in the 1930s and one of its first contracts was from the fuhrer himself ferdinand porsche and his team were tasked with designing a reliable efficient family car for the german people that car would become the volkswagen type one later called the beetle only a handful of civilian beetles were made before production shifted to military transport vehicles and tanks after the war ferdinand porsche who had been an ss officer in the nazi party was arrested for war crimes he was never tried but spent almost two years imprisoned during this time his son fairy porsche kept the company in business ferry would soon design the first car to bear the porsche name the 356 based on the volkswagen beetle the 356 had a rear-mounted air-cooled four-cylinder but with a focus on performance early on the company did not have much of a following and it took them two years to make just 49 cars but with constant improvement and some important wins in racing the company began to sell more and more cars the 356 went through four different design series each having a little bit less in common with the beetle production spanned 18 years and 76 000 cars before the 356 was replaced by a larger more powerful and more comfortable car the 911 the 911 or 911 if you want to start an argument was an evolution of the 356 in the same way that that car was an evolution of the original beetle it is currently on its eighth generation and is approaching 60 years old it still has the rear engine still has two doors with the tiny back seats and it still has that distinctive shape and people still love it but why [Applause] porsche was never on my radar as a kid i didn't have the posters on my wall i didn't have any friends with rich dads who drove them i never really gave them much thought until i moved to california and started noticing them being driven by a lot of people i knew who are really into cars in fact almost everyone who is deep into cars loves porsche i've seen jay leno a dozen times at carmeats around la and the only car i've ever seen him in twice is this one a 1963 porsche 356 carrera 2. this has really exploded in the last couple of years a lot of people have flocked to the brand driving up prices of new cars old cars water-cooled air-cooled freaking tractors there are a lot of car companies beloved by groups of people it's usually pretty clear what attracts people to them excellent designs beautiful lines sharp edges owners who got dropped on their heads when they were babies but there's something elusive about porsche the cars don't look that good they don't have that much power so why do people love them you might be asking matt if you're trying to find out why people love porsha why don't you just ask well i did i found some people who really liked the car and i asked them why and i got answers that were not entirely helpful you put on a lot of different brands of sneakers but we all decide on hey that's my i love the adidas i love the nike that was my experience with a porsche 911. i like spike nice guy good podcast but this is not a very helpful answer it doesn't really tell me anything it's like if i asked you why you liked nike shoes and you said oh you know it's like cars some people like bmw and some like porsche let's keep asking people just beetles really and everyone loves the beatles in the stones right okay very poetic 911s are basically beetles and everyone likes the beetles and the stones also not super helpful if you really like the beatles and i want to know why i don't have to ask you i can just listen to the white album this is because the white album does not cost 140 000 but maybe i can borrow the white album this is a 1965 porsche 356c it is owned by my friend jared over at jnh classics he spent a long time fixing up this car and has lots of videos on his channel about it i asked to drive it so that i could understand the porsche mystique why this car well because jerry seinfeld perhaps the most famous porsche enthusiast of them all once said if you want to understand the porsche mystique the three cars you must drive are an early 911 a 356c and a volkswagen beetle the 356c particularly if you want to feel what are these guys about if that's the question you want answered drive that car this car really surprised me especially the way it drives i like the way it looks not so much the body style but the interior is great it has that mid-1960s feel before cars got too plasticky and too busy but it's done really well i love the dash love the headliner the seats are just comfortable enough and it sounds pretty great it's like a really well engineered tractor this is not too surprising since porsche engineered some of those too the really surprising part is the handling older cars often feel loose or a little tired and that makes me lose confidence in the steering and this does feel a little bit floaty and loose but it actually inspires confidence i don't feel like i need to be constantly correcting it the suspension is way better than it has any right to be for a car this old it feels planted in the corners but soft over the bumps almost like active suspension like it knows what's coming up i really like this car i want to own one of these cars what are they like 10 grand oh my never mind i did actually find one for 10 grand it has what real estate agents would call potential i also had a drive in a 912 the 912 is essentially an early 911 with a smaller engine it's slower but it handles a bit better because it has less weight hanging off the back this is not exactly an early 911 but it's pretty close i didn't love this car it felt more like a sports car than the 356 but it didn't put the same smile on my face that's not to say it's bad i had just driven the 356 and that's a hard act to follow compare it to literally any american car made in the same time frame and you're probably going to prefer the porsche like the 356 it has the confidence inspiring handling both of these cars are more than the sum of their parts more so than most cars you can tell that they are engineered systems not just engineered parts assembled into a system there's a big difference the 356c was the result of 18 years of improvement what happens after another 18 years what happens after another 50 years this is a 911 991.2 gt3 it has the same two-door four-seat layout it has the same engine in the back with the pistons on the side just like the early 911s just like the 356 just like the beetle this is what happens when you let the germans improve on the same thing for a lifetime it has 500 horsepower it goes 200 miles per hour it costs more than every vehicle i've ever owned combined it is very nice it is engaging in a way that few other cars are throttle response is incredible shifting is virtually instantaneous the handling feels like the car knows what you're thinking turn on sport mode and all of those things get better it will put a smile on your face and it might send you to jail with a smile on your face i didn't want to go to jail so i didn't push it but i previously had a chance to sit shotgun in a gt3 around a racetrack and it was bananas i towed what is essentially a race car to the track and this dude just drove his air-conditioned porsche in quiet luxury and then lapped the course seven seconds faster than me but the really impressive thing about this car is how good it is as a car it's comfortable reliable you can see out of it mostly the suspension is soft enough for everyday use in fact the guy who owns it drives this car all the time he had just gotten back from a road trip in it and this is one of the high performance variants you want a little more comfort and a little more back seat get a gts or a turbo s it's easy to make a car do one thing really well but it's really difficult to make a car that does everything really well there are so many compromises and when it comes to sports cars it's hard to imagine anyone navigating those compromises as well as porsche has done with this car i swear the suspension can see forward in time and you must think they have some sort of secret advanced suspension geometry but they don't in fact it's quite the opposite the 356 uses trailing arm front suspension at a time when most sports cars had switched to a dual wishbone suspension these days sports cars are mostly dual wishbone or double ball joint there is another common front suspension called mcpherson strut this is the low cost option used on all sorts of cheap front-wheel drive econobox cars and also almost all modern 911s it's not unheard of to use this on a sports car but it does seem like a bit of a flex give porsche suspension parts from a beetle or a golf and they will make it handle better than anything jaguar can come up with i started to understand why people like these cars and why they're so good i found a couple other porsche fans and asked them why they love their porsches this time with a little more understanding and some better questions i never appreciated these cars a kid because you could pay like seven grand for this and get 150 horsepower or for five thousand dollars you get 425 horsepower corvette when you're a teenager oh it's all about the horsepower you know but then then when you drive something like this it's really the whole driving experience you're really involved in the car these cars never had power steering or any of that stuff back in the day so everything had to be nicely weighted nicely balanced and the way it all comes together in sort of a symphony it's just remarkable to drive you know a lot of cars you get up to a hundred whoa whoa you're getting all this stuff you're getting aerodynamic lifting you're getting buffeting and you don't get any of that with this it's remarkable well they're usable practical very fast and their build quality is exceptional they tend to work and so they're very precisely made and they offer you know a level of performance and build quality and engagement that is not really available from a lot of other places do you think that's true going all the way back to the early cars in the 60s sure i think the further back you go the more different it is from regular cars if you drive a 1971 chevelle compared to a 1971 porsche one of those things is a box it's not the porsche air-cooled 911s especially are were built to last okay now we're getting somewhere the cars are a symphony every part working together to make a great product this is rare and difficult also good build quality this is true especially of the older cars there are a ton of old porsches still on the road this partly has to do with the fact that they hold their value so there's an incentive to keep your car on the road also half a century of improvement on the same thing this all leads to fantastic vehicles which in turn leads to passionate fans but the cars and the company are not without their flaws and the brand is not what you might call approachable porsche has never made affordable cars but it's gotten a lot worse in recent years even accounting for inflation they say that an entry-level porsche is a used porsche but even the used ones are out of reach to many people they're expensive especially now even the crappy ones a 356 has more in common with a beetle than a 911 and they're still a hundred thousand dollars people say stuff like oh you have to drive the turbo to really appreciate porsche neglecting to mention that a turbo costs more than a house in duluth and if you decide to scrape together enough money be sure to add another 20 or 30 grand for options everything is an option and they're all expensive these seats were fourteen thousand dollars six thousand dollar interiors five thousand dollar sound systems you will not spend a hundred and twenty three thousand dollars on this car not even close another barrier to buying a porsche is that if you buy one you might become a porsche driver to be clear i know a lot of great people who own and drive porsche cars but they do seem to have a disproportionately high number of insufferable douchebags behind the wheel especially young people if you're 20 and you own a porsche chances are pretty good that you were born on third base and walk around like you hit a triple this is so true that driving a porsche is a movie trope for someone you're supposed to hate even the protagonists driving them are kind of pompous about it porsche there is no substitute the community has its own language you say 911 but the specific generation digits are spelled out individually like 997 and then they have ts and s's and 4s's and gts's and gt3s and scs this one is a super i'm still not sure what carrera means but they seem to stick that on everything this is a 2011 911 997.1 gt3 rs 4.0 which is a name only the germans could come up with the community has a lot of really intense nerds if you have the fuchs wheels on your 1976 porsche they better have the shallow step between the spokes and the bolt pattern because if you try to pass off 1979 wheels you will hear about it like right now there is a cadre of porsche fans freaking out because i call this a 2011 911 997.1 gt3 rs 4.0 when it's actually a 2011 911 997.2 gt3 rs 4.0 when it comes to the specificity of obscure details porsche owners land somewhere between rainman and the germans this kind of weird passion for accurate details is not bad in and of itself but it often leads to gatekeeping you get this in other car subcultures some more than others but it is more pronounced in the porsche community so much so that there have been articles written on it however i have come to find out that there are a lot of really great people in the community more so than i previously thought and more so than a lot of other car subcultures several people took time to answer my questions on camera and a few let me drive their very nice cars just to help me understand them better you do get the whole spectrum of people driving porsches [Music] all right portia you convinced me i want one i would like to buy a 911 carrera gts in shark blue no why not i don't want to but you sell cars i have money i don't care that doesn't make any sense too bad turns out you can't just show up and buy these the wait times are passed a year on a lot of these trims and that's if you can get an allocation if you're a new porsche buyer looking to get a 911 carrera with a few options you might not even be able to get on the wait list there are stories all over the place about dealers asking for an extra twenty five thousand dollars for a spot on the list or potential buyers being told to purchase another porsche like a macan or perhaps a watch just to be able to maybe buy a 911 a year from now that red 991 i drove the dealership is trying to get the owner to sell it back for considerably more than the msrp of a new gt3 why even put this number there this is not a porsche thing ferrari has made a whole business out of this you have to own a few used ferraris say really nice things about them and attend their special events just to be on the list of people who can be allowed to buy a new ferrari a lot of rich people love this sort of stuff it gives them a warm fuzzy feeling of being better than you i don't love it and i'm not the only one you have no ferraris why i just never like dealing with the dealers i don't want to be told well you must buy two mandial before you can buy this here you have to buy two crappy cars before yes well the thing you know just buy the car you know and then the idea that i have it for two years then i take it back to get a certificate to prove that it's actually a ferrari that's twenty five i just get tired of that a lot of these games with dealer markups and allocations have to do with supply chain problems and a spike in demand over the last couple of years people have extra money parts are hard to get in the middle of all of this porsche is experiencing a lot of interest from new buyers i don't know where the company will go from here more exclusivity and higher prices maybe most car companies make two or three thousand dollars profit on each car for every car it sells ferrari makes on average a hundred thousand dollars profit ferrari is a brand more than a car and porsha has jumped into the deep end of this lifestyle branding blurring the lines between art and branded junk a four thousand dollar muffler shaped sound bar a 300 wireless charging piston a painted body stamping that costs more than a whole nissan versa they have a store on rodeo drive in beverly hills where they will sell you a 30 000 watch harley-davidson has done this for years they limit the sale of new bikes in order to keep prices up and sell branded everything so that if you're flush on cash but short on personality you can be a biker dude with one swipe of a credit card and now a certified car enthusiast this seems to me like a cynical business move from just the kind of mba who would drive a 911 in an 80s movie this sort of stuff is not directed at me not only because i don't own a porsche but also because i don't want to be these people this does not look appealing to me it does not elevate the brand to me and makes it seem less valuable but also somehow more expensive like name brand nfts which is also a thing they sell harley davidson overplayed their hand with this and they almost went out of business when people couldn't get one of their bikes they just went to other bikes on top of that they've been having a hard time making motorcycles for new riders because their brand is so inextricably associated with a dying generation the only harley that i would consider buying is the one that is wildly different from the rest of them also coincidentally the one engineered by porsche ferrari sells italian design sexy red paint wrapped around a beautiful engine in a fast car harley sells the image of bold individuality the open road and heart disease porsche sells engineering it's in their name it's right there wait is engineering the new hot thing am i super fast matt sexy and cool no i am not and i know a lot of other engineers and none of them are sexy or cool either the difference between ferrari and porsche is that ferrari is selling hand-built cars and exclusivity both of which require production to be lower than demand the difference between harley and porsche is that porsche makes really good vehicles but a vehicle goodness is relative to its cost 150 000 cayman gt4 rs might be a good car but at 250 000 it's probably not and right now nobody is getting these for anywhere near the msrp and yet in spite of all of this you can't deny that the cars are very very good all the reviews all the tests all the numbers say the same thing i used to own a first generation dodge viper gts acr it was a great car but it was not a very good car it was not even remotely a good car the brakes were comically small the interior plastic and cheap the suspension so stiff that it would transmit every road bump directly into my spine but it was great it always put a smile on my face it had amazing acceleration it would light up the rear tire sometimes when you weren't even expecting it it was a poster on the wall of a generation it was great in the same way that alexander was great it was a sledgehammer great but only at a few things defeating and enslaving and doing wicked burnouts creating an empire so fragile that it only lasted a few years porsche does not make great cars they make good cars very good cars they are not reckless egomaniacs blasting through the opposition and failing to plan for the future the 356 is not a gt40 or a 250 gto or a cobra it is not great at one thing to the detriment of everything else it is really good at all the things it needs to be good at to be a good sports car the 911 the successor to the 356 a better car the g series the 964 the 993 996 997 991 and 992 were all better than the last incrementally improved to be very good cars great cars have fundamental flaws a window you can't see out of a door you can't get past or the tendency to spin out for no reason some people would say that the rear engine of a 911 is a flaw extra weight hanging off the back giving you a bad weight distribution while the corvette has a perfect 50 50 split but if you know anything about performance cars and race cars you should know that 50 50 is not perfect especially for a rear-wheel drive car when you're braking your weight balance shifts forward so if you start with it in the rear you get more evenly loaded under braking and so you slow down faster when accelerating you want more weight on the driven tires so it's better to start with a slightly rear weight bias even in an all-wheel drive car you never have enough power to always break the tires loose but you do always have enough brakes to lock them up so it's still an advantage to have the weight biased to the rear the rear engine also gives extra space for rear seats and yes these are very small but it does make the car a more practical car great cars have tragic flaws porsche's flaws aren't tragic they're not even flaws they're trade-offs to make the car better at being a car people like to look at numbers horsepower 0-60 nurburgring times but cars have to be more than individual numbers you can do a four second quarter mile but it doesn't matter if there's nowhere to put the groceries cars are more than the sum of their parts some cars more than others this i think is where porsche really stands out car designs have different forces cost style performance safety comfort some companies balance these poorly some companies prioritize one aspect to a fault engineering is the process of balancing requirements a well-engineered car has the best balance of all these things porsche does not have a great engineering team inside a big company porsche is a great engineering company they do two things better than anyone else they engineer the whole car together as a system and then they continuously improve it they have always been good at making a sports car that is also usable as an actual car they didn't limit the usability to chase lap times but now they've improved so much that they have variants that will obliterate the lap times of cars that are built to only set lap times a few weeks ago my friend robin shoot won the pikes peak hill climb in a prototype race car second place was david donner and a nearly stock 911 turbo s on street tires beating out all sorts of purpose-built race cars unbelievable for the past 25 years much of my life has revolved around cars my job my hobbies my side gigs auto racing off-road electric combustion motorcycles all over the map most of the map anyway i never really got into cars like ferraris and lamborghinis and that's really just because they're not for me why would i spend three hundred thousand dollars on a car when i could spend three thousand dollars on a hundred cars but what about porsche what about that 911 gts in shark blue would i spend 142 thousand dollars on this car if that's all it took to actually buy it i don't know that's a lot of money i guess that depends on how good i do at my job in the future my job being to make videos and to convince you to hit that subscribe button and maybe that thumbs up wink wink nudge nudge but it doesn't matter right now because i can't get one anyway and that's the real problem with porsche they're not making enough porsches i don't know if that will change in the coming years but i can say with some confidence that i know what porsche will be doing in five or ten years they will be making a two-door four-seat sports car that kind of looks like a fat guy sat on a beetle and it will be a very good car it used to be that you had to impress people to get people to watch your show now you just have to impress the algorithm so do me a favor hit that subscribe button all hail the algorithm [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: SuperfastMatt

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Length: 23min 39sec (1419 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 18 2022