997S Coupe

Massively competent, refined and elegant with crushing performance.

The 997S is a truly elegant and punchy sports car, beautiful finish and form, lovely and comfortable interior a big improvement over the 996 model. Supportive leather seats, leather dash and door cards with no weird 996 "ovoid" design cues or "elephant hide" plastic much beloved of other manufacturers in evidence.

Quiet and refined engine with an intoxicating note once you push it. As easy and unengaging to drive as an A4 or Golf when bimbling about in traffic but with a split personality, use some of the performance which is instantly available and you are in no doubt that this is a serious performance car, the torque is superb and you can short shift through the gears and drop it into sixth at speeds as low as 25 mph at which the car is perfectly happy and tractable. Switchable suspension is simply superb. Gearbox is sublime and the cars roadholding and handling is truly outstanding.

The downsides? Fuel economy is not brilliant unless you drive it like a 2CV, the exhaust note is virtually absent unless you are gulping petrol above 4 thousand revs and the car doesn't feel anywhere near as much of an event to drive as my old 3.2 Carrera (1987), however the car does everything better than the old air cooled models but with apparently so little effort that you don't actually feel as if it is as fast till you look at the speedometer !! To have the sort of fun in a 997 that you can in a 3.2 you would have to shatter the law rather than just push it.

My car has Michelins fitted and the tyre noise is rather intrusive at anything above 30 mph.

These cars are great value, I was an unshakeable air cooled man and I'd still pick one of those for a Sunday afternoon B road blast where ultimate velocity isn't the whole point but in a real world, everyday car contest there simply is no contest and the 997 as I said at the start does everything better.

If you can exercise some right foot restraint and afford the fuel go and buy one, you will not regret it.
Northway Porsche supplied my car and Ray is very knowledgeable and a pleasure to deal with.

I can get 36 mpg on the motorway at about 60 and around 27 on a mixed run but this takes effort. 24 is about average as long as you don't hit jams and don't use the performance too much. What do you expect from a 355 bhp Porsche though ?

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