colinisaac

To add a European perspective. Ruf and 9ff both fit variants of the Bilsteins. Manthey Motorsports (who run the factory backed cars in the VLN events at the Nurburgring and elsewhere) offer a custom KW v3 kit that is highly thought of and Parr (Race team and Porsche motorsport importer in the UK) do a setup with JRZs. Motons are supposedly disproportionately pricey and are generally not used other than on racing cars over here. Personally I still haven't clocked that much track time and will stay with stock until they need replacing. If that were today though, I would almost certainly go with KW.

Why do you want to remove the ceramic rotor? Any problems on the street or track? Not necessarliy a lot of use to you in the US, but some of the independent specialists over her in the UK offer replacement kits for ceramics which use the original PCCB calipers. It would perhaps be worth getting in touch - they may ship a solution to you or know of someone with a similar product on your side of the puddle. Try http://www.jzmachtech.com and http://www.parr-uk.co.uk for more info/contacts (no personal experience as I am still on the original stock parts, but both come very highly recommended by people in the PCGB). Colin

I am not planning to track mine until next year (so nothing first hand), but I have been looking into this so since nobody else has replied... Firstly on the cost of normal maintenance, while I stand to be corrected the running cost as a road car are so far proving to be rather less than a normal 964 (parents used to have one until this year), so I cannot imagine a 964RS will be any cheaper. However, track costs are a different matter as tyres and brakes are pricey items. Wear rates will differ depending upon how you drive on track but from what I can determine the cost on 'consumables' will average at least £500 (GBP) per day and likely a fair bit more depending upon what tyres you go with. I would recommend trying the PCGB forums for more specific answers (http://www.porscheclubgb.com) as there are plenty of people with lots of track day experience in GT3s (on European circuits) there. Colin

The problem is that even now, several months down the line, thinking about driving the toy causes me to start to smirk. However, having lived with it for a while I can now offer a broader perspective. Not least because I am far too familiar with your comments about third gear (pulls on to bypass - NO other cars - result! Hold second, hold third, into 4th, check speedo - realise that you go to jail for less over here - and slow right back down to 85, hook 6th, calm down). Euphoirc feeling of adrenaline, rebellion, guilt and having got away with it then follows. After you stop, the enormous stupidity of what you just did registers and you wonder if the fact that you don't care [because the road was clear] makes you a bad person... :-) The downsides for me are speed bumps (walking pace only), the occasional crunching noise as the front lip grounds out entering car parks, etc... and the fact that I have a very unhealthy addiction to the soundtrack when you put your foot down. I will be honest and say that I have had a couple of near misses when I simply didn't realise how much speed I had picked up - the brakes were thankfully just good enough. Remember that my last car had less than a third of the power - it is a dangerously steep curve, but I am getting there. The cornering, however, is utterly sublime. There is nothing more certain to provoke a stupid cheesy grin than throwing it round a roundabout at over 50..... :-) [though only the ones that you can see over naturally]. One day I will grow up, but I think it has been set back about a decade... Colin

I'll chip in here despite having never had a Boxter (I went with a 911 from a similar but more costly dilema against staying with BMWs, but I am familiar with Boxters and MX5s [they aren't called Miatas in Europe] from people I know who do own them). The bottom line is that the Porsche is (IMHO, and probably that of most people here) a better car, but you are never going to get near the pure value for money of the Mazda, which has a worldwide reputation as THE value for money 'drivers car'. Your real dilema is not so much one car or the other, but how prepared are you to swallow an entirely different level of cost of motoring. It isn't even a simple question of whether you can afford it, more whether you are prepared to swallow the (financially) poisoned pill in order to live the dream. My advice is to sit down and work out the cost of a year. If you buy a Boxster, run it for a year (fuel, servicing and above all depreciation) and then sell it, what is it going to cost you? (Cannot help you here - prices in the UK for pretty much everything automotive are well beyond what you guys pay, but try to think closer to worst case than ideal world). This number is essentially the cost of finding out whether it is worth it TO YOU. Nobody can tell you the right answer but yourself - this is actually a very personal dilema. If you can swallow that number as a pure and total financial loss against satisfying 30 years of automotive lust then you really should buy the Porsche. If it looks like too much money against other factors in your life where it could bring you more smiles - stay Miata. They are truely great cars and awesome value. If you are like me then you will buy the Boxter though : a waste of money is far easier (even if it is going to really hurt) for me than not knowing. Life is too short to waste time on regret, and there is no more painful regret than what might have been... Colin

And just to finish off the thread: http://www.renntech.org/forums/index.php?&...ew_item&CID=460 Picked it up today and have merrily drank a third of a tank of fuel already B) Well - I had to show a little restraint... Colin

I have just got back from a test drive at another dealer (over 50 miles away) where I put a deposit down on an August 04 GT3. Black with leather bucket seats with embossed crests, Xenon lights, 6300 miles. I'll be picking it up in about a week or so... Suffice to say: can't wait. :jump: Thanks to everyone for their thoughts, encouragement and advice. Colin

I did think about that. A lot. And given how much hassel I am having getting a 996 I am still considering it, but there are three obstacles I am struggling to get past. (i) I would have to wait over a year for it. (ii) It is a substantial slice of cash for something I haven't even seen in the metal, much less had a chance to drive. (iii) Given the second point, I am having serious trouble getting past the fact that a sensibly specified 997GT3 is the cost of a brand new Lexus (IS admittedly) _more_ than a 2 year old 996. It is a big gamble - active dampers, variable ratio steering and stability control are going to make it drive a whole lot different (the difference in steering feel for a normal 997 vs 996 is way more than I expected, though it is less tiring to drive as a consequence so who knows which will be better. Walter Rohr does, but he will be biased :) ). Also, the ground clearance looks so low it my be an issue driving in my speed hump riddled locale. Waiting until I could test one would mean August, so with the waiting list that would make it the end of Next year before I would have it on my drive... So I am leaning away from it, though feel free to try to change my mind. Colin

Sadly not :( I didn't want to buy sight unseen (shouldn't be an issue with a dealer car I guess, but I had only driven a car with the Comfort spec [i.e. basic Porsche sports seats] and I wanted to be sure that the buckets would fit me before committing to buy - reserving the car would have taken a £2k NON-Returnable deposit). However someone else did a couple of days later while I was considering it, so it was sold by Porsche UK before it was even prepared to be sent out to the dealership. Which leaves me in something of a quandry. I asked my dealer if they could get a car in from either the pipeline or another dealer (as I understand it, UK dealers are all owned by Porsche UK - they aren't independents like in the US). They said they would try and get something in and get back to me. That was over a month ago - I have had a little contact (there was another GT3 going through the pipe that they said they would try and get, but the Porsche car search on the web shows that car now at another dealer somewhat further out), but as far as I can tell they aren't going to make much effort unless I want to buy something without seeing it. This may well be how they operate over here, but I cannot say it leaves me as comfortable as I should be to spend what to me is a somewhat less than trival amount of money on a used car (over £60k). As far as I can tell, I need another dealer :( According to the Porsche search and autotrader, my best options are currently in the North: a 350 mile round trip just to look at a car. There is another possibility (less ideal spec, price and mileage, but not out of the question) in London - closer but possibly the most car hostile place for a test drive I could think of. I have been a bit tied up with other things of late, but hope to be getting my arse in gear to go long distance shopping soon... The thought does occur that if I hadn't fallen for the GT3 and opted for a brand new 997S I would have got it next month - at this rate less time than a used GT3. And I thought this would be quick and easy :( Colin

Today was a strange day. Until now the only Porsche I had driven was a 964. Today I test drove the 997S and the 996GT3 and it took all of my self control not to make the most expensive decision of my life so far on the spot... The 997 was a great car and I loved it, then I tried the GT3 (04 model) and frankly I still have the same stupid grin on my face 9 hours later and my old car (of over 9 years - a BMW) felt utterly wrong when I went to drive it home. I guess you guys already know how that feels. Anyway, before I decide whether or not to take the plunge I wanted to get some thoughts from those who (i) live with these cars day to day and (ii) don't have any vested interest in selling me anything. Firstly Ceramic brakes - good idea or not. The car that I am thinking of buying has these and my main consideration is : if I wear them out/kill them/damage them then they seem to be pricey items to replace. Does anyone know exactly how much a pair of PCCB disks cost (in the UK), and whether I am even likely to wear them out and need to replace them (car has 12000mi so far. I do plan occasional light track use in the future but not a huge amount of it, and I only cover at most 5k miles a year of normal driving. Car is from a Porsche UK dealer). If I did need to replace them, how practical an option would it be to replace with steel? Or are they really as great as my dealer would have me believe, likely to last me another umpteen thousand miles and I am just being paranoid? Next ground clearance - how much of a consideration. Seemed okay to me when out driving, but it does look very low on the road. Does anyone have any torrid stories about "traffic calming" features or car parks with GT3s? Can you safely clear any size of sleeping policemen (for non-UK readers who may not be familiar, these are large humps that local councils install on roads to encourage parents to buy SUVs for the school run and create extra business for the shock absorber business) without worrying about anything? Is there anything to worry about with multi-story car parks or anything like that? Finally - how are they to live with? This would be my only car (though I could borrow something with 4 doors on exceptional circumstances) but I don't drive to get to work (foot, train and underground) so we are talking about every other day use at most - generally short hops with occasional road trips. A more specific question is how far can you drive in the bucket seats comfortably? I have slight reservations about them, and my dealer has said they will swap them for conventional sports seats if it is a deal breaker. Is that something I should consider or does everything think they are fine for driving a couple of hundred miles at a stretch... Just trying to play devils advocate with myself - what does everyone think. Is a GT3 a day to day car or should I be looking more directly at the 997S? Thanks for any comments. Colin :rolleyes: