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      07-06-2015, 04:24 PM   #34
jphughan
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Drives: '16 Cayman GT4
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Austin, TX

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Never Convicted View Post
So, they'll offer a manual for guys paying $150k + who DON'T want the car to perform as well as it can. That would indeed be listening. To the lunatic fringe. But hey, not my circus, not my monkeys.
Not everyone values speed above all else even in performance cars. There are plenty of cars that are more expensive than other, faster options and offer feel/drama/theater/whatever you want to call it instead because for some people, how exciting a car is to drive is more important than how fast it is -- otherwise every performance car enthusiast with $100K to spend would buy a GT-R rather than basically anything else. Do you see everyone in that market doing that? I don't.

And if performance car enthusiasts were actually honest with themselves, the overwhelming majority of them would buy for feel rather than speed anyway. Most of the people talking about how much faster DCT is will likely never drive in a context where that last bit of performance really matters, never mind learn to drive well enough that the difference in transmission is really what prevents them from going faster, just as people who get ECU tunes and want their top speed limiter removed will likely never drive that fast anyway. I've never understood armchair racing.

Quote:
Originally Posted by visualguy View Post
The GT4 is a limited-production car. They're making 600... It's irrelevant. Also, they probably put a manual in it to differentiate it from the GT3.

Porsche will drop the manual too - it's just a matter of time. Manual sales are very low. Close to zero at the dealership where I bought mine...
The only consistent production number I've seen is 2500 units worldwide, not 600, but even that number hasn't been confirmed. Anyhow, the GT3 and GT3RS are also limited production cars, but I don't why that makes any of those cars irrelevant. And yes, Porsche may well have put a manual in the GT4 to differentiate it from the GT3, but what's wrong with that? It's still an acknowledgement that the manual transmission has a place even in performance cars. I'm also not arguing that the days of the manual transmission are numbered, just as the days of hydraulic steering and gas-powered engines are as well. That doesn't mean that any of those technologies won't be missed by at least some portion of the market.
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'16 Cayman GT4 (delivery pics, comparison to E92 M3 write-up)

Gone but not forgotten:
'11.75 M3 E92 Le Mans | Black Nov w/ Alum | 6MT (owned 5/2011 - 11/2015)

Last edited by jphughan; 07-06-2015 at 04:29 PM..