A question raised while negotiating 25 miles of stop-and-go commuter traffic: If the 911 is considered to be an uncompromised "driver's" car, owned by people serious about the sports car experience, then why is it so easy to drive? And why has its day-to-day interaction with us been so uncomplicated, so similar in its simple nature to the lowliest hatchback?
Shouldn't such cars have to earn their provenance by being difficult, twitchy and temperamental? To be considered a "real" sports car, shouldn't it balk out of the starting gate on cold mornings and gnash its steel teeth at the thought of stalled traffic on a hot day? Shouldn't it cause little aches and pains from untidy ergonomics? And forget about being easy on the wallet. Real driver's cars can't possibly be had for well under a hundred grand, they're service nightmares, and the only way they'd get 20 mpg would be on the world's longest downhill.
Shouldn't such cars have styling that can pop the buttons off the blouses of buxom bystanders? Mustn't they screech for attention with every tire-smoking launch?
Every owner of a 911 knows that all those things need not be part of the equation, and they certainly aren't part of the return from driving the world's best all-around sports car.
Our long-term C4S is putting on the mileage like it was running Le Mans. Already it has 9,524 miles on the clock, most accrued by this admittedly greedy editor. I even used it for vacation, stuffing an unlikely amount of stuff into it for a 2-week lark in the Sierra Nevada mountains (plus two doggies; the luggage shelf provided by folding down the two rear seatbacks made an ideal viewpoint for my two West Highland Whites.)
Spending so much time in the car has turned me from user to quasi-owner. I notice things now which went unnoticed in the first blush of meeting the all-wheel-drive coupe. Most of them are good. The central command module is very easy to use, the graphics very readable. (I'm still not sure about the Nav system, as we're still waiting for the DVDs required for it to work.) The sound system is excellent. Developed by Bose, it's the first stereo in a 911 than can deal with the ambient noise, even when the car is on pace. Porsche charges $800 for the Bose High End Sound Package, but it's well worth the pop. I also like having a choice between the dash-mounted single CD slot and trunk-located six-disc changer.