"Mine's better than yours" Wars update

How could I have overlooked this perennial favourite? The "My James Bond is the Best" Wars. Recently intensified because of Daniel Craig's contentious choice for the sixth 007. Some clever types have created a website in an attempt to scupper him before he's even had a chance.

http://www.craignotbond.com/

Check out their page on "Who's the best bond" (http://www.craignotbond.com/ConneryCraig.html). Their analysis is stupid and mindless. Everyone knows that Timothy Dalton was the best Bond :)

SatNav Update

In my first post I mentioned that I'd bought a TomTom ONE. I have just sold that on eBay (for £60 less than I paid for it, but hey) and replaced it with a TomTom GO 700. Not because the ONE wasn't good, because it was excellent, but because I need the European maps feature. I'm taking two Euro trips in the next three weeks, and I don't much fancy starting my holidays by getting lost and getting in to arguments.

TomTom make European maps available for other models like the ONE, in two different forms. Firstly, as a set of individual maps available on CD or via the web. These maps are loaded a country at a time, although I believe you can use the "Plus" maps that give you the "Major Roads of Europe" for other countries to navigate cross-continent. The second form is on an SD card that TomTom supply, which contains full maps for the whole of Europe and allows door-to-door planning. That, however, is £180 and added to the £250 I'd already spent on the TT1 was more than I could get a GO 700 for!

There are, I'm sure, plenty of ways to get European mapping working far more cheaply but I have enough complications in life that anything I can smooth over with a little extra cash is almost certainly worth it.

The GO 700 is certainly cool, I got it to map a route from my driveway to Verona airport in Italy. It took about 3 or 4 minutes and then out it popped. It's got a 2.5Gb hard disk rather than an SD card, and it sounds a lot like my MP3 player. It's slower than the ONE if it has to load information from the HD but I will look in to optimising that. The majority of the time it will be used in the UK so perhaps European stuff can be set aside or something.

Defending the 996

The big argument in the Porsche world (web forums and print magazines) is about whether the 996 is a better car than its predecessor, the 993. The 996 was a ground-up re-design of the 911 concept, with a newly designed modern water-cooled engine replacing the old air-cooled unit of the 993. The interior was updated to that of a modern car, replacing the 993's interior that was little changed from the original 911s in the 60s and 70s. The handling was tuned further so that even in inexperienced hands, the 996 was a fairly benign car - or as benign as a vehicle can be with quarter of a tonne of engine hanging out behind the back wheels, anyway. The new 996 was faster, quieter, more efficient, more exploitable and more modern than the car it replaced.

Ask any Porsche purist, though, and they are will give you a litany of reasons why the 996 will always be inferior to the 993. The 996 shape was considered a step backwards from that of the 993, flatter and less curvy. The famous round headlights were replaced by units with integrated side-lights and indicators, to create the disparagingly named "fried-egg" lights. That name was earned by the early indicator lenses being orange, and not being very elegant at all. The famous air-cooled noise and character has been lost. The new car's build quality has been criticsed for being built down to a price, and not up to the standard of the 993. There have been issues with the so-called "RMS" issue, which is a leaking oil seal. And last, but probably most importantly, the 996 shared many of its panels and components with the Boxster.

The big problem with this is not who is right or wrong, because 993 vs. 996 is just another version of the "mine's better than yours" wars. These wars take place in the press and on the web between different factions, and can be about anything you can think of. Usually it's a quasi-religious subject, with the loyal customers of two competing brands, marques, or products
locking horns and refusing to listen to reason. For two groups of Porsche owners to be doing it is slightly unusual, more so that it's two sub-groups of one model, the 911.

No, the problem is that 996 owners like me can start to get an inferiority complex. Personally I have no interest in the 993, I don't prefer the shape and the idea of running a ten year old car fills me with dread. But the gnawing feeling that you don't quite have the prettiest 911 available is a difficult one to shake. For me that can only lead in one direction: the 997. For me the 997 takes all of the best parts of the 996, and tweaks the styling just enough to create something truly gorgeous. Beautiful. Sexy. But is it worth a £40,000 premium over a 996? Well, that's the question...

Tyres

The car is currently wearing Pirelli P-Zero asymmetricos. These tyres are not actually reknowned for being good on Porsches. They're noisy, don't hold the road well, and (crucially for me) they slope away from the wheel rim, leaving it exposed to kerbs. I have already kerbed my wheels two or three times because of this, and now I tend to park much further away.

I plan to replace the tyres with Michelin Pilot Sports. The sizes for the front are 225/40/R18, rear 265/35/R18.

First post, and why we're here

This blog will be where I write about my new car, a 1999 Porsche 911 (model 996). I've tried posting on the Pistonheads Porsche forum a few times, but I think this will be a better place for my musings.

So, a quick rundown on the car first. As I said, it's a 1999 model 996, it's Basalt Black and has a dark grey leather interior. I think the interior colour is called "space grey", although I'm not certain. It's certainly a lot more pleasant than a nasty grey interior. It's got several interior touches that lift it above the normal 911. First is the aluminium rear console; that makes a real difference to the normal interior, which is trimmed in vinyl the same colour as the leather trim. It's also got an aluminium gear lever and handbrake, which are nice touches. Finally, it's got silver/white background on the dials; this makes a big difference, the black dials that come as standard look pretty boring. The standard interior of a 996 of this age is fairly uninteresting and a bit plasticky. The details on mine certainly improve it.

The exterior is in good condition, and I had it treated it with Permagard, a paint protection system based on polymers. It's great and helps keep the paintwork in great condition. You wouldn't believe the car's nearly 7 years old, other than the stone chips on the bonnet. The wheels are 18" cup/turbo style, and are in reasonable condition, although I've curbed the rear ones a bit. The tyres are Pirelli P-Zeroes, which have the nasty feature of sloping away from the wheels; that means that they're susceptible to kerbing. The tyres will need replacing before too long, and I'll be putting Michelin Pilot Sports on, which slopeout from the wheel, giving a little more protection. Once that's done the wheels themselves will be refurbed at about £50 per wheel.

I'm gradually tuning in to the car. I had some issues with the brakes early on, and had them checked out by a local independent Porsche garage. They were also checked by the OPC East London, and given a clean bill of health. I gave the car a few firm emergency stops, which seems to have cleaned the rust off of the backs of the discs. The car handles well, although it pulls to the left a bit. It probably needs to have the wheels balanced, which I'll need to get around to.

The car wasn't fitted with satnav when it was specced (in fact, it wasn't even fitted with a CD player!) so I've bought a TomTom One, which is very useful. Update DVDs aren't even available for the Porsche satnav any more, so people with pre-2002 models like mine are buggered anyway. That's one of the big reasons why I wouldn't spend £2000 on fitting satnav to a new Porsche.

Since buying the Porsche, I've been sizing up the new 997 model. I don't see much reason to go for one yet, although it is a fatnastically pretty car, but maybe in 18 months or so I could be very tempted.