General 981 ramblings

[John Whalley]

My 4 year old 981 2.7 had done 15,000 miles with its lady owner when I bought it a few months ago from Bristol Porsche.  It is a bit short of the ridiculously overpriced Porsche extras, but those it has are almost exactly what I would have chosen.  Heated seats - essential.  Sports steering wheel - also essential.  19in "S" wheels - a good choice.  Leather seats - also good.  Sat Nav - missing, but not needed - by me.  Sound system - first upgrade - adequate - this is a noisy car, with quite a bit of tyre and gear noise, so little point in heavy spending to enhance Beethoven and Wagner.  My son David says I should have bought a car with the PDK auto box.  But it is costly, weighs over 30kg more and seems only of benefit in heavy traffic or extreme non-legal road speeds.  Many reviewers say that Porsche manual gearboxes are better than any.  Have they tried a new MX5 Mazda box?  Just as good, if not better.  My old BMW E82, with Amsoil Extreme Gear in its ZF box, was at least as good.  The Porsche box, with its long pair of cables running all the way to the back of the car, is good but not brilliant.

David and I found the gear ratios slightly awkward at the Anglesey track, running out of revs at 7600 in 2nd and 3rd at points where there was not enough road left to usefully change up, but enough to leave you hovering around the rev limiter for a second or 2.  What really surprised us was how little fuel this thing used.  On road trips with my wife on board it will do about 42mpg.  With me alone, up to about 38mpg.  On track, it needed no topping during its 150 miles around Anglesey - almost seemed better than the E82 diesel.

The headlights on this 981 need help.  They are the standard halogens, almost as poor as on my now sold Westfield S2000.  The Zenons on the 987 I had briefly were superb -  a ridiculously costly extra, (my leaning back driving style meant there was not enough room inside.  The 981 is better in that regard, much prettier and it also has a longer wheelbase and wider track front and rear).  I hope that the Nighteye LEDs I have ordered will do the trick, but they need Canbus error resistor decoders.  Will they work?  We'll see.