Fair enough. I can respect that this Edmunds editor prefers the Cayman and feels it's a better drivers car. However, opinions vary. According to this, the Motortrend staff (who absolutely adore the 911) feel that the C7 would place above the Cayman in their recent best drivers car competition.

http://www.motortrend.com/features/p...car_aftermath/

Exactly, MT feel differently than Edmunds. But I never take Edmunds seriously, even if they think the Corvette is better than car X -- it doesn't count for me. This review felt biased from the start, and their comparisons have been inconsistent.

Now, I do feel that you can't review a car by saying "well, if the Cayman had 911 power, what's what?" The mags do the same thing, too (i.e. put the Z07 package tires on the LFA). You review the car that's given to you. That's it. Edmunds felt that the Cayman is a better car. Fine. MT feels that the C7 is superior to the Cayman. OK.

The Cayman is a great car and the interior is a nice place to be. I can't bring myself to ever consider a Porsche. It may drive better, but the heart wants what it wants.

But some people want a deep explanation than what you've offered. And "testing" cars the same day, back to back, allows for more fidelity in comparing subjective assessments.

Ah but see one is.

You feel the feedback through the wheel. It is immeasurable, and different tastes for everyone.

Drive a BRZ and a Z07 on a track, through a mean, wide turn, and the Z07 wants to dislocate your head, while the BRZ will not. That is because of a measurable force each car generates.

The Z07 FEELS better(more fun?) taking that corner because it IS measurably better, while the BRZ is measurably worse. For one to argue that they thought the BRZ was generating more G's would be a bold face lieg

As for your other post, PROVE that these plethora of performance car owners almost never go WOT and mearely purchase these cars as garage candy, not caring about a performance car's performance. Until you do, that's simply your opinion, nothing more nothing less, so stop touting it as fact.

My opinion would in fact be the opposite, between the unlimited number of racing videos on YouTube, my personal experience at the drag strip, and just watching cars in daily driving.

Right..."feel" is subjective. There is also a SOTP interaction, a hands-on interaction, a visual interaction, and a sound interaction that all contribute to overall "feel", and they are all subjective, not objective assessments. They can be individually assessed, and they can be packaged together to establish a synergistic derived assessment.

The subjective assessment of "fun" and/or "best driver's car" is not all about how much lateral g a car can achieve while turning.


My opinion about people spending far more of their driving time at something less than WOT has been formed by many years of observation, and conversation with others. It also makes logical sense.

And I never said people who don't street race or who don't take their cars to the track, or who don't attempt to spend as much of their driving time at WOT, purchased their cars to be "garage candy". Do you think it is one or the other; track/drag strip/drive like you stole it car, or "garage candy" car??? Nor did I say that none of these people cared about performance. Many do care about performance. It's just that once a certain level of personally determined performance is achieved, more performance than that is not the deciding factor in what car to buy, as other considerations certainly exert an influence on their decision at that point.

Nah..not really relevant.
Takahashi, as well as a good portion of the 'car guys' from his generation are simply a product of the 'Porsche marketing generation'.
They grew up reading about how awesome P cars were, and thus they continue the cycle.
He thought the car was 'special' as soon as he got into it, based upon his own bias, whether he consciously did so or not.
Even so, I don't think it would have mattered who reviewed the 2 cars.
The conclusions to these 'road tests' were scripted months in advance. They knew who was going to win these comparisons before they even got into the cars. Edmunds isn't stupid.

By any objective measure in the test, the C7 is the better sports car.
Subjectively (bias), the reviewer gave the win to the *lesser* car.
Blah blah.. same story, nothing really to see here.
The war will have to be won with marketing. Until then, these results will be the norm, as predictable as the sun rising in the East.

Exactly.. That is where marketing takes over. People that want status and to feel like they are special buy P cars. People that don't want to be walked around on the track buy something else.

That's a nice opinion, but it certainly isn't fact.
I (and I am sure many others) DO associate 'fun' with 'lateral g'. In fact, I would say most people that buy performance cars with the purpose of actually driving them the way they were made to be driven put a fair amount of emphasis on that very point. Why buy a track car that you can't toss around a track?

It's like this;

There's are YouTube video's of two celebrities dancing. One is Miley Cyrus twerking like a Capuchin monkey on Meth. The other is Natalie Portman ballet dancing in Black Swan.

Not everyone is going to agree which one they like best. Live with it. ;-)

Right, it's all a giant cabal.

And obviously, many people don't purchase sports cars based on solely objective numbers.

The reviewer didn't "give" anything to the Cayman; the car earned it in his opinion. Another way to look at it is the Vette, being the *lesser* car subjectively, lost the test.

Nice post.

And people care about build quality, design, functionality, steering feel, steering response, brake feel, throttle feel, shifter feel, and the relative balance between these controls, switchology location and feel, chassis feel, safety (including roll over protection), looks, sight lines from the driver's seat, seat feel, number of seats, all weather use, roof rack systems, AWD, PDK, and the ability to customize through a very lengthy options list and Porsche Exclusive.

I think you guys are reading way too much into this.
Bottom line: the reviewer was a pussy and scared of a car that can actually over power it´s driven wheels, which plain and simply won´t happen in a Cockster or a Caveman.

Sure it's a fact. The Best Driver's Car determination is not comprised of just one assessment...lateral g. They assess many other things, both objective and subjective. Therefore it isn't "...all about how much lateral g a car can achieve while turning". Pretty straight forward.

I didn't say lateral g wasn't fun. I said determining the Best Driver's Car wasn't all about how much lateral g a car can achieve while turning.

On public roads, the key to a great driver's car is not the size of the lateral g number the car can produce, it's how the car delivers the lateral g experience.

I don't know of any car produced today that if in normal working order can't be "tossed around" if taken to the track.

Additionally, the 911 and the Boxster/Cayman are not "track cars".

Exactly. People (MANY people) buy sports cars to look cool and feel special.
The car 'earned' it in his 'opinion'.. so basically he had a subjective preference for the Cayman, correct? That 'subjective preference' could have been influenced by any number of reasons. However, marketing and branding have a HUGE influence on buyers, and their perception of quality and status - more so than which switch gear feels better , or some such other BS these 'journalists' come up with. I have driven P cars, they aren't nearly as 'special' as some people make them out to be if you go in with an open mind.

And if you want to equate a marketing campaign with a 'cabal' , great.
Not very accurate, but whatever.

This reminds me again why I prefer Car and Driver to other mags. They actually have a numerical rating system for various measures of the car (both objective and subjective) and they add up the points to determine a winner. Edmunds and Motortrend (and others) seem to pick winners based on an overall gut feel, which can sometimes be out of step with reality I think.

Nah..based on previous comparos by the same publisher, the C7 is the equal or better than the P cars in most of those categories. And controls, switchology, 'location and feel' BS..completely subjective and could vary 10 ways to Sunday if you asked 10 different people. - Completely useless as a comparison variable.
Number of seats? C'mon. Not that crap again. If you bring this up you don't belong in this forum, and you certainly shouldn't be shopping for a sports car.
Same with 'all weather use'. If you want to sound like a P car shill, bringing up 'snow performance' as a way to claim victory over another sports car is a great way to do it.

What is comes down to is this: fringe cases don't matter. They don't move charts, they don't sell cars, they are statistically useless in determining *anything* - the very definition of a fringe case!

People buy sports cars to go fast, and/or look cool. Arguing anything else is ridiculous, and intellectually dishonest.

There's no doubt that Porsche offers a much wider range of configuration options. They make you pay through the nose for them though.

Notch, let's say you're in my situation and you're looking at a (new) sports car with a maximum price of 60k. What would you buy? I'm honestly curious.

Nope. This was your quote:
Your assessment of 'fun' is not necessarily the same as mine...or anyone else's. There are quite a few people who DO equate 'fun' in a car to how well it corners.


Again, subjective. I'd rather take a corner in a sports car than a Caddy, even though the Caddy would probably make the corner more 'comfortable'. Not to mention that the number is what gives the largest impressions..all this touchy feeley crap about *how* it delivers lateral G... um ..ok whatever. I'll take the faster lap, and I'm pretty sure most others who buy a sports car to drive it would too.

Your definition of 'tossed around' is clearly different than mine.
And of course there is 'tossed around', and then there is *HOLY CR** I THINK MY KIDNEY JUST FLEW OUT OF MY RIB CAGE*

I agree with this statement wholeheartedly.
Someone should probably tell Porsche though.

That's nice and all, but where does the title say "Best driver's car?" In fact, I can understand what to take literally and what to brush off when I read that from car and driver. This was not that. This was a C7 vs Cayman S comparison test.

Last I checked, when the score is 10-2, the team with 10 wins. Ergo, ESPECIALLY when taking price into it, there is no reason to give the win to the cayman S... except as I said, this recent trend of "Oh but feel is most important so it's worth 9 points!"

And "the subjective assesment of fun...is not all about how much lateral G a car can achieve while turning" I find to be false, so again, stop touting your opinion as fact.

The feeling of reigning in a powerful car around a mean corner without killing myself, regardless of when or where, while the car attempts to eject me from the seat, is invigorating and addicting to say the least. I can only imagine what some of these super cars, glued to the pavement, must feel like.

The stupid irony is, no matter how wrong you are, you'll always think yourself right. I can drive a ZR1 and BRZ back to back and prefer the way the ZR1 drives with me piloting them, but if I post that on a BRZ/FRS forum every single response would be "You just dont get it." Every. Single. One. It doesnt matter that I truly enjoy the rough and tumble manhandling nature of the vette vs the precision nature of the BRZ. It doesnt mater that I can view them as separate but equal, hp aside. It doesn't matter, my opinion is somehow "wrong."