There's a video coming next week featuring the new
991 GT3
. I've had a right-hand-drive UK car since last Friday and now have a far better understanding of how it works in this country and how usable it might be as an only car. We'll explore that subject further in the film.
Yes, we're talking about this again
But it's the gearbox that is still leaving me scratching my head. I can't remember the last time a single component so dominated the discussion surrounding a machine, nor shaped the driving experience itself.
This brings me, circuitously, to the first rule of headlines and magazine covers. Back in the old days at Haymarket we were taught that you could only criticise such things if you could offer a better alternative. So the GT3's two-pedal layout really only deserves criticism if we can identify a better solution - the key factor being that it must be integrate perfectly with the rest of the package.
Now in the case of the Aston V12 Vantage S, I can make that call with confidence. The car is a belter, but it would be better with a manual gearbox. It just would.
Excited for this video much?
But the GT3 is more nuanced than that. In principle, according to wind-bags like me the car should be fitted with a manual, or at least offered with one as an option. That should be the Porsche philosophy, but the balance sheet doesn't allow such things, so we have to accept that paddles sell. Then you drive the 991 GT3 on road and on track and much as you miss the ability to smooth shifts and demonstrate your heel 'n toe technique, it quickly dawns on you that trying to shift manually with an engine that literally races from 7,000 to 9,000rpm and has seven very closely stacked gear ratios to mask a mid-range that isn't quite as potent as some might like for use on the Queen's highway would prove, well, problematic. As in I don't think it would end well.
The 991's engine is a sublime response to the industry obsession with turbocharging. I loved it last year when I first drove it, but somehow it seems even more engaging on these shores. It's everything you could want from a high-performance motor: tractable but with so much spite over the final 1,000rpm that you can't help but visit that place the whole time.
Well it's a divisive issue, that's for sure!
And when you do pull that paddle at 8,900rpm and the exhaust sends a great crack of noise into the surrounding area, you can't help but admit that it wouldn't be as immediate, or bluntly exciting if you couldn't just pull a paddle and grin at the waaaaaaaaaap-pop-waaaaaaaap. Because that high-rpm jolt is the very essence of this engine - a sensation of living right on the edge of what is mechanically possible and, because of those seven ratios, always dropping straight back into the mental zone of the power-band.
And so it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that the 991's motor would not be as exciting if it was accessed via a stick.
As a flat-earther I find it hard to admit such a thing, and I also find it quite strange to find myself digesting that point and then reaching the conclusion that we're actually being offered a choice of extreme atmospheric engine characteristics, or a properly interactive gearshift. But not both; because both almost certainly wouldn't work for road use.
Ah 911 GB, good to have you back
What emerges is actually a very simple choice: motor, or 'box? This is problematic because I rank changing gear as one of my preferred pastimes (yep, just read that and don't feel entirely comfortable with it), but, hell, I need that engine.
It's simply the best motor I've experienced in years. To preclude living with that dreamy engine for the love of a third pedal might just be the great auto-existential question of modern times. And it's one to which, for the moment, the transmission does not form the basis of the answer.
I'd take the engine. I can't believe I'm saying that, but I'd take the engine.
And also buy an NSX to enjoy a real gearchange?
