A few remarks.. I wonder why you ever drove a 911 in the first place.. you never use launch control, you never specced a sports exhaust.. never did more than 100mph.
you also complain about difference in price.. YES you compare a 140.000 dollar car with a 60.000 dollar car
then you compare a 170.000 dollar Taycan to a 60.000 dollar M3P.. have you even driven a Taycan ?
I’m not saying the M3 is a bad car but you can’t even compare it to a 992 4S..
you say performance is better in the M3 ? No quite.. but ofcourse.. the 911 starts where the M3 stops.. 0-200kph is 11 seconds in the 992 and 16 seconds in the M3P.. that’s like apples and oranges.
I’m happy you are happy with the M3P but you can’t really compare these cars.. it’s like saying a Ford Camry is better than a formula 1 car because the ford has a trunk and 4 seats.
Full disclosure : I come from owning Macan, then a panamera hybrid to owning a model S and now waiting on the delivery of a 992 ( and keeping the model S for now) I don’t get driving pleasure from an EV
I think I bought (actually leased) 911s for the same reasons as many. I found and find it an intoxicatingly beautiful car without being ostentatious and I thoroughly enjoyed driving one for sixteen years. I only ever had one car at a time and I drove my 911 every day. It was practical enough for me and I managed to fit an adult or two in the back in extreme emergencies. (It should come with a passenger extraction tool, as getting out seems more challenging even than getting in). My first two were stick shift which I very much enjoyed driving but with the 991's seven gears it seemed time to transition to the wonderful PDK.
As mentioned, I am an aggressive driver and used much of the 911's real world, highway level handling and performance to my advantage and no doubt it's incredibly agile handling saved me (and others) on more than one occasion! I never tracked them primarily because I leased all of them. That's my excuse, anyhow.
I never used launch control because I found the whole idea ridiculous, personally speaking. Sitting at a traffic light, revving an engine to 4,000 rpm? For what? Sports exhaust is similar for me: making more noise because one can? And without any performance benefit even. I detest Harleys because its all about them, not considering the discomfort to anyone in hearing distance. Many will disagree. I live in a quiet, sedate neighborhood and I had no interest in announcing my arrival any more than I already did.
I never did over 100mph or so. Because I didn't want the hassle or cost of speeding tickets, not to mention risking losing my license. It's that simple. And against all odds, and with the help of my Valentine, I haven't gotten a speeding ticket n at least ten years. There may be parts of the country where some roads are unmonitored but not in northern NJ or most anywhere I am likely to drive and one is always especially at risk if one is driving on unfamiliar roads.
I don't really complain about the price of a 911. I do note the disparity not so much of pricing as pricing structure: how Porsche charges extra for everything, and it has only gotten more absurd to my mind over the years; when the base price is around $110,000 and one still has to pay for options that are standard in a $25,000 car, I find it a bit insulting frankly. Luxury goods pricing is a fascinating subject. There is even a category called Veblen goods where demand actually increases as the price increases! The more it costs, the more it is desired.
You ask if I ever drove a Taycan? I didn't. I am uncomfortable demoing a car I do not intend to buy, even though Paul Miller Porsche would have been no doubt delighted to have me test it. I wasn't going to lease or buy an electric car that had a significantly shorter range (and fewer charging stations) than a Tesla, I wasn't going to pay close to $200,000 (or the lease equivalent) for a car, period, and especially one that would not significantly outperform an M3P on the highway. Again, I am not looking to track either. (Yes a Taycan 4S would have been a lot less - around $130K as I would spec it, but significantly lower performance than an M3P, again I'm talking highway, not track.)
But there was more, much more. I became fascinated and invested in what Tesla (and Musk) were doing: their entirely new, clean sheet approach to designing cars. Not to mention the reality that they are years ahead of their competition from what I understand, especially in battery technology (including cooling). And I am thrilled with the initial experience. Even how I can survive quite well without CarPlay!
Continuing to address your specific points: re performance I pointed out that real world performance up to the real world speed limit on public roads the M3P outperforms the 911 (991.2, practically speaking the 992 too, I think). If I want to leave a traffic light quickly, I have more practical acceleration. If I want to overtake someone on the highway under 100 mph, ditto. If I want to enter or exit a highway fast on a tight ramp, a 911 would be a tad better, but honestly I've never pushed either to the limit.
You quote 0-200 km/h acceleration figures. I'm sure you are right for the 992 and having gearing will always win out at high speed, but even the old figures for the M3P (0-200 km/h) was 14.1 sec, and that was before the more recent performance increase. Again, I tend to stay below 100 mph myself.
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Tesla Model 3 Performance Accelerates From 0-163 MPH: Video)
Finally, your suggestion that comparing an M3P with a 911 is like comparing a 'Ford Camry' (I think its a Toyota) with a Formula 1 car. Let me suggest a real world analogy. Last summer I bought a Rolex. Just a stainless DateJust. It was a bit of an emotional decision with a bit of a backstory concerning AP, but suffice it so say: the watch was beautiful and the Chinese-American sales lady rather persuasive! I got immersed in the watch including how Rolex is the only company that is totally vertically integrated: it makes everything including refining the steel and creating its own lubricants. How they had just replaced the movement after 18 years; that it was now accurate within two seconds a day which I confirmed. Actually it was initially accurate within a 2-3 seconds a week. A mechanical watch! This beautiful, sensual, heavy watch that has hardly changed in design in 50 years. And for a luxury watch both practical and fairly priced. And I though to myself: this is the Porsche of watches!
Around Christmas we went to Buenos Aires and just a week before an English chap was shot dead in front of his hotel. International news. How did they target him? By his watch! Coming out of international arrivals. They followed him and his family into BA. He fought off the thieves and they shot him. So I was going to wear my modest Rolex but the headlines screamed: don't wear any expensive jewelry or watches! So literally the day of the night flight I headed over to the Apple store and bought a silver aluminum Apple Watch 5 with a black rubber strap. $499 with cellular. It's amazing. When we got back from BA I took out my Rolex and went through the ritual of winding it and setting it up with as much precision as possible using my Apple Watch to do so. I put it on. It looked beautiful. It displayed the time though not as clearly as my AW, and it felt really, really heavy after wearing an AW for a week. A few minutes later I put back on my AW and haven't taken it off since. Every few weeks I go through the ritual of putting on the Rolex and immediately taking it off!
Apple reimagined the watch just as Tesla reimagined the car. For sure, Tesla still primarily gets you from A to B whereas the Apple Watch really does so very much more than any mechanical watch but this comparison really resonates with me as flawed as it may be and apologies to anyone that thinks I went on too long and have too much time on my hands!
One more observation: more and more people, say those sitting in business class on international flights, who could no doubt afford and probably already own multiple luxury watches, many who no doubt wore them as status signifiers (I plead guilty to that charge, too) are now wearing Apple watches. Women as much as men.