Ben Przekop
Mercer Island, USA @benjaminprzekop Model 992 CARRERA S Year 2022 Acquired DECEMBER 2021
No car is perfect. There are always a few things we wish the designers and engineers had done a bit differently. From my four months of ownership and over 2,000 miles of driving my 992 I’ve put together a list of Likes and Dislikes, which I thought I would share with you this month.
At the top of the Likes list would be the things that matter most in a sports car: power, handling, braking, steering, suspension and the PDK transmission, all of which are simply fantastic. The bottom line is that this is the best driving Porsche I’ve ever owned. The icing on that performance cake is the Porsche Sports Exhaust, which sounds perfect to my ears. It’s throaty and robust with delightful deceleration burbles, and has the perfect level of loudness.
However, I have a love/hate relationship with the wide, five-dial dash layout behind the steering wheel, where the two outermost dials are partially blocked by the rim of the steering wheel. I love the fact Porsche has stayed true to the original and iconic 911 design, but on the other hand wonder if the time has come to finally adopt a more modern, three-pod layout similar to my 2019 Macan, where everything is easily visible through the steering wheel.
Speaking of the wheel, the controls for all the important functions are right there, including the Drive Mode’s rotary knob. In combination with the improved Porsche Voice Commands that come with the new Porsche Communication
Management (PCM) 6.0, you don’t have to take your hands off the wheel or your eyes off the road to do most things while driving. The standard wireless
Apple Carplay integration works very well, including full integration with Apple
Music, which sounds great over the
Bose stereo. I especially like the way the system alerts you when you receive a text message. With a single touch you can have it play the message for you, and then record and send a reply, meaning you can keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.
Porsche Connect is now included for the first three years, and includes realtime traffic for the enhanced sat-nav. Also much improved is how Porsche is providing continual updates of the PCM software. I regularly receive notices that maps or various other functions have been updated, which give me confidence that Porsche is taking digital content much more seriously than in previous years. Elsewhere, I love the way the excellent 18-way sport seats hug my body with the large and adjustable side bolsters during spirited cornering, yet they’re also comfortable on long trips.
So on balance, aside from a few minor nits, I have to give this car a rating of five stars as the world’s best everyday-usable sports car. No car is absolutely perfect, but to me this one comes awfully close, and I just love it – quirks and all!