Boredom warning: most readers will want to ignore this post.
I've had the 850R for around 10 years now, it's various travails have been recorded in this thread.
It's got a great deal of charm and I suspect I'll never part from it, if we put all else to one side I've put more money into it than Elon Musk has in SpaceX so I'll wait and see if mid nineties turbo-performance cars go the same way as the air-cooled 911. I suspect they won't.
Anyway - when I bought the 850R I flew to Aberdeen to get it, I purchased a cheap sat-nav in the airport to direct me the ~600 miles home, which it did admirably.
That lasted a while then simply stopped turning on, but by that point telephones all featured sophisticated sat-nav and so I swapped the mount for a phone gripper and carried on following the prompts to my destination.
When I bought the 911 I therefore replicated this - charger in the fag lighter socket, phone gripper on the dash. But from the off, I was unhappy with it.
Now part of this is probably that the 911 has brought out levels of OCD obsession rarely seen this side of a numbers-matching 1960's train set, complete with papier-mâché landscape, but it prompted the purchase of a Becker Cascade Pro, a built in unit that banished the trailing wires and vent - mounted phone gripper.
This was much better, I was happy with the interior and finished tidying up a few bits and bobs.
Now one thing about the Becker is that whilst it does have a small screen that features an arrow that indicates your way it's not really that which you use to navigate - it gives clear verbal instructions which you follow without taking your eyes off the road, it demands a bit more focus from the driver and suits the character of the car.
This has combined with a strong desire to stick to A and B roads, a desire I never really had in the 850R - which excels on the motorway, all ~650Nm of torque available instantly - and this is where it gets slightly more interesting for me as for the first time in my life I'm looking at maps and planning journeys. Always before I've chucked the postcode of my destination in the phone and away we go, now I'm making a mental note of how to get where I want to go via the road less travelled - I found myself using street view to recognise when I needed to turn when plotting a route earlier (first right after the second railway bridge) to get to a cars and coffee event at Precision Porsche tomorrow morning.
Which brings me back to the key difference between the cars, the 850 vs. the 911.
The 911 makes every journey an event that you want to plan, that you want to ensure features the roads that are the most suited to it's character. I drove the A272 pretty much end to end the other day - it was glorious. I don't think I ever went over 80mph and that was brief, but you don't need to. I just wish it didn't keep costing me so much money.
Boredom warning: most readers will want to ignore this post.
I've had the 850R for around 10 years now, it's various travails have been recorded in this thread.
It's got a great deal of charm and I suspect I'll never part from it, if we put all else to one side I've put more money into it than Elon Musk has in SpaceX so I'll wait and see if mid nineties turbo-performance cars go the same way as the air-cooled 911. I suspect they won't.
Anyway - when I bought the 850R I flew to Aberdeen to get it, I purchased a cheap sat-nav in the airport to direct me the ~600 miles home, which it did admirably.
That lasted a while then simply stopped turning on, but by that point telephones all featured sophisticated sat-nav and so I swapped the mount for a phone gripper and carried on following the prompts to my destination.
When I bought the 911 I therefore replicated this - charger in the fag lighter socket, phone gripper on the dash. But from the off, I was unhappy with it.
Now part of this is probably that the 911 has brought out levels of OCD obsession rarely seen this side of a numbers-matching 1960's train set, complete with papier-mâché landscape, but it prompted the purchase of a Becker Cascade Pro, a built in unit that banished the trailing wires and vent - mounted phone gripper.
This was much better, I was happy with the interior and finished tidying up a few bits and bobs.
Now one thing about the Becker is that whilst it does have a small screen that features an arrow that indicates your way it's not really that which you use to navigate - it gives clear verbal instructions which you follow without taking your eyes off the road, it demands a bit more focus from the driver and suits the character of the car.
This has combined with a strong desire to stick to A and B roads, a desire I never really had in the 850R - which excels on the motorway, all ~650Nm of torque available instantly - and this is where it gets slightly more interesting for me as for the first time in my life I'm looking at maps and planning journeys. Always before I've chucked the postcode of my destination in the phone and away we go, now I'm making a mental note of how to get where I want to go via the road less travelled - I found myself using street view to recognise when I needed to turn when plotting a route earlier (first right after the second railway bridge) to get to a cars and coffee event at Precision Porsche tomorrow morning.
Which brings me back to the key difference between the cars, the 850 vs. the 911.
The 911 makes every journey an event that you want to plan, that you want to ensure features the roads that are the most suited to it's character. I drove the A272 pretty much end to end the other day - it was glorious. I don't think I ever went over 80mph and that was brief, but you don't need to. I just wish it didn't keep costing me so much money.
Anyway, you can't say I didn't warn you - TL:DR.