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GTV6 vs 911

Well, it should be pointed out for those of you who think that 0-60 
times matter that that web page cleverly omitted the decade known as 
the 1970s in their 911 list.  Other people made most of the points 
that I would have made, and did so much more politely than I would 
have.  But I have to ask--would you feel safe knowing that your wife 
was out there driving a 911?  I don't know your wife, but I'm 
inclined to think that putting non-Porschephiles in 911s falls under 
the same category as putting 16-yr-old boys in RWD pickup trucks w/ 
manual gearboxes in the rain.  I also have to argue with Tess' 
assessment of the interior.  I know the GTV6 is no ergonomic 
masterpiece, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to fly any airplane 
with a 911 interior (I won't even comment on Tess' analogy for the 
GTV6 interior).  The *new* ones work pretty well, but older 911 
interiors are a disaster.  Every time I see one at a car show, I have 
to comment on my amazement that they could come up with that mess 
considering that their factory is within a few hundred miles of all 
the world leaders in economics.  I mean, the steering wheel blocks 
the view of important gauges, and it seems to me that a bigass analog 
clock takes up some space there too, much like the GTV6...  But I can 
reach all the switches and knobs in my GTV6.  The GTV6 has a real 
center console, so I don't have to reach down to a pseudo center 
console on the frickin floor to operate certain controls.  Nor do I 
have to lean across my passenger to reach others.  And call me crazy, 
but I prefer the (later) GTV6 gearchange to that of a 911 (maybe I 
just don't like oddly-bent footlong gearshifts).  Of course, you 
should refuse your wife a 911 for purely moral reasons.  That kind of 
weight distribution is fine for a Beetle or a Skoda, but I laugh at 
least as hard at the notion of a sports car with an engine hanging 
out its ass as I do at the size of the cylinders in the last version 
of that wannabe GTV6 that Porsche built for entirely too long.  The 
GTV6 has usable back seats, too.  I spent an hour in the back of a 
'83 911 once, and even though I was 12 years old and <5' tall, my 
head was in contact with the backlight the whole time.  Seriously, if 
your wife is the kind of person who might come to enjoy driving a 
sports car everyday, a GTV6 is much more likely to induce that 
reaction than a 911, which is much more likely to scare her away from 
driving altogether.  And no Alfa should have to share a garage with 
an ass-engined swing-axle muscle car (that's all it is, a muscle car 
with brakes, the handling is a farce), or any swing-axle beast for 
that matter, or any semi-trailing arm beast that behaves like a 
swing-axle beast--Pat Braden, I hope your Bimmers sleep outside! 
Ahemm, I digress...where was I?  Uhh.... I thought I had something 
else to contribute that hadn't been said already.  <head scratch> 
Well, when the gearbox fails in your Alfa, at least you have the 
peace of mind that the flawed synchros were licensed from a company 
that had nothing to do with the design of the rest of the car. 
Hahahahaha.

Happy motoring,
Joe Elliott

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