sgroer

I’ll start by saying I am immensely grateful to even have one of these cars in the garage. It is a marvel of engineering in so many ways.

This is my 10th Porsche GT car. With all of the tracking and driving I did with the first 9, I had one unscheduled repair - a thermostat went out in my 991.1 RS. Never even a stray squeak or rattle.

My 992 GT3 has around 2000 miles on it so far. In the 6 weeks I’ve owned it, I’ve discovered the brakes suck when you drive the car hard, the passenger window spontaneously cracked, there are two interior rattles that drive me crazy and the cupholder is stuck in the dash and kind of just flops around if you are able to extract it by opening the glove box and pushing it out from behind.

I am starting to wonder if this car is going to have more issues like this pop up. I don’t understand how Porsche didn’t know the windows would crack with all the testing they did. There are so many reports on this forum as well as various Facebook groups about this issue. Surely they had some of this pop up during testing, and in the real world, lightweight glass all around is likely not worth the minimal weight savings.

The brake performance is inexcusable.Yes we are dealing with new environmental regulations but the bar was set so high with the 991 brakes, any customer who drives the car hard will have their expectations shattered with the stock 992 pads. It shouldn’t be up to me to troubleshoot and solve juddering and excessive dust on my brand new car.

The rattles and cupholder issue are indicative of poor quality control - likely as a function of the global issues we face today.

The car’s performance (stock braking excluded) is spectacular. Every time I drive it I am blown away. But I can’t help the feelings of disappointment about some of these issues. Porsche has set an impossibly high bar for themselves with previous models. For the first time I find myself wondering if this car will be a headache to own.

ngamountains

Sgroer I’m not a GT3 owner, but have been keeping up with your excellent reporting re: your car and especially the brake issue. I just took delivery of a 2022 Spyder, and share your general hesitation. Though I’ve not been impacted (yet, knock on wood), there was a stop sale of Spyder/GT4 in 2021 MY for quality issues with connecting rods, and now of late, multiple apparent instances of engine failure due to grenading oil pumps. Long-term ownership confidence this does not inspire.

ShakeNBake

Sucks! hopefully the dealers who are desperate for business and miffed at the mothership right now will be very happy to diagnose vs the typical “sorry we can’t reproduce that issue”.

jfr0317

I wonder if the build date of these cars may have anything to do with the presence or lack thereof of some of the reported issues. My car was originally scheduled for assembly prior to the August vacation plant shutdown but was pushed to the week the plant reopened. I have over 2800 miles on my car, around 1000 of which were "spirited" driving (at least by my standards) in the Arkansas Ozark Mountains. I have not had any issues with my PCCB brakes nor with window cracking, interior rattles, etc.

I am categorically not saying others are not having the reported issues. I am just throwing out my experiences to add another data point.

NSD991

Thanks for your honest feedback.

Maverick787

Sean, suck man sorry to hear. Agree testing should have revealed some of the issues, but I think what’s we’re seeing is Covid “hang over” and the lack of focus on process. It’s happening all over in the work place people are distracted, and a rush to move cars issues occur unfortunately. Look at the PDK issues with the Turbo S not shifting correctly unresolved, and I think the 992.2’s will solve some of the issues. The key to see how Porsche responds to solve quickly, hold them accountable….doesn’t help when some are paying 100k over. In the end it will sort out, but the brake issues are a joke.

raymort

Dang!

FLACHT6_pilot

The brake issue in particular is really disappointing. I know California is a big market, but should the other 90%+ of global cars suffer because of brake lining regulations for one state!?! I understand the new regulations are tougher, but they should have worked harder to find an acceptable solution without a performance trade off.

Regarding glass, there appears to be more issues with the 992 than I can remember on any other GT model. The window breakage Sgroer and others have seen is an unexpected headache, and I personally have see significant (small area 3" x 3") distortion on the windshield of a 992 GT3 in my area.

Maybe some items are slipping through the COVID cracks that would normally be caught by QC.

I absolutely love my new 992, and I'm impressed by the general design quality of the car, but recognize there are some noticeable irritations/issues with the first group of cars. It doesn't seem to be hurting values at all though!

ac199

@sgroer: esp given your long history w/GT cars, has your dealer and/or PCNA been helpful in addressing these issues?

Seems like your PCCB judder was a serious safety concern and should have been solved by PCNA under warranty, not by an out-of-pocket solution w/unknown later implications if use of last-gen pads is blamed for any subsequent brake issues

sgroer

I simply don’t have the time nor desire to chase this down with PCNA while my car sits in the garage with crappy brakes - life is short. I have deep enough connections inside PCNA that I was able to get confirmation that the rotors are unchanged. Therefore I am comfortable running the 991 pads.

now that the dust has settled (get it? Haha) I do plan to use my what little influence I have to see what can be done to address the issue on a larger scale.

3-Pedals

Unfortunately newer isnt always better. In the quest of trying to make things bigger and and technologically more advanced, we seemed to have added mass. Trying to reduce that mass means lighter materials. Lighter materials arent always better.

That cup holder is a design disaster to be honest. Very disappointed that Germans couldnt come up with a way to position the damn cup holders so that they dont get in the way of the shifting AND can fit 2 drinks. Corvette seems to be doing just fine and Ford’s GT350s fit a 6 speed manual just perfectly next to the cup holders. I have almost 100,000 miles combined in my ZR1 + GT350, both manuals, and never ever my wrist or elbow hits the water bottle I always keep with me.

Rattles I am afraid are part of ball joints. My RS has developed them after about 2,000 miles and they have gotten worse and worse the next 7,000 miles. At 9,000 miles now it makes more noises driving over road joints and such than my Mustang and Corvette. When I go over bridges and such where there is a sudden steep bump, but a small one, I feel every part of the front dash, gauge cluster, vents, rattle. Its a very sad feeling. Would I have ever thought that my $58,900 Ford Mustang built in USA in a union shop would have had less rattles than my $250,000 german sports car? Never, not in a million years. Mind you, mustang has almost 75,000 miles and is driven year around. It is parked outside 24/7/365, and sees salt snow etc. I bet if RS was parked outside in winter, that leather dash would crumble.

But I dont see these rattles as a “quality issue”. I see this as a reality check. All that handling and performance come at the cost of these things. You want sub 7 min nurburgring performance? You need 18 solid connections to the chassis. Result is this. No interior will survive that kind of rigid chassis. The new GT3 is no different than the old RS, and some more. Now it has double wishbone suspension so the old car’s softer struts are gone making this interior falling apart even more likely.

I think 991.2 GT3 was the perfect balance of everyday enjoyment of a sports car that was live able and didnt have any of these issues. The ride quality of a 991.2 GT3 vs my RS is day and night. I am always bouncing in my RS whereas the GT3 just soaks up everything.

The glass breaking is most likely due to wind buffeting. Was it the big window or the small triangle one?

ac199

Very reasonable/activist approach
One's time is far more valuable than nominal $

ac199

Appreciate your sharing your data points
Helps greatly to hear both the positives as well as the negatives in the sample set
My GT3 arrives this week
Am hopeful that the payoff for the later build is higher quality

3-Pedals

I think some of you have unrealistic expectations and/or do not understand the difference between QC issues vs design decisions.

- The glass cracking : wind buffeting putting stresses on gorilla glass and eventually too much flex cracks the glass. Same was a common issue pretty much every RS model. Design issue.

- Rattles inside : suspension design not cooperating with the interior panels/tolerances as well as switches, tabs, etc. Again, design issue.

- The cup holder : Design issue again. It is entirely due to its location and NVH.

- Brakes : Design issue. Bad choice of compound in pads.

NONE of these issues are QC issues. They will eventually show up in every car IF and only IF each car is subjected to same use as sgroer (i.e hard braking, driving over 100 mph with windows down, driving on roads that arent super smooth, etc). If you read his review thread, you can see he drives pretty aggressively (in a good way lol) on some roads with lots of dips and uneven surfaces and etc. He also mentions the amount of wind buffeting being much worse than 991 car above 120 mph. So you subject your 992 GT3 to these conditions, you are most likely to experience these issues. I dont think he got a “bad car” here.

You need to manage your own expectations. It is what it is. If any of you is an engineer, you’ll understand where I am coming from. There is nothing Porsche can do to address these as every one of them were conscious design decisions that they “had to” make.

sgroer

I concur with some of your thoughts however the glass breakage in the side windows is not related to buffeting.

These are the windows in the doors and they are generally cracking in the top corner. I’m sure associated with the lightweight glass since we don’t see this in any other 992’s.

There is a separate thread on it.