cgfen

It’s winter for much of the country and while hoping to forestall some of the “what-is-my-car-worth” threads, I thought we might chat about these two heavyweight P car magazines in the US domestic market.
Feel free to discuss what you will, but I’m going to limit my initial comments to the recent issues of both, (otherwise I’d go off on a rant about how I was ready to burn all copies of Excellence edited by the guy between Pete S and Greg H…………)

New model introductions - First thing I notice is that Panorama seems to give more balanced feedback on new model tests. Note the recent comparo’s of the 991 GTS. Both think it is an interesting car, but Pete S in Panorama, who could fall into the trap of being a PCNA “mouth-organ”, provides a very balanced review and actually speaks the heresy that the 997 GTS may have been more fully resolved. Ian Kuah, in Excellence provides a more glowing review, but his opinion still seems based on his experience and reality. The insert by SS(?) in the Kuah review seems like out-and-out over-enthusiastic shilling. I hope they don’t continue to use his input.

Special interest articles – Hard to compare right now, my brain is filled with the enormity of Panorama’s article on the SY 993 RSCS and GT2. But overall, I’d call them fairly equivalent. Excellence does too many 356 articles and not enough hot-rod 911 articles for my taste, but I recognize that is a personal preference. Kudo’s to Excellence for Trophy’s 993 / GT3 build series and Kudo’s to Panorama for printing Pete’s(?) article a while back about how the new GT3 sucks without a manual tranny.

Photography – Panorama wins hands down at this point. See the cover of the November issue as a prime example. The iphone photos by Jeff Z on the back page are pretty amazing considering the HW / SW involved. Just goes to show how important an eye is for composition.

Tech Section – Excellence winds hands down, even with the departure of Tony C. and Tom P. I hate that many of the Tech Question responses in Panorama point the questioner to get the issue resolved at the dealer / shop (see the current reply by JR about taking a 993 to a shop for an oil change) <There must be some liability reasons why magazines don’t encourage DIY>. I know that many of the tech editors have forgotten more about these cars than I will ever know, but the answers are often condescending IMO. But, anyone that writes a magazine with a tech question knowing they will likely get a response in print after 30 – 45 days, pretty much gets what they deserve.

I’m done for now

Craig

nine9six

Just my humble opinion, but I stopped subscribing to Excellence years ago, due to lack of objectivity and opinion rather than reality.
Blah, blah, blah, the same print from year to year... <yawn>
Again, just my opinion.

Cowhorn

I enjoy reading both magazines but prefer Panorama over Excellence at this point. I devour anything written by Pete Stout (sorry for the initial misspelling, Pete) or Ted West.

I liked very much how Pete Stout brought on Peter Verbeeck for some really well written pieces that melded science with opinion about Porsche's current direction.

I also appreciate the frankness of some of the articles that are in both magazines. Panorama is not afraid to say the newest car (or pig) may not be the best, and Excellence's lack of censorship in the Peter Falk interview ("People who own Panameras are not part of the Porsche tradition.") was refreshing.

The advice in the tech forums are either too simple (go to a shop) or too complicated (three pages on water pumps) to be helpful, but then I usually just browse those sections to pass the time while on the throne.

race911

Realistically, when you've got what you've got here/similar sites, absent the photography (and even that's a stretch) what's left to draw anyone to a printed magazine anymore?

ilko

For one, certain things I prefer to read in print. Like long articles written by a seasoned journalist who's had experience behind the wheel of many cars and can give me an unbiased opinion on what's good and what's not so good about the newest offering from Stuttgart. You won't see that exclusively on a web site. Maybe with the exception of a Chris Harris video but even that I consider more of an infotainment feature when you have all the tire shredding mixed in.

Or consider Fuchs wheel failures, issues with PCCBs, a technical overview of the 919, a 3-day test of the Sharkwerks GT3RS 4.1 compared to the 3.8 ad 4.0, all written by actual engineers. Or what it takes to import a 993 RS, written by one of the most knowledgeable Porsche aficionados out there. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, but I don't see these people posting such articles online...

mathfuzzy

Panorama has become relevant again under Pete Stout. This is my 23rd anniversary as a PCA member and I'd almost entirely stopped reading Pano. That pretty much all changed with Pete Stout. Conversely, I stopped subscribing to Excellence a couple of years ago. I found the writing and 'insights' amateurish, at best. And the values section was seemingly out of touch with the real market for years. Hopefully it's improved.

Incidentally, maybe because I travel extensively, I exclusively read Pano on my tablet and don't find that it takes anything away from the experience. Or if there is anything taken away, the convenience I gain by always having it with me far outweighs any negative.

Matt Lane

Really enjoying the refreshed Panorama - really, it's night and day.

I have to agree the tech section is pretty crappy and could use a boost. I think there is a middle ground between an exhaustive dissertation on a particular question and some of the 'pass the buck' answers we see. I love to read technical questions and their solutions. If you're not going to do it properly, why bother at all?

I don't think it would be that hard - you need an old school tech, and one for the newer cars.

Need to be able to write clearly and thoughtfully.

We're talking handful of questions a month, total. This is ripe for a refresh.

Cheers

Matt

race911

Go ahead, name that journalist. I don't really think I got the warm fuzzies from any of the guys in the '80s. Remember the angst over should you find a 2.4E or S, based on some imperceptible difference in torque curves? Or from the point you unlocked a short wheelbase 911 you were risking death. Figured out most of these guys were full of ____ about a month in on buying my '68 when I was 18 and near clueless. The guys in the club and the SCCA racers were the knowledge base, and set me straight.

Today? I guess I'm the outlier that doesn't give a rat's *** about the new cars. Where in the US can you drive faster than what a 356, 912 or 914 1.7 provides, absent small acceleration bursts?

Now onto the tech. Newsflash--we first saw Fuchs failures from curb hopping in the '80s when most of the wheels were about 10 years old. Ditto PCCBs literally months after the first 996 GT2s showed up on track. (Friend had one, and somehow talked his way into what I believe was the first comp'd full replacement.)

Salesmanship and tuners putting their product in front of the public will take place no matter the format.

Importing a 993RS? Was that the guy in TX who had a small business doing that ~15 years ago? I briefly considered a car he had, but went with the faux RS in '07.

It's great we have nice glossies, but since I was a kid in the mid-'70s I've usually looked at them as a launching point to get real answers.

rlme36

So panorama tech section on
Page 121 for feb states the 993 prefers 0w-40 to 15w-50 for an oil change. Clearly someone hasn't gotten the memo re the 993's correct oil weight.

Matt Lane

My point exactly - just not a robust technical section at all.

As to answer a few questions a month superficially, would almost be better to save the pages altogether.

M

Ed Hughes

Could it be that Excellence depends more on ad revenue to survive, so they take a more neutral /positivestance when reviewing?

Allen

To be perfectly honest...I unsubscribed to Excellence years ago because I really have no interest in the newer Porsche products. Like already mentioned...I can get anything I need online.

cgfen

What's left to draw anyone to a printed magazine anymore?

I prefer that old-fashioned interface of being able to easily flip pages back-n-forth.

I DO HATE some publications that use light text on light backgrounds.
As I grow a bit more mature, this aspect makes reading digital versions more appealing.

Agreed.
A few years ago I remember reading an answer to a readers question, "how do I symmetrically raise the rear of my Cayman if I don't have a lift?"

answer "it's impossible, take it to your local shop."

I cynically snorted beer through my nose as I looked at our Cayman on stands that I had just "symmetrically raised" using a piece of wood spanning between the coilover mounting points and a floor jack.

Is the Tech Section just a subset of the one on the PCA website?

Cheers

Craig

stout

Interesting to watch you cats zero in on the same thing(s) I see as ripe for improvement. We moved to address a lot quickly with the redesign, and have been working to improve other areas ever since. With limited time resources and legacy systems, the pace has been slower than we'd like.

As for the TQA section, Craig, it is a direct pull from the TQA section of pca.org, and is a digest meant to be shared with readers who enjoy technical reading. (The askers get their answers long before we print the TQAs.) It is only possible due to volunteers on PCA's National Technical Committee, so if you know better than they do, I encourage you to get involved and help 115,000 Porsche enthusiasts instead of moaning to 475 people in an obscure thread on a web forum that the editor may or may not spot? Of course, Rennlist relies on volunteers, too. It has major advantages in strength in numbers and real-world experience, but also a blind spot in that "everyone's an expert" with an equal voice—for better and worse. And that's cool. I love Rennlist for what it is.

But, then, this thread isn't titled Panorama VS Rennlist?

It's titled Excellence VS Panorama. To be honest, I'm thankful on one hand for this thread because its kind offers helpful feedback from real readers, and saddened on the other because Excellence is my "alma mater." I think the OP has it right: One does (and should do) some things better than the other—and I firmly believe it's good to have more than one dedicated U.S. Porsche magazine. (That Falk quote is amazing!)

As for magazines, Ken, I remember thinking their relevance was coming to an end in 2001-2003~. More than a decade later, many magazines are doing just fine, and are far more viable, financially, than websites or car video sites. They also tend to offer a greater separation of church and state, though there are certainly web entities that can be proud in bucking that statement (see Rennlist and Jalopnik and CHOC). Generally speaking, ad rates are far higher for print than they are for web. Will it always be this way? I'm not sure, but there's still a place for magazines in 2015 despite all predictions. The smart books cede what the web does better to focus on what they do better—and do it well.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for magazines I see is the death of the newsstand, a critical tool for finding new subscribers. The industry has yet to find a viable replacement.

Cheers,

pete

stout

One other quick note—Pete VB just went to Sweden for Panorama for a press intro and got to know Walter Röhrl while he was there. Then he went and drove a bunch of air-cooled 911s in the ice and snow. So this is what can happen when a Rennlister (and PCA member) is armed with a magazine's access and resources. Sky's the limit.

It all happened because Pete wrote a particularly fantastic post here on RL, and then did the hard work of taking up the pen. I have no doubt that the trip will benefit Panorama readers and Rennlisters alike, given who Pete met and what Pete learned over there. And that's what I call a win-win...