Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

It's here

So things aren’t going well at all in San Francisco, as the coronavirus have finally reach this tiny peninsula of ours. As of current count there’s nine total cases, and if trends are to go by in other countries (Italy’s Lombardy region went from outbreak to complete lockdown in the span of a week), things are going to get worst before any corner is turned.

Meanwhile, I still have to go to school today, even though one of the guidances for preventing coronavirus contraction is social distancing. I guess packed lecture halls filled with students are quite okay. Hey, you only die once, am I right?

And I’m not saying we should shut down schools for a few weeks just because I would benefit from not having to physically go to work. Taking all classes online is no easy task, and I happen to work at the department that would be in charge of sorting it out and troubleshooting any potential issues. Should the campus close down, I’m not going to be chilling at home watching car videos on Youtube or taking the GT3 out for a spin - there will still be plenty of work to do remotely.

I did take the 911 out this past weekend for its weekly exercise, after performing a quick repair of a small plastic piece on the front underside. It’s been over two weeks since I took the car out for an extended drive, so on Sunday I had a fun and glorious four-hour stint covering nearly 200 miles in and around the San Mateo mountains. As I’ve said before: these high performance sports cars tend to be more reliable when they are driven regularly, getting the internals and oily bits up to operating temperature. It’s the ones that sit for months on end that skew towards having problems.

The long stint in the GT3 left me surprisingly exhausted, which is a reminder that my fitness is not what it used to be and needs to be. I think more cardio and going back to running is needed to gain back some of the lost endurance. That’s going to be tough to do in the interim with the coronavirus going around. It’s probably best for the rest of this month to stay home as much as possible.

Let’s see how the rest of this week develops.

Safety recall on the 911

A few days ago, I received a safety recall notice mailer from Porsche Cars North America. My initial reaction was one of mild annoyance, because my favored dealership is some 40 miles away, and having to take my 911 there out of schedule would be a pain in the butt. That’s right, I was more concerned about logistics, rather than what the recall was about. Because I knew that whatever it was, I would not be out of pocket for any costs, and honestly I had some curiosity on exactly what Porsche - the vaunted German automaker - can actually screw up on.

Turns out, it was much to do with nothing: the safety recall was about insufficient documentation in the owner’s manual, particularly the section pertaining to the child safety restraint system - think car seats for kids. Inside the same envelope was the remedy/fix: a new supplement to the manual, printed on solid paper stock, with the freshly printed smell you’d expect. I’m sure to Porsche all of this is but a drop in the bucket cost-wise, but from my decidedly plebeian perspective, spending hundreds of thousands just to print and send out a supplement seems a bit excessive.

Especially considering, and I’m confident in saying this, no GT car owner has ever used the child restraint system in their specialized 911. These are thoroughbred sports cars of the highest order, not a vehicle to ferry the babies around (that would be a Porsche Macan, naturally). Not to say we shouldn’t: I would wholeheartedly salute the GT 911 owner who actually uses a child car-seat regularly. People who uses their cars rather than letting them sit in a heated garage are the true heroes of car enthusiasm, like this guy who takes his GT 911 to the snow.

Now that I think about it, when it’s time for me to have progeny and god-willing I still have my GT3, I’d totally put a child-seat in the front passenger space to shuttle the baby around. It’s never too early to get a kid started on the path to passion for Porsche and cars in general.

Exercising the car

I get my exercise in on the weekends, though it’s not just my own body that receives a bit of work out. Like clockwork, my 911 gets taken out for a drive, rain or shine. Much like how the human body needs movement to stay agile and fit, a car’s mechanicals need to get up to operating temperature periodically to be at its best condition. High-strung sports cars especially aren’t meant to sit stationary for months on end; that’s usually the reason for random gremlins to pop-up. Those cars will be reliable so long as it gets driven.

Besides, I bought the Porsche to drive, and not just a pretty object to admire.

Of course, I don’t commute with the 911, so the only chance to take it for a spin is on the weekends. During the warm Summer months it’s a rather joy to do so, and often times I’d spend both days blasting on the local mountain roads. The darker Autumn and Winter months, however, presents a challenge. My particular 911 is not very fun when the temperatures are low and the skies are raining: the Michelin Cup 2 tires, while magical in fair conditions, are nearly dangerous to drive on in the cold and damp. Indeed, track-focused tires are as good as bald tires if you can’t get heat into them, especially so on sets with considerable mileage (like mine).

So during this time of the year, I only take the 911 out long enough for the mechanicals to get appropriately warm, and for the battery to get recharged. Maybe push the engine out to its redline once or twice to get the secondary cam-profiles involved. Other than that, there isn’t much more to do, especially when it’s raining. Try as I might to find openings in the weather radar, some weekends it’s simply impossible. The 911 still needs to be driven, so I take it as smoothly and gingerly as possible; a quick loop on the local highways does the trick, then it’s parked again for another week.

I won’t have to be so careful once the Cup 2 tires are worn down and I switch to a set of tires that’s friendlier in wet conditions, though the Cup 2s have still got at least 5,000 miles of life left, perhaps more, so I’ll have to suffer through this rainy season with continued trepidation. Unlike my brother who tossed away a perfectly good set of all-season tries for a set of summer tires, I don’t have quite that sort of financial resources. Needless to say, a set of tires for a 911 GT3 is multiples in terms of costs compared to my brother’s Audi A3.

Next year, though; next year we’ll have some fun in the rain.

I got lucky this past weekend with avoiding the rainy weather.

I got declined for the Apple Card!?

I obviously don’t need yet another credit card. I happily bank with Chase - except for their savings products which pay absolutely peanuts in interest rate, and currently have their line of credit cards with excellent rewards. I mean, 5% back on Amazon with the Amazon Prime Card! How on earth is Chase making money from me - someone who always pay the full amount on time - on that particular card is beyond me.

But I am a huge fanboy of Apple products, (typing this on my brand new 15-inch Macbook Pro, and getting distracted in the process by twitter on the iPhone X next to it) so when Apple announced a credit card product of their very own - replete with the usual Apple design flare - I was completely onboard. In a landscape full of metal-backed cards, Apple went and produced the Apple Card out of titanium, which sounds awesome. Of course, the entire thing is colored in white.

As far as perks and rewards go, the Apple Card is wholly inadequate. Zero sign-up bonus to speak of, and you only get the industry-typical 3% back when you shop with Apple. Using the actual physical card only nets 1% cash back, which is very pedestrian.

A credit card made out of titanium, though!

So like a good Apple shill, I applied for the Apple Card as soon as the sign-up was available to the general public (I was not amongst the lucky few to get an early invite). To my utter surprise: I got declined! I guess even a near 800 credit score means nothing these days. To Apple’s - and Goldman Sach’s - credit, they do send you an email explaining the rejection, and for me it was because my debt to income ratio was too high(?)

At first I thought this can’t be possible: the only solid chunk of debt I have is the car note on the GT3, and that only amounts to around $750 a month; I comfortably make more than that. Then I realized it was because the loan for the GT3 is uncollateralized; Goldman is treating it as simply a huge lump of debt, something of an albatross that needs to be paid off as soon as possible. Obviously, in reality that’s not structurally true at all.

This probably means it’s not only the Apple Card: I likely won’t be able to apply for any other credit card until the GT3 is entirely paid off. Which is just as well, because like I said, I don’t need any more credit cards.

Highway rest stops in the U.S. are solidly disappointing compared to those in Asia. Where’s the restaurants? Where’s the amenities?

The early morning drives

Living in a dense city full of cars and traffic, it’s mighty difficult to find space to truly stretch the legs of my beloved sports car. Even the mountain roads gets congested on the weekends; due to hikers, revelers of nature, and people trying to get to the Pacific Ocean. It only takes one not so cooperative driver refusing to pull over for your obviously faster car to ruin what is suppose to be a joyful drive (there always is one). Of course, I can be a dick about it and pass them crossing the double yellow line, but I’m the type to follow rules of the road absolutely, and also I don’t want to reinforce the stereotype of the asshole (junior) supercar owner.

A good strategy to avoid the crowd and traffic is to get up super early and drive the same mountain roads whilst everyone else is still soundly asleep. It’s an especially serene time as well, perfect opportunity for a bit of meditation and reflecting. Driving on city streets and highways with nary another car on the road, backdropped with the subtle haze of glow from the approaching sun dancing with the darkness of the receding night, is something immensely therapeutic. I’d get up before dawn, so that by the time I’m finished with a few hours of driving, I’m greeted with the day’s sunrise (weather permitting, naturally; can’t be sure with San Francisco’s notorious fog).

Well, at least that was what I did with my previous cars. Due to unique circumstances with the 911 GT3, its let’s call it permanent location is not inside the house (we don’t have a garage, sadly). Rather, the GT3 is parked some distance away at a different location, necessitating a 20 minute drive to access. Therefore, to perform an early morning blast on the mountains, I have to add at least 20 minutes on top of the already ungodly hour I’d need to wake up. In my twenties perhaps this would be doable (as if I could afford a Porsche in my twenties), but nowadays with me paying close attention to the quality of sleep, it’s not an enticing proposition.

Just one of the many idiosyncratic realities of owning an expensive car in a crowded urban city.

I met the first owner of my GT3!

A bit of a surprise treat this past weekend: I met the very first owner of my 911 GT3.

It was a surprise because the chance meeting was completely unsolicited, and the car meet I attended on Saturday wasn’t even a Porsche-specific event. While cars costing into the six-figures aren’t exactly common, a plain GT3 is not in the realm of limited-edition Ferraris, where a car’s provenance is immensely important and therefore previous owners are well documented. Porsches produces thousands of 911s each year, so I held zero expectations of being able to meet the first owner of my particular GT3.

It’s a small world indeed.

I knew something was strange when I saw a dude taking a keen look at my GT3 when there was more interesting metal parked in the same lot (a GT3 of the RS variety, for instance). After ascertaining that it was me who owns the car, the guy followed up with a few questions pertaining to the GT3’s origins, and it matched up with what he had speculated: this was the very car he used to own. He had bought it from a Colorado dealership back in April of 2015, and after 8,000 or so miles the GT3 was then sold to a local dealership, putting that money towards a McLaren 570S.

There’s a second owner of my GT3 sandwiched between me and the guy I met on Saturday, and after this serendipity I have some hopes of meeting that person as well. It turns out the Porsche enthusiast community in Northern California is rather small.

A normal person reading this may think it ridiculous that there’s people like me who gets excited about meeting the previous owners of our cars; I get it, but a 911 GT3 is not an ordinary car. It was quite informative and special to chat with the first owner on why he configured the car as he did: picking Sapphire Blue Metallic to stand out in a sea of white and silver colored 911s, and forgoing the option for lightweight buckets because it would’ve delayed delivery for six months (one sympathizes). Super geeky details made interesting because the ordering process for a GT3 - or any 911 for that matter - is intricate and specialized. As the third owner, I never got to experience that process, so it was fun to hear the original owner tell his story.

I received some constructive information, too: the GT3 upon delivery was flat-bedded to a shop for paint protection film, so the paint underneath ought to be absolutely pristine. After the film application, the entire car – including the wheels – received ceramic coating; great news for me because I can stop waxing the car during my wash routine. Lastly, the first owner confirmed he took the car to the track regularly, which doesn’t bother me at all because first that’s what the GT3 is developed for, and secondly these cars are paradoxically more prone to break when it doesn’t get driven hard.

911 GT3s are driver’s car in the truest sense, and I’m glad my car have received the proper amounts of exercise since it’s left Zuffenhausen. Meeting the original owner and learning about his chapter with car gave me more confidence and admiration for my GT3, and I’m grateful for this happy coincidence.

The green lizard was a popular attraction.

718 Cayman GT4: atmospheric 4.0-litre!

It would appear that natural-aspiration is not quite dead just yet.

Porsche a few days ago announced a new generation of the Cayman GT4 and Boxster Spyder, the top, most sporting models of their respective range. The biggest revelation from the news is the return of the atmospheric motor to the 718 chassis. Not only that, it’s also a return of the flat-six engine to the Cayman/Boxster twin, with this generation of cars having switched entirely to the much-maligned turbocharged flat-four.

Too bad it’ll cost you six figures to get back the good stuff.

Nevertheless, in this day and age of turbocharged this and electrified that, any new sports car that’s still got an atmospheric beating heart is worth celebrating. The day may arrive when the Porsche GT product line will only feature turbocharged engines and or hybrid drivetrain, but for the time being the unencumbered sounds of natural-aspiration remains ever so sweet. Porsche flat-sixes that revs to the sky is precisely why I bought a 911 GT3.

A not insignificant amount of enthusiasts was hoping Porsche would simply transplant the 4.0-litre unit serving duty in the GT3 and GT3RS into the new GT4 and Spyder, though it was always a bit of a fool’s wish. It’s difficult to see how Porsche could’ve done it without hugely inflating the already hefty purchase price, and more importantly, not encroach on the GT3’s performance capabilities. It seems the Cayman will forever be neutered in service of the 911 big brother.

Indeed, this new 4.0-litre flat-six engine is not of the vaunted 4.0-liter badged 911s of prior: it’s a heavily reworked motor based on the turbocharged 3.0-litre currently serving duty in the 911. The enlarged engine, sans turbochargers, makes 420 horsepower and will spin to an 8,000 rpm redline; all very exciting stats in a vacuum, but compared to the supremely characterful, motorsport-derived 4.0-litre in the 911 GT3, an engine that goes to 9,000rpm, it’s honestly a bit pedestrian.

Relativity is a funny thing.

So I’m sure there’s some disappointment going around, though we should really detach and look at the overall picture: the atmospheric flat-six is back in the 718 chassis – arguably the purest sports car platform Porsche produces. Yes, it’s a great shame one must spend top money to avoid the charmless turbo four; though for a company that will charge you hundreds just to get the seatbelts in a different color, it’s fairly on brand, isn’t it?

An even more delicious prospect: placing this new 4.0-litre engine of the GT4 in a variant of the 992, perhaps a 911 T. That would give me something to ponder about in relation to my GT3…