Porsche Part II: The Panamera

The second car that I was put into was the Panamera 4S: Porsche's new four-door sedan.  For those of you who have never seen the Pananmera, imagine a 911 that has been cut in half and lengthened in the same way that a Lincoln Towncar is cut in half and lengthened to be turned into a limo.

After stepping out of the Cayenne and into the Panamera I found myself in familiar surroundings.  The Cayenne and Panamera share almost identical interiors.  At first I thought that the seats in the Panamera were too hard and wouldn't be comfortable on long journeys, but after a few minutes and few curves I appreciated the the stability they provide and couldn't notice any discomfort.

The Panamera that I was driving had air-conditioned seats.  Like heated seats, when you only read about the feature, it is easy to imaging that you could do without it and would be happier not having spent the $500 they cost; after all you have gone your whole life with regular seats, how great could seat heating really be?  But as anyone who has actually experienced heated seats will attest to, they are far better than you could ever imagine.  The same experience applies to air-conditioned seats.  Just as nobody today would buy a car without air conditioning, in the future, nobody will buy a car without air conditioned seats. Since driving the Panamera, I have promised myself that I will not buy any car that does not have air conditioned seats.  In the summer, they are a godsend.  

I have always hated going to malls or big-box stores in the summer because I know that by the time I get back to my car the seats will be hot enough to melt boron.  But, no more.  With air conditioned seats we will all be more civilized and drive more safely.  Suffering second degree burns is distracting, especially while driving and if car seats are no longer searing us, then we can focus on the actual business of driving.

One disappointing thing about the Panamera is the steering.  It isn't that the car doesn't handle, like all Porsches it handles brilliantly; it is the feel of the steering.  When driving the 911, Boxster, and Cayman you can feel every detail of the road through the steering wheel and you know, just from the wheel, exactly how much grip the tires have.  The steering on the Panamera, like the Cayenne, is much more numb.  The car will still do everything that you ask of it, but because the steering is much less informative, it doesn't give you the same confidence in the car's abilities.

Overall, the Panamera is a great car.  I can see why Porsche built it.  For all its brilliance, the 911, even with the tiny back seats, just doesn't work as a family car.  But, I don't have children, therefore  I would still pick the 911.

Porsche Driving School Part I

Back in July, I was lucky enough to be invited to a Porsche driving school event.  Now, when they say "driving school event" what they mean is a tent where the marketing department can collect your email address and phone number, but because I knew they would have free drinks and I love cars, I gladly took a day off of work to join in.  At the Porsche event, I was given the keys to the new Cayenne, the Panamera, the 911, and the Boxster spider and told to take them for a few laps around the track. I was put into the Cayenne first.

Even though I don't wish to ever own a car as ugly as the Cayenne, I was eager to try it out.  My wife drives a Honda CRV; that car has never impressed me.  Its seats are too narrow for my shoulders and because the steering wheel cannot be moved closer to me, the only way to comfortably reach the wheel is to position the seat in a place that causes my legs to hurt when traveling anything more than short distances.  It is impossible to change the radio without the fing-longer.  Not to mention the fact that the car feels like it will fall over anytime it goes around a corner.

To my regret, the CRV is the only SUV that I have driven in the past ten years.  That being said, the CRV is clearly not trying to compete with the Cayenne.  Even knowing Porsche's reputation, I was stunned by the Cayenne's capabilities.  It hurts me to say it, but the new Cayenne handles as good as, if not better than my BMW 335i coupe.  For an  SUV, it is superb.  I never would have expected to go around corners in an SUV  the way the Cayenne does.  Even in the rain, the handling and the brakes were amazing.  Driving it is like riding an elephant with cheetah's legs.

If I had to pick a complaint, I guess it isn't the most spacious SUV available, even compared to others of a similar size.  The gearbox, when not in sport mode, can be slow too.  But, these really are minor inconveniences.

As your mom always told you, don't judge a book by its cover.  Beneath its Quazimodo looks, the Cayenne is a great car.  Especially when you consider that the Cayenne is the cheapest car that Porsche makes.  At $46,000, it is less expensive and much better than the Mercedes M class and Audi Q7.  If you have a family and want an SUV that drives properly, you really cannot do better.

People do what they know

When my wife and I moved to the town that we live in, it was like going back in time. Small communities are just not as up to date as large cities. It's everything really: how people dress, how people style their hair, the technology people use.

While some of it is comes down to income, the major factor, I believe, is that people in small towns just aren't exposed to modern society. Sure they can see these things on TV or on the internet, but lifestyles and trends are different when you see them with you own eyes. I had this experience the first time I traveled over seas to Thailand. Everything is much more real and impactful when you are there in person. Without people pushing boundaries and bringing in new ideas, small towns remain stuck in a bygone era.

This was made very clear to me when my wife got a haircut this week. My wife has never been very stylish and has always relied on others to guide her to good fashion and style choices and she expected to do the same for this haircut.

When she got home was surprised to see that my wife had been replaced with Bonnie Tyler. The "salon" worker's last job was evidently in the hair department for an 80's music video. I had never expected to see my wife with feathered hair. Thank god her hair still looks good when it is straightened.

new car

Since I was a kid, my parents have always driven Audis. It started back in the 1980s when Audi's cars gained notoriety for running over their drivers. My parents, always fond of a good deal and never impressed with other people's driving abilities, decided to purchase one when the prices dropped after the bad press.

Ever since then, even as their income has risen, they have always owned at least one Audi. This has always irritated me. By almost every objective measure, the BMW 3-series is better than my parents' Audi A4s. BMWs and Audis cost roughly the same and my parents could easily have afforded the Bimmer. I believe that at this point they keep buying them just because of personal inertia.

I cannot do that. Just going through the motions has always rubbed me the wrong way whether it is major purchases like cars or just what route I take to work. A few months ago, I bought a BMW 335i.

catastrophic success in the job hunt

Right now I am helping my wife prepare for a job interview in Minneapolis. We are both thrilled that she may soon have the opportunity to move to a job that she enjoyed much more than her current position. But, while the job is in Minneapolis, we are not. We live in Iowa. Moving to Minneapolis for a new job would be an easy decision were we not both employed where we live. My wife taking this new job would force us to either live separately or for me to voluntarily become unemployed in a terrible economy.

I don't know what to do. I don't want to live away from my wife, but quiting my job seems idiotic in this economy. I never thought that I would almost hope that we are stuck where we are now.

The biggest problem someone can have is blaming other people for their problems. I have come to realization after listening to my clients describe their legal and life issues to me: women claiming they cannot support their children on their $5,000 per month child support payments; men with no education and no skills complaining that they cannot find a job to pay their child support; boys complaining that they had to punch the person who was rude to them at a bar.

Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to find a way to tactfully communicate to these people that the they are only ones in their way. Because my clients are paying me, direct confrontation most often only leads to losing their business. But, anything less does not seem to get the point across.

When nothing is your fault, you will feel no need to change, no need to improve, no need to do anything other than to keep repeating their obvious mistakes.

Ugly Cars Part II

The second reason that companies make ugly cars is, I think, bad management. So companies just make ugly cars, Subaru in particular. The Subaru Baja is one of the ugliest cars ever made. I think that it is inconceivable that anyone at Subaru thought that car actually looked good. The 2009 Subaru Impreza WRX is another hideous car. In fact, while not all of them are as offensively ugly as the Baja and Impreza WRX, there are no beautiful Subarus. I belief that the only way that this is possible is if Subaru management intentionally ignored the aesthetics of their products.

Maybe they got the idea that the looks of a car don't matter from Ford. For many years, the Ford Taurus was amoung the best selling cars in America. At the same time, it was incredibly ugly. Perhaps Fords success with such dreadful looking cars gave Subaru, Pontiac, and Nissan the courage to release their own awful looking vehicles.

Come to think of it, until recently, many of Ford's cars, exlcuding the GT, would make you give them a second glance. The Explorer and Expedition, stylewise, are not much more than giant boxes. Even their new Thunderbird made me cringe when I saw it a few years back. No focus groups could have told Ford and Subaru to release such dreadful designs; mistakes that big must have come from management.