On this day that the death of Ferdinand Porsche the designer of the Porsche 911 was announced, it seems appropriate to reflect on why I drive a Porsche. I recently posted to a thread on the Porsche Cayman/Boxster forum Planet 9 the following thought:

Very few people drive their very fast cars on the track, and even then they rarely come near the limits of the car. Who cares if a car gets to 60mph sooner than my Cayman? Who cares if it can do 180 when mine will only do 171 (this is the published top speed)? I spend 99% of my time averaging 27mph (that’s what my computer tells me). For me, averaging 27mph in a Porsche is a better option than doing it in any other car. Period.

The thread was about Porsche falling behind the competition, especially with the notoriously under-powered Cayman. Regardless of the context, for me the last sentence holds the answer to the question why I drive a Porsche. I drive my car every day to work, at 8am and 5pm, in congested, stop-go traffic surrounded by idiots and distracted people who should not be in charge of a machine that can cause more damage and trauma than I care to imagine. That’s why I average 27mph. But if I have to be there, doing that, then I’d rather be in a Porsche Cayman than any car I can list as “competition.”