Oversteer
 

Hi - I'm new here, and planning to be new to Porsche soon. I hope you can help me quantify something about the 911. As a past BMW guy I'm used to being aggressive without any tricky handling traits.

I love the 1984 - 1989 911s and am monitoring eBay. Can you advise me how prominent the oversteer issue might be? I'm a little nervous I might get into something beyond my skill set.

Have you driven one yet? You should go test drive some in your area.

I've driven one and like the feel (a 73 of a friend) - it's a purist sort of appeal pulling me back to my motorcyclist days. I'm a former motorcyclist brought into the BMW fold by how similar they were to high performance bikes. At insane speeds they have the same confidence inspiring 'this isn't anything' feel. I would never test drive one hard enough to bring out oversteer though. So, I'm wondering if the oversteer reputation is something everyone experiences - or if it's something more of legend that most people have not experienced. I'm looking at late eighties models because I love the look, but I'm wondering if I need to look at later post PSM 911s.

BMWs don't handle that well so you really have not been spoiled. Keep in mind that they are upper end but still mass market cars with structs rather than real duble wishbones, etc. They handle better than average but not extremely well. had you been driving a Lotus or Ferrari I might worry, but not a Bimmer. Still, you have probably never experienced snap breakway of the rear end, so just don't push it to the limit and you will be fine until you can get to a track and practice it a bit.

Early Porsches (except the racing models) up through the mid to late 60s made the reputation for oversteer that still lingers. 911s into the early 80s could be provoked to it, but they were reasonably stable unless really abused. Modern 993, 996, and 997 models understeer in most situations, sometimes quite badly: I owned several and was really not that impressed with the handling. Lotuses they are not.

Thanks Lee, that helps alleviate what are probably unreasonable concerns. I'll be hunting for mid 80's to 89 and then will be careful, A