Where the Money Went

One of the most common comments I hear about my 718 GTS comes from people who are not car enthusiasts. Usually they're sitting in the passenger seat, looking around the cabin and they've asked how much a car like this costs.

The comment is almost always some variation of the same question:

"I can't believe it doesn't have XYZ. For that kind of money, shouldn't it have more features?"

It's a fair question. After all, we've been conditioned to believe that expensive cars should be loaded with equipment. Ventilated seats. Massaging seats. Automated driving systems. Giant touchscreens. Night vision. Soft-close doors. Hologram generators? Force fields? A seemingly endless list of conveniences and technologies. If you're spending a lot of money on a vehicle, surely it should have everything. But I think there's a big misunderstanding there. People assume all expensive cars are trying to accomplish the same thing.

They're not.

A luxury car and a sports car may occupy a similar price range, but they're solving completely different problems.

A luxury car asks: "How can we make this journey more comfortable?"

A sports car asks: "How can we make this journey more engaging?"

Those priorities lead to very different outcomes. When Porsche engineers sat down to develop a car like the 718 GTS, they made choices. Resources are finite. Weight matters. Packaging matters. Development time matters. And so they focused their efforts where enthusiasts like me would feel it most.

In the engine. In the steering. In the gearbox. In the chassis. In the suspension. In the brakes.

The average passenger never notices how much engineering is hidden inside those components. But the driver notices. I notice.

Every. Single. Kilometre.

The steering wheel in a sports car isn't simply something you hold onto. It's a communication device. The gearbox isn't just a way to change ratios. It's part of the experience. The engine isn't merely a source of power. It provides character, sound, emotion, and connection. These things are expensive to develop. They are expensive to refine. And they are expensive to perfect. Yet they're largely invisible to someone evaluating a car by counting features on a specification sheet.

I think nobody climbs out of a memorable drive talking passionately about the automatic climate control. Nobody tells stories twenty years later about how effective the lane-centering system was. Nobody remembers a road because the seat massage function worked particularly well that afternoon.

What people remember - what I remember - is how a machine made them - me -  feel.

The precision of a perfectly weighted steering rack. The satisfaction of a well-executed downshift. The way a car settles into a corner. The sound of a naturally aspirated flat-six as it climbs through the rev range. Those are the things that stay with you. Those are the things enthusiasts are paying for.

In many ways, the greatest luxury in a 718 GTS isn't something that was add-ed. It's something that was protected; the purity of the driving experience, the absence of unnecessary distractions, the feeling that every important component of the car was designed to serve a single purpose.

Connection.

That connection is invisible on a specification sheet. You can't photograph it. You can't demonstrate it in a showroom. And yet, for me, it's the very reason the car exists.

The next time someone asks why my Porsche doesn't have every feature imaginable, my answer is surprisingly simple. Because that's not where the money went. The money went into the drive. And for the people who understand these cars, that's exactly where it belongs.

I'll take it over automatic cruise control every time.

Thanks Porsche.

~ Luke