[Jedi1]

I've spent more than a little bit of time in Porsches over the last two years. Everything from Cayman R's, Boxster Spyders to TurboS 911's and the 991 CarreraS. While the fit and finish in the FRS is by no means that of a 185k TurboS, it is definitely nowhere near what you described.

The switch gear in the FRS is weighty and nice to the touch. The Seats, while not on par with Alcantara are definitely several steps beyond all other cloth seats I've ever sat in. I would like a bit more weight in the steering and ultimately a touch more road feel, but this car at 27k is communicative, nimble and reassuring at the limit.

I do love knowing how others feel this car stacks up to the benchmarks of sports car performance that are currently out there. And I appreciate that everything that I've just written and the original poster wrote are our opinions regarding the car. Having said that, I just couldn't walk away from the value per dollar that the FRS represents. The other cars we were considering were a PDK CaymanS, an 05-07ish Elise or Exige and several 996 variants. The FRS won because of its styling, handling, no nonsense interior, paddle shiftable trans (the wife wants to play and has a bad back. This coupled with almost instant shifts, rev limiter banging gear holding and rev matching on downshifts led to the auto trans choice.) and amazing maintenance plan and 7-100k warranty (yeah, we went there. Didn't want to pay for that trans if it decided to play up in a few years!).

Value per dollar and the challenge of turing the FRS into a National Level SCCA ST player were just too much for us to resist.

Sean