awesome

It's been a week now and have to make a post declaring my newfound respect and dedication to the liquid cooled 911. I was a 9 year air cooled die hard, but after only a week I am 100% converted. My 2002 C2 is unbelievably nice. Sure the aesthetics take a little getting used to, but the car is not boring to look at, and over time I think the look will become more interesting and respected. Lord knows Pinky Lai worked hard on it and he had a vision. As far as the mechanicals go - I really don't know what to say. This car has exceeded all of my expectations, which were high to begin with! My wife is even gushing over how it feels and drives, and she has never really shown an interest in cars and how they operate. She has her doubts she said, until she drove it and now she doesn't want to get out of it! Anyway. I'm happy....and check out my cool license plate:

yes, awesome.

Thanks for your post, I've never been in an air cooled Porsche, just my 997 C2S and was wondering how the compare.

We 928 guys knew that liquid-cooled was the way to go years ago...

Does BTL mean something or is that license plate simply the greatest coincidence in the world?

I agree Jasper, it's a car that gets better and better with every mile. I've always been baffled by the aircooled bias against the 996. I suspect , that bias could be universally extinguished with some serious seat time in a watercooled 911.

Not really a coincidence - we can buy our insurance and license plates at any one of a thousand "autoplan" agents...our auto insurance is government run you see. So what you do is call up all the insurance agents until you find one with a number plates that start with the numbers you want. The boxes come in packs of 100, so for any letter sequence, you have one out of ten chances to find a box with the 996 number sequence in it (make sense). In my case the fifth guy I called had a 996 plate for me, it happenned to be the BTL letters. It's naturally much much less probable to get the letter sequence you want, although if you know an insurance guy you can ask him to call you when an interesting sequence of letters arrive, like SEX or ***, although I think the insurance company doesn't bother printing them. They make a XXX plate though, I think. I have previously had CPH-911 on my 911 and more recently 666-AGS. You can buy custom plate stoo, but they cost extra of ourse, and I don't lik ethe background. This is much more low key I think. Lot's of Porsche club guys do it around here.

thanks, that means alot coming from a guy w/9 years of aircooled history. Really getting tired of that purist stuff. Maybe one day Porsche will bring it back...and might have to buy one!

Oops. I assumed BTL was short for "Beetle."

I still don't get what 'BTL' means.

It's not a custom plate, it's just a plate that starts with 996 (though it's not a total coincidence because apparently in Canada if you're willing to spend some time you can find the numbers you like) and the last 3 letters are immaterial.

My first thought is that the car is on the bottle.

Did you import the car from the US, or buy it locally? If local, from whom?

Ah...gotcha. Thanks!

I bought it from a very nice doctor type in Indiana - I found it in the Rennlist classifieds in fact! Here's my intro pic from a while back in case ianyone here missed it. It's still the best one I have for now.

That was my first thought...actually I commented that I would be hitting the bottle after the paperwork ended and the payments started.

agreed... i though the btl had some significant on it....... although i love the 996 part........that's cool....

Nice looking ride!! Glad you are enjoying it!!

Very nice! Enjoy!

Welcome to the DARK SIDE(at least according to the 993 guys)!!! Excellent looking car, enjoy.

Hey what about the 924 / 944 crowd! We knew too! Great Car and now that wife is hooked you have it all...

FWIW, I think the only people who complain about the looks of the 996 (either healight style) are people who are entrenched in Porsche history. When I show pictures to any of my family members, they ALL specifically comment more on the 996 pics than the older ones. It always goes something like this: 84 turbo - "mmm, nice" 66 - "looks classic" 01 996 - "oooh, that's nice. which one is that? I really like the sleek look of that one". I like them both. I'm not a fan of the non-turbo style headlights, but still think one with a aero-kit on it is sexy. I think its funny when people knock the 996 and then love the 997. They have nearly exact dimensions except for the headlights. The 997 is just as 'slab-sided' (not my word) as the 996, but those round headlights make all the difference. In my opinion, I think the 996 was Porsche trying to make the 911 look more like an 'sleek exotic' car. Not saying that pre-996s aren't, but they were really trying to get rid of the bubbly roundness that the 911 had and pissed off a lot of people who happened to love the roundness. To them, that's one of the attributes that what made 911s so unique.

thats what makes the 996 unique... the lights, its different from other 911... one day maybe the 996 will be worth a lot of money...hey I can dream cant I

the 99-01 has the unique headlights EVERYONE wants.... especially the halogens...... anyone wants to buy mine.....?

Jasper, good move!!