GTS Ride Quality with or without Active Ride

[prj]

In terms of comfort if you downsize to 20” you’ll save 7k
Add winter tyres and the drive is smooth as Heaven even in sport plus…
Forget S class comfort with Porsche Air ride, not even near it…
Paying 7k to speed over bumps doesn’t seem very smart.

It's not just speed bumps, you clearly have not driven a car with PAR. The suspension is on another level both in terms of comfort and performance. I already have the 20" wheels, and I have a CT that has a softer suspension by default. PAR makes a huge difference.

Sponsored

 

[Crazymind]

On another level is pure exaggeration. CT is comfier by setup, I get on the CT makes less body roll and nose dive, mine was bit wobbly and your car with your tune box and double the power might make sense with air ride.
I talk from a 4S perspective where active ride is not that impressive in terms of comfort. The double chamber also takes away the nice drive feel of standard Taycan, where you drive like the car is on coilovers. On air ride is bit more distant from the road… maybe mighty if pushed hard but I don’t drive the Taycan hard, never… I have got other cars for that.

 

[prj]

On another level is pure exaggeration. CT is comfier by setup, I get on the CT makes less body roll and nose dive, mine was bit wobbly and your car with your tune box and double the power might make sense with air ride.
I talk from a 4S perspective where active ride is not that impressive in terms of comfort. The double chamber also takes away the nice drive feel of standard Taycan, where you drive like the car is on coilovers. On air ride is bit more distant from the road… maybe mighty if pushed hard but I don’t drive the Taycan hard, never… I have got other cars for that.

No, it is not an exaggeration whatsoever if you're at all sensitive to how a suspension works in the car.
Porsche puts AR on the Turbo GT and keeps it on the Weissach despite the extra weight, so clearly the performance is better.

I don't think you know what to feel for. AR will do absolutely nothing driving in a straight line or over e.g. paved paths, it controls the large motion of the body. The small road unevenness is first and foremost the tyre size and then the dampers.
Saying a fully active suspension is not on another level compared to a passive one is insane to me, but to each his own.

Blaming the CT is dumb too, my Turbo S in sport plus mode didn't squat nor did it lean with PDCC, but it did in normal.
I bet you thought on the J1.1 the PDCC was also a waste of money.

Here is Mercedes Magic Body control, the first generation of this technology:

 

[Crazymind]

In terms of performance I have no doubt air suspension is great and probably worth the 7k. Didn’t have the chance to push the car to the limits with air ride nor I wish to.
In terms of additional comfort, there is something more to it with air ride and to answer the question of this post, is not worth the 7k that additional layer just for the comfort.
991 and 992 both with PDCC, Taycan CT I Didn’t bother. It’s the car my wife drives to take the kids to school. So it is now the 4S.

 

[prj]

In terms of performance I have no doubt air suspension is great and probably worth the 7k. Didn’t have the chance to push the car to the limits with air ride nor I wish to.
In terms of additional comfort, there is something more to it with air ride and to answer the question of this post, is not worth the 7k that additional layer just for the comfort.
991 and 992 both with PDCC, Taycan CT I Didn’t bother. It’s the car my wife drives to take the kids to school. So it is now the 4S.

PAR and air suspension are two completely different things.
The PAR is a hydraulic suspension. Not a double chamber air suspension. The double chamber air suspension is the standard option. With PAR you only have one air chamber to set the base ride height.

 

[DerekS]

I've had direct experience comparing a 23 GTS with a 25 GTS.

Neither had active ride.

To me they drive the same. I'm happy to have the smart lift and adjustable chassis options. I've not missed Active Ride.

 

[Crazymind]

Now I understand why the standard feels like is on coilovers and the air ride not. I thought the hydraulic system worked the same way using hydraulic pressure.
How do they manage to have comfort when needed and stiffness when needed all in one chamber?

 

[prj]

Now I understand why the standard feels like is on coilovers and the air ride not. I thought the hydraulic system worked the same way using hydraulic pressure.
How do they manage to have comfort when needed and stiffness when needed all in one chamber?

PAR is not air ride. It's active ride.
Standard on pre-facelift was steel springs (only on the base RWD). Then you had 3 chamber air suspension as an option on the RWD and standard on everything else. PDCC was the handling/comfort upgrade which allowed for soft/hard electromechanical antirollbars.

On facelift it's 2 chamber air suspension as standard and active ride as an option.
The air suspension has fixed antirollbars, the active ride has basically no antirollbars, they are not needed when you can push each wheel in and out independently.

The active ride does away with the 2nd air chamber and has a hydraulic system in the bottom chamber. The air chamber is purely used for setting the base level. The active ride can "suck in" or "push out" any corner independently at any time and with very fast reaction speed.
This improves everything from comfort to handling to grip.

However, all this is related to the body control and keeping large body movements in check. The small bumps are mostly the dampers. There's no difference in the dampers between active ride and non-active ride cars, they are the exact same and feel the same.

What AR does is keep the car level no matter what. Speed bump is just an example - when the front end of the car starts to move up it sucks the wheels in momentarily and when the rear starts to drop it pushes the rear wheels out, that's why the bump feels half the size. But it is doing that in all four corners at the same time. So there's no lean, no squat and if you have just one corner going up on a bump that's completely smoothed out as well. Like having the stiffest ARB in the world, but without upsetting the whole suspension.

During cornering you have the inside wheels firmly in contact with the surface and better traction, on uneven surfaces the wheels get pushed into the gaps etc.
It is next level tech, with the price tag to match. Active suspension is the equivalent of having your lunch and eating it too. Many compromises fly out the window. You can have very high comfort and very high level of performance at the same time.

Whether that is worth it to you is a whole other story, but saying that different size wheels can compensate or something other like that makes no sense - wheel size has no effect on what AR is doing, because it's controlling the up and down motion of the entire corner independent of what the surface is doing while tyre profile and dampers are mostly what is responsible for the feel of smaller movements and for how jarring or not the ride is.

 

[Mr.Smith]

As a cost percentage, 7k is maybe 5% of the total cost of the car? It's a lot of money, but I would forgo other options for the PAR.
Taycan feels smooth in normal driving without PAR, but it gives it a more luxurious feel with it.

For performance, there is no doubt active ride is a huge benefit as @f1eng pointed out.

 

[Avantgarde]

I've had direct experience comparing a 23 GTS with a 25 GTS.

Neither had active ride.

To me they drive the same. I'm happy to have the smart lift and adjustable chassis options. I've not missed Active Ride.

How do they compare to your very first RWD?

 

[DerekS]

How do they compare to your very first RWD?

The main thing I noticed with the RWD was the lack of launch speed.

The main thing I notice handling wise is the smart lift to reduce scrapes.

 

[SoccerMan94043]

In terms of performance I have no doubt air suspension is great and probably worth the 7k.

Active Ride requires PTV+ so on a 4S, that's $9,370 with both AR and PTV+. Still worth it imo. Or even better, find a CPO with it and get a discount.

 

[RAHRCR]

I find this text string odd. All GTS models are tuned to be on the firm side….making a concession on ride equally/comfort in exchange for a modest gain in “sporty/track” driving performance. If the ride is not to the OPs liking, I would suggest going to the 4S or Turbo which better prioritizes on road comfort vs the GTS.

 

[prj]

The difference in tuning on the GTS is much less than the difference between running 20" wheels and 21" high performance with the dynamics package.
That's where the massive difference is.

If you test drive a Turbo or Turbo S with dynamics package and GTS there is very little difference. That's as expected because the suspension hardware itself is the same. At least I did not notice a significant difference in ride comfort during my test, nothing like is described in the OP.

 

[RAHRCR]

GTS handling/dynamics isn’t just a function of a tire/wheel package….and neither is the associated comfort. Tires/wheels can influence things some though.

Best to get the right model first and use the tire/wheel choice for fine tuning of specific preferences.

Sponsored