What constitutes a modern car? One could argue that the presence of OBDII, side airbags, stability control, or simply the Antique Automobile Club of America’s minimum classic car age of 25 all provide reasonable cutoff dates for what constitutes a modern vehicle. Despite this, the internet has been abuzz recently with news of the Edit G11, a 997-generation Porsche 911 touted as a restomod. Beg your pardon?
First, a little about the car in question. The Edit G11 is a Porsche 911 from 12-to-19 years ago that’s been tweaked with new suspension, revised coachwork, a minimalist interior, and . EDIT Automotive claims “We disassemble the car and replace important old worn out parts with new ones.” No word on unimportant old worn-out parts, although potential problem areas like early model IMS bearings are addressed.
On the outside, things get divisive. The EDIT G11 gets a new front bumper that seems inspired by the 992 GT3, and a new rear end that’s a little bit of a mess. I understand what EDIT Automotive was going for — merging a slim 964-like rear lighting assembly with a 997 — but the result is unfortunately incohesive. It truly makes me wish the front bumper was available separately because my word, that rear isn’t easy to look at.
Inside, EDIT Automotive seems to have taken a leaf from the Porsche playbook because the G11 comes with less stuff than a typical 997. You don’t even get a radio, just a climate control panel where a radio should go. The modern, single-function steering wheel is a lovely touch, but it just feels a bit spartan in there, and no amount of suede can make up for having to slog through traffic in silence.
As for mechanical work, EDIT Automotive keeps power stock but adds Öhlins adjustable suspension, a limited-slip differential, and, should you wish, optional carbon ceramic brakes. Not exactly game-changing stuff, but nice upgrades nonetheless. Still, it all feels a bit light on substance for the restomod label.
Yes, the start of 997 production in 2004 is nearly 20 years ago, but cars got so much better through the ’90s and 2000s that it isn’t even funny. Whereas once, a 100,000-mile car was considered high-mileage, that’s now just the standard for durability. It also wasn’t that long ago when seven-year-old cars could be full of rot, but now that’s largely a thing of the past. A 997 is a perfectly usable car, which sets the stage for this restomod conversation. See, the term ‘restomod’ means to restore a classic car while adding modern conveniences. Brakes that work, air-conditioning that blows cold, a stereo that doesn’t sound like a gramophone, that sort of stuff.
In the beginning, the Singer formula worked because it was a clever backdating of a relatively modern 911. Take a 964 with its silky Getrag transaxle and HVAC controls that don’t feel cobbled together, and make it look like an old Porsche 911. Classic looks without the classic jankiness of “now where’s first gear gone?” and “oh great, my headlight fell out.” People restomod old cars because they love them but are willing to admit that by modern standards, some of their components suck. However, other than fear of M96 reliability woes, nothing on a 997 sucks.
The interior holds up well against its 991 successor, a mixture of tightly-textured plastics, upholstered surfaces, and bright materials that’s leagues nicer than the cabin in its 996 predecessor. All controls are reasonably intuitive, all accessory functions simply work, we’re talking about a car you can just hop in and drive. Oh, and it will drive splendidly. Clutch uptake is pleasant, ride quality is still good, and the handling is both vivacious and composed. A 2005 911 Carrera S pulled 0.97 g in Car And Driver instrumented skidpad testing, and that was on tire technology from 2005. This is a supremely capable car that can still hang with some of the best sports cars today.
Even better, that’s just the Carrera S — 997 trim levels run the gamut. Want to get in on the ground floor? Early well-kept but high-mileage Carrera. Straight-line speed junkie? Turbo S. Can recite upcoming trackdays off the top of your head? GT3. Want to ski in style? Targa 4 with a roof transport system. No matter what you choose, you’re getting a great car, and you aren’t losing many comforts compared to a 2023 model. Fripperies like cooled seats, sure, but the biggest tech difference from old to new is the presence of modern mobile connectivity. Thankfully, Porsche itself has a solution for that latter. The Porsche Classic Communication Management system adds factory-look Apple CarPlay and Android Auto to any pre-2008 997. From buttons to fonts, it looks like it was there from the beginning.
Worryingly, this 997 restomod might say something greater about nostalgia acceleration. The speed of internet culture has accelerated to the point where TikTok users are fetishizing Tumblr of 2013, which was only a damn decade ago and not that different from the times we’re living in now. Sure, cell phone cameras were grainier and things were cheaper, but we’re not talking about a huge shift in general culture. The prevailing concept of a collector car has gone from charmingly fiddly beasts often sporting carburetors and points to something reasonably popular that never depreciated to the point of being truly clapped-out, thus necessitating restoration. What happens when we run out of nostalgia, borrowed or otherwise?
Maybe we should take a step back and ask if the internet is really suggesting without the slightest shred of irony that a car which ended production a mere 11 years ago is the end of true driving enjoyment? Does something this new that hasn’t yet been at risk of becoming outmoded on a wide scale deserve the restomod label? If you fancy the EDIT G11, by all means, part with a big chunk of money. However, my advice would be to buy a well-kept 997, re-bush the entire car, then fit a set of Öhlins or Moton coilovers and PCCM should it work with your model year, then just drive it.
(Photo credits: EDIT Automotive, Porsche)
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That gold leather interior is whack, whatever whack might mean to you.
It’s a modded car. If that’s a restomod, so is my 2004 Z4 with a “bespoke driver’s seat”, “sports Bilstein suspension”, “upgraded brakes” and “sportier transmission”.
F that.
It looks like someone ask ChatGPT to design a 911.
2004…I just can’t. It’s modified, yes, but it’s too new to restore. Replacing parts is maintenance, not restoration. Then again, people are restoring 80s Suburbans, a mainstay of carpools when I was a kid.
“Oh, great, my headlight fell out” made me laugh – I’ve been there. A 915 really isn’t bad as long as you shift it the way it wants to be shifted, not the way you want to shift it.
Definitely a restomod, since some parts have been restored and other parts have been modified.
If you had a Shoebox Chevy in the Malaise Era, with a junkyard 350/350, Cragars and Gabriel Hi-Jackers, and an Earl Scheib paint job, that would also be a restomod, even though that word hadn’t been coined yet.
Anything that makes a purist shake their head and declare the car ruined is a restomod. Really all you need is a few questionable styling changes.
These are just things that any enthusiast might do, and one with bad taste in the case of the body kit. It seems like off-the-shelf parts replacements.
I have a 19 year old 996. I’ve gone through it end to end with a fine toothed comb and replaced anything worn or broken (all bushings, suspention, wheel bearings, coilovers, clutch and ancillaries, vacuum lines, coolant lines, pump, etc, etc.). I’ve removed the bumper just to clean the radiators, and I scrubbed and cleaned 99% of the underside of the car It’s still stock except for the coilovers and an interior “GT3 console delete”. I just thought that was all enthusiasm and care.
I guess it’s now some sort of “restomod”?
A car like in this article could be pulled from any enthusiast forum. Porsche, BMW, JDM, muscle cars, whatever. I’m not sure what’s special about it.
I’d love to see (or build if I stumbled into money) this on a 996 instead. Heck, I’d keep the fried eggs, or at least update them sympathetically
IDK. Looks worse than the 996. I never understood the 996 styling hate. These stupid halo lights look like something out of JC Whitney in 2002. The butt looks is too fat in the wrong places and resembles the Crossfire which looks like it’s a dog taking a dump (Credit: Clarkson).
In fact, this whole thing kind of reminds me of the Crossfire in a weird way; in it’s original form it was a pretty good car, but then they placed too much styling on it and it just doesn’t work for me. It’s kinda like when your white trash uncle wears a tuxedo to his daughters wedding, while the additions/changes to the item in theory should make it better, it just doesn’t.
Oh god. It’s a 997. Doesn’t matter. The cars still ugly. Ignore my rants on hating 996.
For a modern comparison, my timer box showed a max G of 1.3 last weekend on track with my 2007 911 Carrera S on Cup 2s with an upgraded PASM controller. Modern rubber really makes a huge difference.
The 0.97g from MotorTrend is an average throughout the corners, not a peak figure.
0.97g average is nothing to sneeze at. Though recently in testing at Willow Springs, the new GT3 RS was managing an average of 1.27g through the sweeper, which is insane.
That makes sense. And wow, my peak is the RS’s average. That’s wild.
Even years ago there were a few non-hypercar sports cars that were peaking around 2.0g. I think even the 2nd generation Audi R8 LMS trim managed it.
Heckblende? More like Whattheheckblende!
That right there had better be in contention for COTD.
Well done, that
The biggest thing that bugs me about the rear is the panel line still being there, even though the taillights are not. The big long line got interrupted by the color/texture change, but without it, the line just screams “LOOK AT ME! I AM AN IMPERFECTION IN A SEA OF COLOR.”
I also just… don’t understand a lot of Porsche coach builders in general, but especially when it comes to aesthetics. Most of them are just plain gorgeous cars to start, and then they’ll add a bunch of cladding and “aero” that ends up destroying all those clean lines and, to use their word, minimalism. Feels less like an enthusiast/fan project and more like a dupe.
Okay, this absolutely does not deserve the restomod label, but in some ways this article sounds like an old man screaming about the youths again. For us, yeah 2013 was pretty fricking different than what the world is like now, and we have our reasons to be nostalgic for it. And while cars made in the last 30 years are all similarly daily-drivable, there are notable differences mainly in the level of technology.
In today’s world where actually fun cars are being vilified, legislated out of existence, and replaced by an EV agenda being forced on everyone, while even the few remaining enthusiast cars are stuffed full of unwanted electronic nannies and cheap plastic parts designed for planned obsolescence so everything is expensive and nothing lasts, can you blame us for being nostalgic for cars made 11 years ago?
Cars like the 997 had just the right amount of technology to be good cars without taking it too far, perhaps being the last era of cars without screens and unwanted digital shenanigans. This G11 might not deserve the restomod label, it’s just a tuned version of an older car, but it does make sense that more people are starting to value cars from the 2000s to early 2010s, since they were some of the last truly good cars before the age of screens took over completely.
Furthermore, that era can be seen as one of the last times when there was still originality in mainstream culture. That’s what people are nostalgic for the most, I think. Back when not every movie was a sequel or remake or reboot, pop music still felt fresh, and not every car was coasting on nostalgia – there was still innovation, new things that felt new, things evolving naturally. It was a more optimistic time, before the creative stagnation of today where all we have to look forward to is frumpy EVs that become boring and samey when you get over the acceleration.
As for what happens when we run out of nostalgia? Well, you could argue we’re already doing so – most nostalgia-bait movies and songs are flopping hard right now, but obviously we’ll have to make something new sooner or later. Trouble is, nobody has any faith in new things anymore. Executives are too cynical to give new ideas a chance, so they recycle and repackage old ones in hopes of selling nostalgia, but consumers are so tired of that shtick that they have no faith in those nostalgia products being good. Meanwhile, everyone would much rather enjoy actually old things. The actual old movies, the actual old music, the actual old cars, even the old fashion. If new stuff sucks, why bother with it? Until they make something both new and original that doesn’t suck, the pattern of stagnation will continue.
@Austin you make a well reasoned response, nice rebuttal
Where’s the line, though? Is it screens? Massive A-pillars for airbags? Defeatable nannies? Presence of nannies at all? Drive by wire?
CANBUS was my personal division line about a decade back, but I’ve backed off that. Hell, I’m even somewhat accepting of certain CUVs now thanks to the comentariat here (yeah; I’m looking’ at you, Nsane—and, ya know what? That’s not a bad thing, so, thanks!).
I was with you until this part. I think you’re viewing 2013 with some serious nostalgia goggles, which is kind of what Thomas is talking about. Things were not nearly as different in 2013 as you’re suggesting. I assure you someone was complaining about all the same things you are 10 years ago. And honestly, maybe 10 years before that. I think it’s one of those generational things where eventually everyone gets to the point where they think everything has been done before. Hell, South Park did a whole episode (Simpsons Already Did It) about this back in 2002.
That said, 2013 was pre-COVID, pre-Trump, pre-Brexit, pre-Putin going completely nuts, so I’m not going to judge anyone for having nostalgia. It was definitely a time when it seemed like the world was getting better, and I don’t know if you can say that about 2023.
The difference between a 2023 and a 1998 car is MUCH less than the difference between a 1973 car and a 1998 car. It is really amazing the advances made since the mid 90’s.
The 997 is one of the best of the watercooled era, why mess with perfection?
That’s an ugly rump. Yikes.
I don’t mind the idea of folks doing cool modified 997s. It’s the best of the watercooled generations—before the 911 got so big and less manual. It still came with a real yank-up handbrake and hydraulic steering! Just a great car.
I just hope it doesn’t fall too hard in the retro trap. Porsche owners fetishize the past too much sometimes. I’m glad that saved the 911 from going further down the too-trendy 996 rabbit hole and gave it the round lights it deserves again, but a 997 does not need a frickin’ heckblende. The 997 was such a good, clean design and a return to form for parsh. Some interior components were a little cheap, sure, but that’s the case with the 992, too, and overall, who cares when it’s so damn fun?
Also, can we move on from “restomodding” 964s? I just want a stock one. Those were nearly perfect as they came. Stop hoovering them all up for Singer builds and other backdates, dagnabbit.
Stop not being an Autopian writer, dagnabbit. We need more parsh
There’s a lot of subgroups of auto enthusiasts that I don’t understand, but the weird Singer/”perfected” 911 people have to be near the top of that list.
it’s true tho!
As you all know I’m a card carrying Porsche fanboy and even I don’t get it. It certainly wouldn’t be the direction I’d go in if I had an ungodly sum of money to drop on a car. In all honestly I’d probably get the absolute nicest naturally aspirated factory Porsche I could find and at most give it the Deman treatment, although I even have mixed feelings about going that far with modifications.
Porsche has been doing this for a very long time and knows their shit. It’s not very often that people come along and immediately know how to do something better than Stuttgart does…and if you want an older style 911 why not just, you know….get one? It’s not like even the worst ones are penalty boxes anyway and anything that puts distance between you and the analog driving experience is sacrilege in my eyes.
Old 911s have a lot of compromises. The HVAC is terrible and confusing, for one. The engines are pretty weak. Without rear flares and being narrow bodies, they suffer from snap oversteer; flares are standard on all +78 cars not due to traction for acceleration, but to stop the snap oversteer.
What’s cool about Singer is the attention to detail, and the bespoke nature of the car. Those front turn signals aren’t from porsche; Robert Singer eliminated the visible fasteners and manufactured his own versions. The interiors are light years ahead of early or late air cooled cars, and the engines/transmissions are bonkers.
If I win the lottery, a call to Singer is the first thing I would do.
Why would you do this to a 997? They’re pretty widely regarded as excellent cars and if you get a later one (post IMS) that’s a manual they’re actually quite reliable as far as the powertrain goes. It’s not uncommon to see six figure mileage on them with just routine maintenance. By German sports car standards that’s excellent, and right now you can still find decent 997s in the 40-60 range.
If you’re willing to suck up an auto (I personally wouldn’t-the tiptronics are garbage and as good as a PDK can be old ones are time bombs) or convertible they can be found for even less as well. They’re good cars as is. Get em while you still can because the Porsche tax comes for all.
Bore scoring is a legit issue on later models that’s more worrisome than the earlier IMS issues since there’s not an easy preventative fix. I’d personally only buy a GT3 997 or at least budget the difference for a rebuilt & upgraded engine.
do better. the targa is the only 997 that you can’t get a roof transport system for. Even the cabrios will accept the 996s if you’re brave and modify it some. also, 997s have the option for ventilated seats.
in other news, yeah, the rear is awful. it could have been done well, but it has the crossfire dog-pooping syndrome. as for using the 997 for a base.. it seems to me this is a huge money grab. they know they couldn’t do anything better or special with the air-cooleds than what’s out there, so they just took the best modern 911 and charge you twice the price for kinda ruining it, but giving you a prettier interior.
Believe it or not, I don’t expect an automotive journalist who has to cover a multitude of topics to be an expert in 20-year old roof rack systems. A simple note would have been fine, but the “do better” isn’t needed. I guess it make sense that you’d be an expert, though, as it seems you’re the one carrying baggage.
yeesh. The point I was making is to be accurate if you’re using something specifically to make a point. This isn’t the first time at all there have been innacuracies (usually much larger) on the Autopian, and I love the writers here too much to see it turn into the lighting sight. Also Porsche RTS have been covered so many times on so many sites for the sheer balls of them making a roof rack for a convertible sports car, it’s not quite the same as remembering the details of set of crossbars for a CR-V. but go off psychoanalyzing strangers if that’s what gets your goat.
Don’t talk to me or my goat ever again.
I’m pretty sure I can get some roof bars on your Targa mate. Just wait there while I grab my drill and some tech screws 🙂
Glad I’m not the only one who saw a Samoyed taking a crap.
I went full Oatmeal and imagined it looking at me the whole time, too
No
„ Take a 964 with … HVAC controls that don’t feel cobbled together“
That would be a stock 964 then. I believe you were referring to the Carrera 3.2 and earlier HVAC controls.
front good, butt ugly
Not a restomod unless it’s actually been restored
Also, not a restomod unless it’s actually been modified. And I just can’t think of anything they did as a major modification.
I mean, they made it uglier and took out the radio, those are mods right?
Hear, hear.
Exactly, this is simply a modified car, no more, no less.
Everybody wants some of that sweet Porsche-stan cheddar.
I was thinking to myself, “You know… there probably IS some Porsche-themed cheese thing going on somewhere…”
Sure enough! There is a Porsche Travel Experience in Switzerland, but it’s Swiss cheese, and not cheddar.
Ferrari cheese? Of course! Though only because some Ferrari family has been making cheese for 200 years — not automotive themed in the slightest, either.
My gosh, you have no idea how much I’d want to do the Porsche Travel Experience in Switzerland. I still need to get Swiss fondue, dang it. Why not do it in a parsh?! (Besides money. I’m sure it costs a lot of money.)
There are Ferrari tractors too, but again no relation to the Ferrari car company. They even sell tractors in the U.S. and are regarded as quite good, particularly for orchard use.
You want an Italian tractor from the company that bastard Enzo? Nah, Nah, Nah
These fellas should be able to help you out! + they have more tractor making experience
https://www.lamborghini-tractors.com/en-eu/