(FORTUNE Magazine) – Dearly beloved, we are gathered today in these pages to say farewell to perhaps the greatest and most enduring sports car of our time, the air-cooled Porsche 911--a car worshipped and coveted--the mainstay, the image of its German parent, lo, these 34 years. Over all that time, in all its iterations, it never once compromised its love-me-or-leave-me bubble physique, its bug-eyed stare, its prima-donna handling, its track-tuned bone-jarring ride, its muscle-fatiguing floor-mounted clutch. This was one tough S.O.B., and performance was its grail; decade after decade, it separated the have-guts from the have-nots. It rewarded the loyal with a resale value more buoyant than cork, and with steadfastness--more than 80% of the 400,000 911s built are still in use today. Over the years some of the greatest automotive minds have called its Spartan interior heaven. With such history, such personality, such consistent kudos--

Hey! Enough already: When are you going to mention its superior replacement, the all-new, reengineered, water-cooled 911?

Keep your pitchfork out of this--it's my column. Besides, I was getting to that. The final nails in this wonderfully idiosyncratic car's coffin were production costs, engine efficiency, and buyer demographics. As Porsche has discovered, there's no room for things with real character and rough edges anymore; there's only the bottom line. In order to survive, Porsche has come to terms with that fact by building the next-generation 911--an altogether more forgiving, peaceful soul than its enfant terrible sibling.

What Porsche has done is respond to market demand--and quite effectively, thank you very much. The new car's 296-horsepower water-cooled six-cylinder engine will silence the growing emissions uproar--it is more efficient and quieter. Porsche radically cut production costs by letting the 911 share nearly 40% of its parts with its younger, cheaper stablemate, the Boxster.

Goodbye bug eyes, hello oversized teardrops (sniff).

And the car's expanded dimensions (there's almost a real back seat now!) and less aggressive body style will, the company hopes, attract a broader range of owners to the formerly hard-core crowd.

Sure, all that is perfectly practical and market efficient. But Porsche has tried that strategy in the past--and ultimately failed--with other cushier, water-cooled models like the 924 and 928. The heart-wrenching truth is that if I had closed my eyes while driving the new 911, I might have thought I was in a Lexus.

Whoa! Wasn't that you screaming with delight during our entire Saint-Tropez to Stuttgart test drive? Until the cop got you at the tollbooth near Nice, at least.

I didn't say the new 911 isn't one fun rocket ride, I was merely arguing that--

Now that it's more comfortable, faster, more efficient, and safer, you don't like it as much? Is that your masochistic point?

That's about right. Remember narrowly missing the herd of cows in Switzerland? I was hammering the gas, the car was gripping like a vise through the banked esses on the perfectly paved road (you gotta love the Swiss), and the new Porsche handled the sudden swerve-and-stop for the dairy queens with far more aplomb than I did. But it was all so...buffered. My heart should have been in my throat, yet it remained--calm--in my chest. In the old 911, I would have felt every kick of gravel, every hint of fishtail, every inch of rubber. After all, what is a sports car for if not complete adrenaline-packed sensory overload?

Yeah, I really miss the sore arms, the unforgiving gearbox, the neck-cramping headroom. C'mon. Porsche took all the already stellar specs on the last generation and improved each one. Its good looks were refined for the millennium: Line up the new 911 with the previous generations, and the family resemblance is stronger than what most fraternal twins share. The car boasts new Le Mans-style brakes (four-piston monobloc brake calipers), goes from zero to 62 mph in 5.2 seconds, and reaches a new top end of 174 mph--about the speed a 747 needs to achieve takeoff; luckily its aerodynamics keep it on terra firma better than its predecessor's. And it is easier to drive: Porsche's European demonstration driver, rally champion Walter Rohrl, called it "more forgiving at its limit" and "idiot-proof."

I rest my case. I don't want my 911 to be like all the other cars on the road today, smart enough to fool average drivers into thinking they're doing all the fancy footwork. I want Porsche to remain the quintessential sports car company--quirky, intimidating, inaccessible.

And bankrupt?

No. Maybe the real the problem with the 911 is that it's so competent you no longer have to do much--it's like cruise control, or room service.

Overall, the car handled most admirably--from hugging the twisty corniche above Monaco to flat-out acceleration runs on the highway around Milan (the two speedometers really dramatize the numbers). And the plushier ride and interior (despite a questionably tasteful ovular design scheme shared with the Boxster) made for a very pleasant 500-mile trans-European sprint. It's just that at the end of the day I locked its sculpted door and walked away without looking back. I guess I need more all-out passion for my $65,000-plus.

I did see one sign of hope: On the first morning in Europe, as all the American journalists scrambled into their assigned vehicles, one German engineer was running from car to car with a towering stack of plastic objects in his arms. They were cup holders, and Porsche was rushing to install them in each vehicle--what would the Americans do without them? When he got to my car, in the haste of snapping it into place, the poor guy broke the slats on the driver's side air vent. I laughed, and prayed it was a sign that personality quirks aren't completely gone from Porsche. Maybe the company will even build another 911 for the hard-core set.

What, all ten of them?

With that, um, devilish gleam in your eye, I'll make that 11.

REPORTER ASSOCIATE Ann Harrington