[SD987]

There's the theoretical and the practical side of the question and since the title of this post was "RPM for every day driving" I think the practical side makes much of this boy-racer discussion, academic.

In the 987 with the 5 speed, 6500 rpms will get you:

1st @ 33 mph
2nd @ 63 mph
3rd @ 93 mph

Unless you routinely get up to 100 mph everyday let's keep the discussion around 1st and 2nd gear. The whole point of redlining the engine as MNBoxster notes would be to achieve a higher speed as quickly as possible, but it's my experience that redline driving doesn't match real world driving conditions (although I wish it did).

In the world I live in, there's frequently someone driving a car in front of me; most folks drive in a band between 35 - 55; you're only first in line at the traffic light maybe 20% of the time (if you try to be); there's usually a nun who steps into the crosswalk without looking; it's 2:30pm once a day so you're in a school zone now; there's often a cop at the next intersection; everybody starts to slow down while you're speeding up cuz there's an accident or some hot chick is waiting to cross the street....yada yada yada.

So you can consider whether you'll be routinely shifting at 6500 rpms when you get out of your break-in period but I can tell you that you won't be and you won't want to...unless you live in a world where:

People wave to you just cuz they're happy to make human contact; traffic lights or stop signs are separated by miles; you're a nun-killer without regard for innocent children just trying to learn and make the world a better place (they're only children...why do you have to try and scare them with your 2.7 litres of horizontally-opposed fury?) your brother's on the police force; no one ever crashes their car in your municipality of homely women...yada yada yada.

More than the shift point, I think the more pertinent question for engine wear would be what RPMs do people routinely sustain at speed rather than during acceleration? If you think it's prudent to cruise @ 60 mph in 2nd gear or drive through that school zone at the redline knock yourself out, but in general I think shifting at or sustaining near-redline RPMs would be hard to characterize as anything but recreational and occasional. In general your own common sense and local vehicular code will prevent you from doing much damage to yourself or your car and the occasional opportunity you'll have to really rev that engine is well within the tolerances that Porsche has engineered.