Choosing a Porsche Test driving some of the most coveted luxury sports cars in the world
The highly strung Targa bumps over even the paint strips across the road to Quriyat: you can feel the little bits of stray gravel underneath, the granulations of the tarmac, every millimetre of the ground beneath those massive, gorgeous tires, the ground itself just inches below you. And imagine what every foot of the highway, with its individual surface variations, feels like if you press your foot down and don’t let go.
The Targa is one of the many variations of the Porsche 911, one of the most recognised symbols of speed and engineering in the world of cars. Ours, clad in gorgeous silver, came with a glamorous glass top, a modern evolution of what had been a necessity in the late 1960s. The first Targa in 1967 had a removable roof panel, a removable plastic rear window and a stainless steel clad roll bar. Porsche had, at one point, thought that U.S. authorities would outlaw fully open convertibles, an important market for the 911, and introduced the Targa as a stopgap model. The name came from
the Targa Florio road race in Sicily, in which Porsche had many
successes over the years.
There is a threshold of speed – that it so much higher than what you’re normally used to – that makes you lose judgement of distance. When you have a few kilometres of open road to see just how fast a Porsche goes, and you start flooring it, the surroundings start to blur and you’re not quite sure how much in advance of the next car you should start braking. What you do know is that it is fast enough, and that apart from such stray opportunities you will be using just a fraction of a Porsche’s capabilities while keeping to legal city limits.
How much of a Porsche can you use on city streets? The recent Porsche World Roadshow allowed us to drive the latest 2008 models of some of the most coveted cars, flitting in and out of various models, including the Cayman S, Boxster, Targa S and Cayenne.
While the Cayenne has had much success in Oman, where SUVs are particularly prized, it is the 911 that has become the icon of the brand across the world. The 911 was developed as a more powerful, larger, more comfortable replacement for the 356, the company’s first model, and essentially a sporting evolution of the Volkswagen Beetle. It was designated as the Porsche 901 (901 being its company project number). Peugeot protested on the grounds that they owned the trademark to all car names formed by three numbers with a zero in the middle. So, before production started, the new Porsche had its name changed to 911. It first went on sale in 1964, and, although evolving ever since, has retained its characteristic styling that has made it as much a worldwide classic as its racetrack record has.
Over the years, the 911 has won 14,000 of the 28,000 race
victories that Porsche has notched up over the years. And its design is more than just beautiful: the drag coefficient for the 911 Carrera is just 0.28, and 0.29 on the 911 Carrera S. Such reduction in drag has been perfected over the last four decades, and you can experience it in the sixth generation 911 now. You can have yours in two variations, a 3.6-litre unit with 325bhp and 370Nm of torque, or the 3.8-litre engine in the ‘S’ models with 325bhp and 400Nm.
If you thought all these figures are impressive, get a hold of a 911 GT3 RS and crunch the numbers. If you were wondering, RS stands for Rennsport, German for motor sport. Coming from Porsche, where even their slowest model can blur past you at unmentionable speeds, this is a rather terrifying badge. In Porsche’s own words, it is ‘a genuine racing car approved for the road.’ Both the 911 GT3 models share the 3.6-litre engine, and, despite a widened body and standard roll cage, the top of the line RS version is 20kg lighter than the 911 GT3. It bristles with the power to weight ratio of 301.8bhp per tonne and – have a look at the box at the end of this article – is the fastest you can have.
But buying a Porsche involves more than just the desire for speed, and the ability to pay for it. These are very highly tuned cars, and, as much as Porsche might insist, aren’t particularly suited to city streets. Of course you can drive them to the local supermarket, but rush hour traffic was painful to deal with in something as tightly wound up as our Porsche. It is meant for long bursts of energy, not crawling behind the bumper in front, and tapping on the accelerator only brought a surge you had to stop in its tracks. Even Porsche hints at such focused mechanics while championing its urban
benefits: ‘The new 911 GT3 RS is a car designed for everyday use – particularly if you spend them at the racetrack.’
In contrast to the sports car models we drove, tight, hard and deeply sensitive to the road underneath, the Cayenne felt like the SUV it was. Its turbo version might be able to whip most saloons into submissions – and easily keep up with Porsche’s own sports saloons – but you’re completely removed from the road. You’re in your own bubble of existence, and feel nothing. The sense of the road – and of speed – are dulled down, background whizzing past the window. Depending on what you’re looking for, this is either a very good or a very bad thing. It’s a bit like the Cayenne, of course.
For Porsche purists, the Cayenne is positively evil, a reversal of everything the German manufacturer stands for. But the SUV (itself an image seemingly opposed to that of a 911) silenced everyone with its success. Porsche sold nearly as many Cayennes in the U.S. in 2004 as it did 911s, Boxsters and Carrera GT models combined, and the off-roader was largely responsible for a 10.8 per cent jump in the company’s sales the same year (it debuted in 2003). Does anyone take it off-road? We’ve never seen one dusty. But, for that matter, does anyone get a chance to really burn rubber with his 911? Perhaps in-between speed radar. But neither has ever been enough reason for not wanting one. In the end, you don’t buy a Cayenne Turbo because it has a wading depth of 550mm with its air suspension, or an RS because it can do loops over the refrigerator. You buy a Porsche because it is a Porsche.
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