The Five Most Memorable Porsche 911s I’ve Driven in 40 Years of Testing
It’s hard to believe it has been four decades since I first put a Porsche 911 through its paces. The car was a white 3.0-liter Carrera, fitted with black Fuchs alloys. It had a narrow body, no rear wing, no power steering, and a five-speed manual transmission—about as pure a 911 as Porsche has ever produced. Back then, I tested it alongside a 944 Turbo, a car that cost almost the exact same price in Australia at the time. The 944 Turbo had more power and torque, and it was faster, with much less effort, on any road than its famous cousin. Yet, I still fell in love with the 911.
“After two days and 600 miles,” I wrote, “I’m certain. I know the 944 Turbo is the better car. But I also know that if it came to the crunch, that if it were me agonizing over how to spend my money, I’d take the 911 Carrera home.\” It wasn’t a decision I made lightly, though. \”The 944 Turbo is so competent, it can make a bad driver look good,\” I said. \”Its soaring, searing performance is superbly counterbalanced by a chassis of astounding ability.\” But the 911 tugged at the emotions. \”The gloriously imperfect 911 Carrera is a sports car of a different age and reflects different values. It’s not tailored to meet the needs of most drivers. It demands understanding and respect. That’s why I’d take it home.\”
I have driven dozens of 911s since then, and with every iteration—except for the 964, which in the early 1990s worryingly suggested the 911 idea was past its sell-by date—I have marveled at how Porsche has polished its icon, keeping it relevant, exciting, and engaging. Four decades after my first 911 drive, it is still one of the few new cars on which I would spend my own hard-earned dollars. Of all the 911s I have driven over the past 40 years, these are five of the most memorable.
The Original 911 Turbo: A Legend in the Making
Back when I first tested a 3.0-liter Carrera, veteran road-test journalists spoke of the original Porsche 911 Turbo in awed tones. They described it as a car that demanded the utmost respect when driven with intent, a car whose binary boost states made walking the traditional 911 tightrope between corner-entry understeer and corner-exit oversteer a job that required quick hands and big balls. The original 911 Turbo did not forgive mistakes and did not tolerate sloppiness. They called it a widowmaker. It took me 35 years to finally get behind the wheel of an original 911 Turbo and see for myself.
The car was one of the first 30 production Turbos ever built, now part of Porsche’s mouthwatering classic fleet. On the road, aware of its fearsome reputation, I took it very easy at first, playing with the throttle, feeling the boost come in, and watching the tach to build a mental map of the power and torque curves. The engine was remarkably tractable, happy to murmur at 2,000 rpm in top gear as the 911 Turbo trickled along at 45 mph. Once the engine hit 3,500 rpm, though, there was a noticeable acceleration surge as the turbocharger huffed 0.8 bar into the induction system. But the sledgehammer blow between the shoulder blades I expected wasn’t there.
I learned the trick to smooth and quick progress in the original 911 Turbo was to keep the 3.0-liter flat-six spinning at 4,000 rpm or more to keep the turbocharger energized. Yes, there is turbo lag—very noticeable turbo lag by modern standards—but it is manageable. Even though it is more than 50 years old, this 911 is still an impressively fast car on the road. First gear runs to 50 mph, second to 90 mph, and third to almost 130 mph, which means it will destroy most winding two-lanes using only second and third. And while it might have a mere 256 hp, it weighs just 2,513 pounds, which means it readily gets into and out of corners. Half a century ago, its performance would have seemed otherworldly.
993-Generation Porsche 911: The Last of the Air-Cooled Titans
For Porsche purists, this is the last of the line—the last of the real 911s. It is the Porsche you drive with your knuckles grazing the dash and the snarling metallic clatter of an air-cooled flat-six behind you. But back in 1994, when I first drove it, the 993 was the 911 of the future, the first of the line to challenge Isaac Newton’s laws of physics. Oh, sure, the 993 still had the pat-pat-pattery front end that demanded to be loaded on corner entry to ensure you hit the apex, and the rear end still rhumbaed through the rougher turns, but there was much more simpatico between them. The 993 still did 911 things, but within a much better margin.
Key to it all was a new rear suspension that replaced the semi-trailing arms of old with a new multilink setup that allowed very slight initial toe-out on corner entry and then progressive toe-in as lateral loads increased, all while reducing the camber change that had been the Achilles’ heel of 911s since 1963. This was combined with steering that at 2.5 turns lock-to-lock was 16 percent quicker and made the front end feel much more decisive, plus a new six-speed manual transmission that made the most of the 3.6-liter flat-six that zinged harder to its 268-hp power peak at 6,100 rpm thanks to lighter internals, a Bosch Motronic 2.0 engine management system, and a new dual exhaust system.
Compared with the 964 model it replaced, the 993 was a revelation. It wasn’t just the engineering upgrades, done under the leadership of Ulrich Bez, later the head of Aston Martin: The exterior redesign, executed under the direction of design chief Harm Lagaay, corrected visual problems with the 964, a car he thought was too tall at the front and too pulled down at the rear. The interior was cleaner, too, with fewer buttons in random locations. The 993 was a 911 that was faster and more forgiving than ever. And, most importantly, it was more desirable, too.
996-Generation Porsche 911: The Water-Cooled Hero
At the time, it was heresy. Porsche’s decision to install a water-cooled flat-six in the tail of the 996-series 911 was, to the aficionados, the automotive equivalent of Bob Dylan ditching his six-string acoustic and picking up a Fender Strat at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. But the 996, the first clean-sheet redesign of Porsche’s indefatigable sports car in 34 years, was a hero car to me. It was the 911 that saved Porsche.
Engineered and developed under the direction of Porsche R&D chief Horst Marchart, the 996 was a clever 911, not least because it shared 38 percent of its parts with an all-new, less expensive mid-engine roadster the world would come to know as the Boxster. Iconoclastic Porsche boss Wendelin Weideking knew the Boxster was needed to give dealers something else to sell when the aging 928 and 968 models went out of production. “We did two cars for the price of one-and-a-half,” design boss Lagaay said with a smile after the company unveiled the 996.
But while media attention focused on its relationship with the Boxster and the water-cooled engine, the 996’s real story ran much deeper. In 1994, it had taken Porsche 130 hours to build a 993-series 911; the 996 took just 60 hours to build. The modern 911 had arrived: roomier and equipped with all the features expected of a late 20th-century sports car but still recognizably Porsche’s icon. Most important, it still drove like a 911. Only better. Yes, there was a new veneer of sophistication to the way it went about its business, but the 996 retained the delicious tactility and urgent response that had made the 911 a sports car like no other. And along with that original Boxster, it saved Porsche from extinction.
991.2-Generation Porsche 911 Carrera: The Perfect Balance
Of all the 911s I’ve driven, it was a base 991.2 Carrera that truly stole my heart. It stole everyone else
