The Iconic super car

The legendary Porsche 911, beloved by yuppies the world over. Arguably the greatest super car of all time, definitely the weirdest.

Rear Engine

Air Cooled Engine

6 cylinder Engine

Unfortunately they all forgot to tell the 911 it had no right to its place in history and despite even Porsche's attempts to kill it off it has continued to thrive whilst the more pure engineering design's of other super car makers have come and gone like shooting stars. At any point in time the 911 has probably been at the least, the "second best" super car available, but it's been that way for over 30 years.

Did I say the Porsche was weird? Well to modern eyes it is, and to British and American eyes it always has been. Nowadays the Germans make the definitive European cars. Water cooled, front engine , front driving Golfs, or rear driving BMW's. They are the yardsticks by which all other Marques set their standards.

Yet not that far in the dim and distant past, rafts of European made cars had such weird set-ups as rear mounted and or air-cooled engines many of them two strokes. The Germans in particular with Marques such as Volkswagen and Audi constituents like NSU majored in such strange things.

As the European market became more conservative and more America focused, and legislative pains such as noise and emission laws became more stringent the Europeans moved towards the water-cooled front engine which is de-rigueur in today's markets. In many ways European cars are much more Anglo-American flavoured than ever. (Reliability and gas guzzling excepted)

The one throwback to the days of freer thinking European's is the anarchic 911.I have to admit that I have never really been a Porsche fan. Like everybody else I have to admire them for their ability, but they have never played any part in my dreams and if I had one forced on me, the 911 would be the last one I would want.

Many, myself included, think of the 911 as the ultimate customized VW beetle but this is really an unfair view. Sure the engine is in the same place and it was spawned from the mind of the same genius but there the similarity stops. The bug-eyed front has some similarity but then there are only so many ways a front end devoid of an engine is going to look.

Whilst I may admit they don't come as a high priority on my post lottery winning shopping list, I'm not daft enough to turn down the opportunity of a spin and when one arrives on the doorstep you really just have to have a go.

Despite the age of the 911 silhouette I still can't make up my mind about the shape, sometimes I like it, sometimes I hate it. This one is the Targa topped version that I dislike the most. The Targa itself is a nice piece of kit snapping quickly on or off and stowing nicely in the BOOT front though it does take up what little space there is under there, So its not much more hassle than a sunroof to open, but miles superior in terms of real open top experience.

The Porsche isn't helped either by the ever popular Tiger tank Urban camouflage grey paint that may be perfect for invading Russia, but hardly sets your eyeballs alight.

The interior is a bit of a disappointment to look at as well. With various shapes a switches scattered randomly around the cockpit, the steering wheel being a particularly ugly piece of kit. But these are all soon forgotten when you crouch your way into the body hugging leather seats. I start off in the navigator position as my pilot proceeds to describe and demonstrate how well the thing goes, my eyeballs straining desperately around the passenger door for a grab handle, the pilots words lost under the metallic cacophony of the barking flat six motor.

By the time we pull in and swap seats I'm beginning to appreciate the performance that will soon be available. If you read car magazines you will normally see at least a quarter of the space taken up with prose about super cars of some description, yet cars of this ilk make up a very small percentage of the market. Most people will never ever get to drive something this special, this expensive, this fast, now I'm beginning to sweat.

In the drivers seat the cramped cabin takes on new interesting proportions. The fat tyres bite deep into the foot well and the accelerator seems to be sited in the place where the brake should be, the clutch seems to be sited some where over in the passenger footwell.

Wary of 250 bhp pushing along a roller skate sized car, I gently try to slip the clutch away on a light throttle, bluuuuu......... stall, try again blu....... stall. I'm being caught out by too much by a combination of too much time in normal cars and diesel engines and last but not least the Porsches floor mounted pedals. With the pilot now relegated to co-pilot barking laughingly to give it some gas, we revert to motorcycle mode, give it a welly full of revs and it off we trot (lets hope the clutch is very strong or very cheap). The Porsche has very little flywheel weight compared to your average car and hence has little stored energy to overcome botched starts, the up side though is electric throttle response with revs rising and falling in an instant at the merest twitch of a toe.

The gearbox comes as a shock too. Heavy and stiff, but short and precise give it a strong pull or push and you won't miss, there is only in gear or in neutral, and its obvious where you are. It may be stiff but that's not to say it isn't quick, elegant it may not be, efficient it certainly is.

Over rough B-roads the ride is a bit on the stiff side, (okay it's a lot on the stiff side) but still better than you could reasonably expect from a short wheel based sports car. As the roads speedup and smooth out you're far too busy enjoying yourself to care.

With the car moving the engine begins to shine, at lower revs its tractable and torquey, but let the revs rise up and it becomes increasingly urgent. Above 4000 revs it becomes very fast indeed, would you ever need more power than this, could you ever use more power than this, on the roads, legally I doubt it. 

The Clutch, the brakes, the accelerator, the gearshift are all firm to the touch and deliver best when you're firm with them. Firm doesn't mean taking liberties though, it does mean the car gives back what you put in, drive with a little effort and brain and senses engaged and the Porsche rewards you with a sense of driving enjoyment and experience few other cars can come close to equalling. Charging away from the lights, each stiff armed, ankle contorting gear change is rewarded by a hefty thump in the back as the little targa powers toward the horizon, bends are skipped round without any trace of body roll, under steer or over steer only the pressure of the seat bolsters on your sides to remind you how much work the tyres are doing, motoring nirvana. It will tootle around like a flat cap on a Sunday drive without complaint, and give remarkable economy whilst it does so, but why bother there are lots of other softer more comfortable quieter cars to do that in. 

Notice the 4 in the title that denotes the four-wheel drive system. Legend and myth would have it that two wheel drive Porsches will swap end should you dare to lift off the accelerator whilst negotiating a corner. The Reality probably was you were going far too fast and anyway Porsche engineers ironed out most if not all of these traits years ago. The engine may hang out the back, but it is made from some very exotic materials to minimize weight, and the suspension and tyres have been endlessly tuned to the point where the laws of physics are defied. For the wary though the 4-wheel drive should calm any last lingering doubts, as it shifts power back and forward to the gripping wheel and cuts power to the sliding one. Whether at the 911 advanced stage of development its really needed I don't know, what I do know is that the 911 - 4 has amazing stability at speed, but I suspect at the expense of some steering delicacy, the steering is good don't get me wrong, positive and direct, full of feel for the road, but seemed to lack some of the feeling of being alive which I had been told to expect. I am talking about preconceptions here though, maybe I just read too many articles which overstated how good a 911 steering is, or maybe its just the downside of the driven front wheels. Either way it's still light years ahead of any normal car.

Grip is of the endless variety or at least it certainly feels like the fat tyres would grip long past the point at which I would deem somewhat less than sensible. Certainly every corner that I ran around the 911 felt like it could go around 20, 30, 40, 50 mph faster, its one of them where you enter the bend teeth gritted, above the speed you know to be safe, and the Porsche glides around laughing at your feeble pansy driving. By most Super car standards the 911 is actually rather small and narrow. This does mean it is very chuck able on tighter A and B roads, it may not have the outright grip of some of the expensive Italian super cars but its diminutive size means its a lot less intimidating to drive and far more agile.

911 "the most practical super car" ?

Well it has what are laughingly described as back seats and the boot could squeeze in a couple of bags as long as the Targa stays fixed to the roof.

For a Super car its visibility is excellent to back, front and side making it easy to park and traverse through traffic.

It also has legendary reliability and build quality. So long as you get it properly serviced it shouldn't break, and for over 20 years they have been galvanized so you can actually go out in the rain - a super car you can use everyday!

There are many ways of producing ever more horsepower, more valves, more cams, more cylinders, more cubic capacity, the American adage is "there isn't no substitute for cubic inches", and over the years Porsche have took this route and grown the flat 6 ever larger. There cant be many power plants with a better power to weight ratio than this one.  When Porsche can extract this much performance from this few cylinders, valves and camshafts you wonder where everyone else is going wrong. Imagine the realistic saving in service costs of the Porsche lump over some quad cam 48 valve 12 cylinder  lump, and of course less parts means less to go wrong. compared to all of its exotic friends, the Porsche lump is remarkably simple, its  probably this that  makes it a feasible everyday vehicle. 

Practicality doesn't mean though that it will be cheap to service and run, or that some lame brain wont try to nick or vandalize it, so it will still take some looking after and cant be abused and abandoned on any old back street like your company Astra.

911 the Ultimate pose

Many people would not know a Nissan Skyline if they got run over by one, but everybody knows what a Porsche 911 is, your Impreza RB5 may be butcher but who really wants to attract the attention of  a large gang of teenage boys. Nope for maximum street cred across the largest section of the population, these are the ultimate posing vehicle but oh so wasted in that role.

The suspension will never let you relax, the engine will goad you into changing down a gear and the ICE will be useless as the only thing which can drown out the engines metallic noise is the pinging sound of snapping knicker elastic.

Posers and yuppies indirectly nearly killed Porsche in the Late 80's early 90's after they ramped up production to follow rampant demand, only for recession to kill off the demand and the market was flooded with low mileage late model pose mobile's from cash strapped stock brokers. Having got through that Emission legislation finally killed the 911 in 1999  only for it to be reborn as the new 911 with water cooling. Rumour has it that these are softer quieter 911's, so if its the ultimate blast your after it has to be Air-cooled, if you want to pose go for water cooled.

Specification's Engine 3.6 litre  flat 6 OHC Max Speed 160mph Max Power 250bhp Performance 0-60mph in 5.7 sec Insurance Group Ouch!!!

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