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Drive it in: the new Porsche 911
Middle-aged single men don’t go to Thailand to eat tom yam soup and ride around in rickshaws (god no). And if you’re into driving, you don’t go to Tasmania to gawk at mountains and the pleasurable meadows of rolling lilac. You go to drive. And so you must take a driver’s car, like the brand new 911, whose creepily brilliant electric steering is exactly the tool you need to dissect Tasmania’s terrific roads.
We've actually taken a 911 to Tasmania before. See Tasmania's Best Driving Roads here.
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But then we already knew that, because we've already had a shotgun ride in a very, very, very early prototype. Porsche has now released these lovely pictures of its upcoming halo model to let us know the first prototypes have been finished, and unlike the car we got to sit in, sports a body. A full carbon fibre reinforced plastic monocoque. That's good.
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The Tao of Singer is simple. Strip it bare, and remake it better. Identify the weak spots and eliminate them. Improve, elasticate the remit, but don't Disneyfy the experience and asset-strip the soul. This is an early Nineties 964 Porsche 911, and there's a confusing aesthetic tangle of earlier 911 design cues littered around the body and interior, and yet - as a whole - it's pretty enough to be a visual punch in the guts. It's as easy to drive as a VW Golf GTI, but as challenging to drive fast as anything you care to mention. Singer has expanded the vocabulary of this Porsche while retaining the basic, satisfying, recognisable grammar. It is one of the best things I've driven in a very long time. The upshot? A very simple conclusion. The most exciting car ever built by Porsche... isn't.
Read the full story in the March issue of TopGear Australia magazine, out now.
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It's not perfect. Just to keep things a little real, there's still plenty to fettle. The uprated Porsche RS suspension was designed for a much heavier car and tries to bounce this lighter version off the road. After a while, the seat is overly-kinky in relation to the steering wheel and pedals, and feels over-plumped. The brakes - though powerful and reliable - need a decent bleed, and the pedals require adjustment to allow for heel-and-toe gearchanges for the full immersive experience. But these are small things, easily fixed - that would be adjusted to suit the prospective owner's particular taste. My taste, if I can possibly have anything to do with it.
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A slight lift, and we're into pure old Porsche territory, all those familiar dynamic shortcomings bright and clear. Rather than pivot around a metaphysical point near the centre of the car, imagine a solid piton driven just behind the rear seats about which the 911 tries to swivel. If you're used to relentlessly modern equipment, with refined and restructured dynamics, all the hairy aspects neatly shaved smooth by design and electronics, this will feel odd and old, verging on the cheerfully lethal. But here, right now, it feels like an ice-cold breath of fresh air after time spent in an overheated old people's home. It feels like life.
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The flat-six yowls an appreciation of revs, mining incongruous torque, second gear is a quick, precise jab with left foot and right arm, and the car tucks and rolls into an uphill left-hand corner. There's a typical scuff of understeer, just before the front finds purchase and yanks the nose back into line, something joyous about being able to really jam the throttle to the floor without waiting for boost, or the fatal deployment of some barely contained power figure. I may not be going devastatingly quickly, but there's something very involved and intimate about the process of the hustle.
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In fact, don't think, just do. Tough, because adrenaline being the guileless hormone that it is, I'm focusing like hell and over-driving.In three corners and two hairpins, I'm soundly reminded that this isn't a modern sports car, despite the slow-speed cues. The car doesn't necessarily track true, hit a line and glue itself to it like anything post-2010. It squirms and writhes and bucks and kicks. But you're there with it, living, breathing through slightly flared nostrils, emoting like buggery. You have to concentrate.
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We cruise for a little while and then park up on the side of a canyon road. I poke and prod and find that the minutiae really make your eyes water. Attention to detail that verges on high-functioning autism. Every nut, bolt and screw thread is plated. Every bracket, hinge, mount and clasp is renewed, milled from raw ingot or water-jetted into a more gratifying shape. Every panel gap is a regulation 4mm. There's a Becker Mexico - the legendary hi-fi - in the dash. Satnav, iPods and other modern-day necessities are plumbed into the back of a bulkhead milled from a single piece of alloy. The dials are just so. The gold badges on the rear deck? Twenty-four carat. The titanium/ceramic-coated exhaust an implicit nod to potential. The bullet mirrors, the radius on the arches, the three-piece forged aluminium 17-inch Fuchs-esque wheels with tall tyres - all perfect. Modernity wrought in a thick veneer of warming retro.
Up ahead, I spy some twisty roads. Rob looks at me. I look at Rob. He knows. It feels as if I'm about to take a precious daughter out for the evening, and I've just turned up on a rusty motorbike and sporting facial tattoos. "Go. Have fun. Tell me what you think."
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