Porsche 911 S/T: across Wales in the best sports car... in the world

We thought (and fought) long and hard over a car to represent the 100 most recent issues of Top Gear and what’s happened on planet petrolhead since late 2017. Obviously it should be electric, futuristic, intelligently linked to the internet. Something that synthesises the sensations of driving while filtering out the noise. Perhaps one of those Chinese e-lozenges, the automotive equivalent of the pill-based diet everyone in the 1950s presumed we’d be subsisting on by now.

And then we thought “b******s to that” and plunged headlong into Wales in the best sports car... in the world. Thank God that’s still an option. The freedom of being able to get into a car at will, rouse a naturally aspirated engine, select first gear with a lever and a pedal, and drive it to Britain’s best roads whenever the mood takes you.

Sure, 2025 sticks its nose in. I fumble about for the buttons to castrate the lane keep assist system and speed bongs, then remember the 911 S/T snuck out the door before those nannying irritations became law. Bliss. Meanwhile, since Top Gear magazine powered into print 32 years ago the UK’s population has swelled by 13 million people, all of whom are currently queuing outside Cheltenham. At least it means 21st century niggles like average speed traps are neutered.

Photography: Mark Riccioni

Along the cruise to what was once called Merioneth, I tot up the big stories since issue 300. Self driving autonomy slid from tech bro inevitability to joining solid state batteries and hydrogen fuel cells in the ‘maybe one day’ pile. Announcing your brand was going all in on EVs soured from ‘share price rocket fuel’ to ‘PR plane crash into landfill site’.

On the eve of turning 300, TG first drove a sublime Alfaholics restomod. In the eight years since, the notion of giving a woebegone classic a radioactive spider bite to inject it with youthful superpowers has gone completely bananas.

Singer(s). Eccentrica. Eagle. Lunaz. All exquisite. All unaffordable. Even the OEMs are at it. Hence, presumably, why the car I’ve pointed at North Wales – Porsche’s 60th birthday present to the 911 – isn’t a downforce terminator with hybrid multiscroll turbos and torque vectoring windscreen wipers. The S/T is a homage to the good old days. Whenever they were. Wait. Maybe they’re... today?

I have the same sort of power as you got in a GT3 RS 15 years ago, entrusted to a manual gearbox (almost ruled extinct by Porsche in 2013) with an anorexic clutch and flywheel. Active anti-roll bars? Animated aero devices? Not here. That has to say something about our times, doesn’t it? This isn’t the ‘best’ 911 Porsche is capable of producing. But it is, without a shadow of doubt, the best.

Certainly not the most refined. Tyre roar roams around the rear half of the cabin where the back seats ought to be. The carbon fibre roll cage clinks and squeaks in its mountings. If you tried to explain to a normal person this 911 is better because its flywheel graunches and chunters like a washing machine full of crockery, its biting point has the tolerance of Jeremy Paxman with a hangover and the final drive is shorter so you’re forced to work the transmission harder to get around, they’d think you were stark raving bonkers.

I hadn’t driven a manual for about a month before picking up the S/T. Sign of the times. It spends the afternoon shaking its head at my incompetence. One stall. Several kangaroo getaways. It lets me off with a warning for a 4th–5th mis-shift at medium revs because the automatic throttle blipper zings the 9,000rpm race engine on the presumption I meant to go for third, which is 0.003mm to the left across the stubby gear gate.

Humans are weird. The hotter the white heat of progress, the rosier our spectacles get. We can carry a trillion songs in our pockets but vinyl sales have grown 17 years on the, um, spin. We could have silent, self aware luxury runabouts to leave us more time to perfect scramjets or consider the meaning of life but the most collectible Porsche of the decade sounds like a broken Zanussi and gets unceremoniously bested by a Build Your Xpeng Or Was It Omoda just west of Shrewsbury.

This, thankfully, is only the preamble. My 100 mile leg begins properly in Bala, and tumbles into a greatest hits compilation of some of TG’s favourite Welsh B road haunts, winding towards Ffestiniog before doubling back down through Eryri in search of Rhayader and the Elan Valley, ending up at the majestic Claerwen dam. It was built in the 1950s from state of the art concrete cloaked in stone to present a classical Victorian aesthetic more in keeping with other dams in the valleys. New technology dressed in a nostalgic suit. Clever eh?

The turn in is so instinctive it’s as though the car read your thoughts moments before

The S/T doesn’t just come alive here, it reminds anyone lucky enough to drive one they’re alive too. Each nailed gearshift or yelp of revs is a slap on the back for your caveman limbic system. The turn in is so instinctive it’s as though the car read your thoughts moments before the slender wheel was aimed into the corner. But without the stabilising safety net of rear steer from the GT3, the S/T is also livelier and edgier in fast corners. It’s a curious character, rich in kitsch charm yet razor tipped with a no nonsense edge.

I adore it. Which is why after we finish taking pictures and complete our allotted route, I don’t stop driving it. Down through the Brecon Beacons, right at Crickhowell, then over the Black Mountains before dragging myself back to Porsche’s lockup, where this car is set to be put out to pasture, sent off to auction. Possibly the highest mileage S/T in the world. Having promised we’d only need it for around 100 miles, I’ve somehow managed to do 482.9. Whoops.

And that’s the reason there have been 400 Top Gear magazines. And hopefully a good few more yet. As long as there are cars that make you want to drive until the road runs out, and readers who love coming along for the ride. Thank you for being one.

Porsche 911 S/T

Price: £231,600 
Powertrain: 3996cc flat six, 518bhp, 343lb ft
Transmission: 6spd manual, RWD
Performance: 0–62mph in 3.7secs, 186mph 
Economy: 20.5mpg, 313g/km CO2
Weight: 1,380kg