Porsche 930 Turbo review

First impressions are of a car that’s rather docile. Joke all you like about 911s having ‘always looked the same’, but the little moments of familiarity are actually very reassuring as you leap back in time. A 911 has always been a user-friendly, intuitive sports car to operate, and thus rewinding 50 years is much less daunting than it might be elsewhere in the automotive universe.

The unmistakable silhouette on the outside leads you to a comfy driving position and classic five-gauge instrument panel on the inside. The latter may eventually be lost to digitisation, but 911s have clung onto this layout since their conception. You’d imagine the option will always hang around within a sub-menu, at least.

Getting going is relatively easy too, but there’s naturally a lot more effort required by each control. Aging the car immediately are its four forward gears, selected manually via a spindly lever and stiff, springy clutch that sits to the left of a curiously offset pedal box. Long gears, too, just to really exaggerate that turbo lag. Performance is very relaxed (though not obstructive) below 4,000rpm and there’s no whip-snap reactions to anything; every input by you and reaction from the car will be ‘measured’ in those early miles. Pottering around on road, you’re only loosely aware of its reputation, such tall gearing keeping you shy of its true powerband. Second gear stretches past 90mph...

And yet the heavy, feelsome steering and broadly strong grip – helped along on this Porsche Museum car by modern classic Pirelli Cinturato tyres – ensure its fifty years feel laughable. Alright, the brakes do feel numerous generations behind a modern PCCB carbon setup. But this is no sepia-hued step into the past. You soon build the confidence to feed in more revs, steeling yourself for what comes as the tacho passes four…

And then?

Well, everything changes. The car really does transform and your relaxed demeanour is thrown to the wastegate. You feel the boost begin to swell before it simply rockets to its redline, your gearshifts suddenly sloppier in execution as the world around you goes into fast-forward.

Its circa six second sprint to 62mph doesn’t really do these sensations justice. You need to push this 911 hard to extract such behaviour but the fun and frenzied plane on which it suddenly operates is all-consuming. Grip remains progressive and the intuition of its steering means you’ll not feel thrown mercilessly to the wolves. You’ll keep coming back for more.

To truly fulfil its legend status the 930 Turbo simply must be rowed along like this, however intimidating its reputation. An experience that remains intense today must have felt beamed down from another planet in the mid Seventies.