2017 Porsche 911 Turbo

Not Just Faster Than Ever, Better Than Ever

- Michael Febbo

It’s unnecessarily hot at Northern California’s Thunderhill Raceway; I’m chasing Hurley Haywood around the full 5-mile configuration in Porsche’s new 911 Turbo. The air conditioning and ventilated seat are working flawlessly. I clearly have more mechanical sympathy than empathy. I would never subject my own car to this sort of thermal torture, but Porsche seems to revel in pushing its cars in ways sane people wouldn’t. To everyone’s delight, but with little surprise, I find the rest of the mechanical systems in the king of the 991.2 model lineup are capable of performance beyond the average driver’s imagination.

I try to envision this same story four decades earlier when the first air-cooled 911 Turbos were pounding around tracks. First, you wouldn’t attempt it in this heat; if you did, the air conditioning would consist of windows and the evaporative cooling of your own sweat. Han Solo didn’t have ventilated seats, much less sports cars. Hurley would be making the car dance, fighting against a chassis that was not all that well balanced and driving on tires that pale in comparison to today’s all-seasons. Instead of hanging off his rear bumper, someone of my skill level would be both the center and cause of a smoking hole on the outside of one of the high-speed turns.

This Turbo is different—completely different from the early air-cooled Turbos and it is even substantially different from the 991.1 it replaces, at least in the way it drives. I sometimes struggle to call new cars “better” than old cars. But it is, without a doubt in my mind, better than any previous 911 Turbo. Yes, even the one from the poster hanging in Jerry Seinfeld’s sitcom apartment.