Dynasty Of Speed

THE 996 GT3 BEGAN A LINEAGE OF DRIVING MACHINES THAT CONTINUES WITH THE LATEST 991.2 GT3 RS

- Scott Newman

ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT,” said Cameron McConville. “One of the most impressive cars I’ve ever had the pleasure to drive. Damn near impossible to fault.” Cam had just punted the Porsche 996 911 GT3 to 293km/h at Holden’s Lang Lang proving ground. With a passenger, no less. The occasion was Performance Car of the Year 2000 and Porsche’s new road-racer had just blown everything else away, beating the second-best Maserati 3200GT by 20km/h. Oh, and it was 10 per cent quicker than anything else to 100km/h and over the quarter-mile.

Thus started arguably the most impressive run of excellence the performance car world has ever seen. To drive any 911 GT3 is to wonder if driving can get any better, yet history teaches us that every few years a new one will emerge offering greater performance, sharper dynamics, and more excitement. So what better way to celebrate the model’s 20th birthday than to unite the cars that bookend the story – the original 996 GT3 and the latest 991.2 GT3 RS – to examine the evolution that’s transpired over the past two decades?

Undertake incremental progress over a long enough period and the result is a substantial change. There is no more obvious example of this than parking a Lizard Green 991.2 GT3 RS next to a Zanzibar Red 996 GT3, kindly supplied by enthusiast Linley Baxter. They are roughly identifiable as emerging from the same gene pool, but the newer car seems to have slithered through some DNA-modifying radioactive waste in the process. It dwarfs the petite 996, sitting 127mm longer, 115mm wider and 27mm taller, its wheelbase stretched by 103mm and the tracks engorged by 62mm at the rear and a whopping 113mm at the front.