UNSTOPPABLE

ANOTHER NEW GENERATION OF 911, ANOTHER PCOTY WIN. MAKE THAT NUMBER 15 OUT OF 24 FOR STUTTGART

- DAVID MORLEY

LIKE ANY MODERN, high-end four-wheeled product, the Porsche 911 unlocks its door for you by detecting the ignition ‘key’ in your approaching pocket. Again, like its peers, it will allow you to start the engine with that same key-fob firmly in the pocket of your Levis. Okay, so it has keyless entry and start… so what? Well, it’s a very Porsche take on the tech. Instead of having to find a starter button that could be anywhere in the cabin (including the increasingly common ‘wrong’ side of the steering column) the 911 pilot simply reaches down to where a conventional ignition key would be in the last seismic age, grasps a very key-shaped protrusion, twists it clockwise through two detentes and listens as the flat-six chugs into life.

The set-up could be dismissed as mere keyless start, but it’s much more than that – cleverer – because it combines new tech with old muscle-memory. It’s as efficient and foolproof as any other modern system, but it doesn’t require the hapless human to re-learn how to operate a car. It’s new and better… not always a given in car design. It is also a metaphor for the whole 992 Porsche deal.

There is, of course, more to it than the starting system, and I’d be willing to bet that anybody who has enjoyed a 911 of the last five decades would be able to tell (if not actually blindfolded) what car they were in just by taking a seat in the new 911. In fact, the 992 is even more overtly retro than the previous 991 model.