Once More, With Feeling

PORSCHE TAKES THE MOTORTREND BEST DRIVER'S CAR TROPHY. AGAIN.

- Angus Mackenzie

The wizards of Weissach have done it again.

The 2020 Porsche 911 Carrera S is MotorTrend ’s 2019 Best Driver’s Car. It’s the fifth Porsche to win the award since 2007 and the fourth 911—the Cayman S drove off with the trophy back in 2009.

The 911 may seem immortal, eternal even, but it’s always been a work in progress. Generations of engineers have spent their careers buried in the bowels of Porsche’s R&D headquarters, polishing, honing, refining, reimagining the car that for more than half a century has been the marque’s lodestar.

This year’s victory proves the point: The 992-series 911 looks familiar, feels familiar, sounds familiar. But there isn’t a part or component that hasn’t been touched, tweaked, or totally renewed. And made better.

“The Porsche blitzes the competition in terms of creating a cohesive, beautifully resolved driver’s car,” Head 2 Head co-host Jethro Bovingdon gushed after he spent some time behind the wheel of the 911 on the back roads of Southern and Central California, on our demanding closed-course road test on State Route 198, and on WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. “It melds every control and input until the experience feels seamless and utterly intuitive, polished to such an extent that every other car appears rough around the edges. It’s easy to drive yet rewarding to push and prod, fluid but keyed right into the road surface. It’s another bloody brilliant 911.”

Champion driver Randy Pobst—a man with tens of thousands of miles’ experience behind the wheel of 911s at the bleeding limit—agreed: “It takes the 911 experience another step forward.”