This is a mid-life update for the 991 generation of the Porsche 911. At first glance it might not appear very revolutionary, with only minor alterations to the exterior appearance of the Stuttgart’s iconic rear-engined sportscar, but under the skin there is a very big change to the 911 Carrera ethos; its flat-six is now turbocharged.
Technical highlights?
The big news, as you would expect, is the turbocharged engine. In both the Carrera and Carrera S it displaces 3.0-litres and has two fixed vane turbochargers although in the S the turbos have larger compressor wheels for greater air mass flow rate increasing boost from 0.9bar to 1.1bar. The result is increases of 20bhp and 44lb ft over the old naturally aspirated engines, while fuel consumption has been reduced by 3.8mpg and 4.2mpg respectively.
The torque increase is actually even more impressive than it initially sounds, as the maximum figure is now reached at just 1700rpm and held all the way to 5000rpm where as the old naturally aspirated engines only reached their maximum torque figures at 5600rpm. This means that the new engines should be vastly more flexible.
The rear wheel steer system that we have seen on the current Turbo and GT3 RS is now available as an option on the Carrera. There is also a new middle ‘Sport’ setting for the PSM stability system, which allows some slip before intervening. One further thing worth mentioning is introduction of a Post Collision Braking system. This means that in the event of the airbags being triggered the car will automatically continue to brake at up to 0.6g until the vehicle’s velocity has been reduced to a safe level.
What’s it like to drive?
While it would be both disingenuous of me and unfair on the car to give a full review based solely on an hour’s drive from the airport to the hotel in Tenerife, I know that everyone is hungry for information, so I thought I would post some initial impressions now and then some fuller conclusions tomorrow after I’ve spent a whole day behind the wheel.
So, the car we have is a standard Carrera S without any PDCC or rear-wheel steering and… it feels pretty bloody fantastic. There is real feel though the steering, the wheel bubbling with background chatter even on the motorway without any lock applied. Up on the island’s equivalent of a B-road the steering weights up beautifully in your hands as you load up the suspension in corners and it really encourages you to push the car. This is a massive change from how the electric steering behaved in the first generation 991 when it was launched.
The chassis reacts as a 911 should – in other words it feels like a rear-engined car, flowing through corners, shifting subtly from turn-in to exit and making the most of the weight balance. The extra torque of the engine really helps to push it through the final phase of a corner too, working the formidable traction to its limit, getting the car to squat and drive beautifully out of bends. As for the new 3.0-litre flat-six, you can certainly tell that the engine is turbocharged in its delivery, but the throttle response is very good and even with a standard exhaust the sound is much closer to an old naturally aspirated Carrera than it is to the gas rush of a Turbo.
The engine continued to impress during our full day on Tenerife. It certainly sounds softer low down, but it is still a pleasing, distinctively flat-six sound. The most gratifying thing however is the way the 3.0-litre engine revs. In a 911 Turbo (the full-fat four-wheel drive monster) you get a lot of gas rush and the limiter not only seems to arrive quite early, but it is also quite hard to distinguish aurally where it is. With the 991.2, the engine has a real crescendo to it, revving sweetly all the way to the far side of 7500rpm and never letting up in its power delivery. In short, while you can surf along on the low-down torque you are also rewarded for chasing the red line.
The overall grip of the car is staggering. It’s also quite deceptive. As I said in my initial impressions, at sane speeds the car feels very much like a 911 should and with the dampers in their normal (softer) setting there is a delightful amount of weight transition and body roll. This leads you to expect that the car might slide quite easily, but certainly on the dry, super grippy tarmac of the roads around the volcano, the 991.2 would just cling on and cling on. Getting hard on the throttle early in the corner the car would feel like it was about to relinquish grip before digging deep with its rear tyres, finding extra reserves and just firing you out of the bend. It was both deeply impressive and a touch disappointing at the same time. I found the car would indulge in small but enjoyable slides that almost didn’t require any corrective lock but it will be interesting to get it onto a track (with a bit more space and less traffic!) and see how it behaves when the limit is conclusively breached.
Finally, I should mention that the car we drove was (intentionally) a very standard spec Carrera S. While Porsche might have liked us to have one with bells and whistles (rear wheel steering, PDCC etc), and we will test a fully-loaded car in the coming months, we wanted to test the base car initially to see how it performed. It’s encouraging that the new turbocharged engine sounds good even without having to lash out on the sports exhaust for example.
Don’t forget to buy the magazine for the full review (there’s something rather interesting about the sound that I haven’t mentioned here) and to see Gus Gregory’s stunning photos of our rather beautiful Miami blue car.
How does it compare?
As ever, the 911 is a hard car to find a rival for particularly now that the Audi R8 is V10 only and therefore much more expensive. Perhaps the most obvious rival isJaguar’s F-Type Coupe. A Nissan GT-R is also comparable on price and while in the past we would have said it was in a different performance league we suspect that a Carrera S with all the bells and whistles might now run it rather close. We will be getting a 991.2 together with its rivals very soon (look out for the test in the magazine) so we’ll reserve judgement until then.
Anything else I need to know?
Porsche Communication Management (PCM) appears in its new, fourth generation guise. There are a host of ways it integrates with your iPhone, most notably Apple Car Play (better Android connectivity is on its way apparently) and the graphics are generally much slicker, with the mapping being particularly easy to navigate. Place your phone in the storage bin under the central armrest and the signal is boosted by the antenna in the front bumper.
| Engine |
Flat-six, 2981cc turbocharged
|
| Max power | 414bhp @ 6500rpm |
| Max torque |
369lb ft @ 1700-5000rpm
|
| Top speed | 191mph (190mph PDK) |
| 0-60 mph | 4.1 sec (3.7 sec PDK and Sport Chrono) |
| Weight | 1440kg (1460kg PDK) |
| CO2 | 199g/km (174g/km PDK) |
| Price | £85,857 |
| On Sale | Now |
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