Porsche 911 Review

One of the things that makes the Porsche 911 so usable is its excellent driving position. You get acres of adjustment for the steering wheel and the driver’s seat, and even when you’re sitting low in the cabin it’s easy to judge the corners of the car. The seats in this latest model are all new – they make a 3kg weight saving on the old ones, but are still comfortable and supportive. The optional seat cooling system meanwhile, is one of the most effective we have experienced and heated seats are also on the options list.

The back seats sit at the opposite end of the scale. You might just squeeze a couple of adults in there – but only for emergency short drives. Really, they’re only suitable for small kids.

The Porsche 911 can’t match the interior storage you get in a family car, but it isn’t too bad. For example, you get a handy pair of cup holders – one that folds neatly out the passenger side of the dashboard and a less elegant solution that messes up the clean lines of the car’s centre console. Under the front centre armrest, there’s space for a couple phones and you get a couple of handy USB ports for charging. Although the pockets in the doors are too narrow for a bottle of water, you do get two on each side. The glovebox, meanwhile, is weighed down with manuals, but find another place for them and you will fit a bottle of water in there.

With the engine at the back of the car, you’ll find the boot of the Porsche 911 at the front. Called the ‘frunk’ its 132-litre size gives you less luggage capacity than you’ll find in a supercar from McLaren or Ferrari – and is nearly 50% smaller than you’ll get in a tiny car like the VW Up. Its shape makes it best suited to squidgy soft bags – you’ll have enough room in there for a long weekend away for two, but longers trips will mean storing luggage in the back seat.

They get a twin-turbocharged 3.0-litre flat-six that produces 450hp, 530Nm of torque and an earthy howl that’ll get the hair standing up on a petrol head’s neck.

In raw performance terms, the Carrera 2S gets from 0-62mph in 3.3 seconds, while the 4S’s extra grip off the line means it hits 60 fractionally quicker – in 3.2 seconds. Both car’s howl from 0-120mph in under 14 seconds and can hit 190mph flat out.

Fuse those numbers into real-world situations and you have an engine that offers great flexibility with bags of acceleration no matter which gear you’re in and what speed you’re travelling at. That usable performance comes about thanks to turbochargers that deliver full torque from not much more than tick over (2,300rpm).

You can also thank the turbos for the 911’s admirable fuel economy of just under 32mpg – the best you’ll get out of the comparable BMW M4 is 28mpg and it’s about a second slower to 60.

The Porsche’s eight-speed automatic gearbox also makes it more usable. Its higher top gear (the old 911 only had seven speeds) means the car cruises more quietly on the motorway and doesn’t burn so much fuel.

The Porsche 911 isn’t just a usable sports car it’s one of the most fun-to-drive sports cars you can buy, which makes its easy-to-live-with nature even more surprising.

Communication is what the 911 is all about. Head down the road in the Porsche and its controls make it feel like you’ve been driving alternatives – such as the BMW 8 Series – by remote control.

You can steam up to corners using the firm pedal to modulate the powerful brakes perfectly, turn in quickly as the front tyres grip the Tarmac hard then power out using the immense traction created by having the engine sitting over the back wheels. It’s so good that you only need the four-wheel-drive Carrera 4S if you live somewhere where the roads are always slippy. In terms of involvement, it’s hard to think of a normal car – or anything that’s vaguely practical – that offers more.

And the more you drive it the more you learn to trust it, knowing that the car’s electronic safety net will come to your rescue even if you do push beyond your abilities.

That safeguard’s bolstered further by a new feature called Wet Mode. Acoustic sensors in the front wheels detect the pitter patter of moisture sprayed up by the tyres and warn you when the ground’s getting slippy. You can then switch to Wet mode – which raises the rear spoiler for more downforce and puts the car’s stability programmes on red alert – so it’s impossible to get the 911 out of shape no matter how stupidly you drive it.

You don’t have to drive like a loony to enjoy the Porsche, though. Pootling about town you can revel in the car’s excellent forward visibility and short nose that makes it easy to thread down tight streets. And, even if you don’t spot incoming disaster, the car’s automatic emergency brakes should stop an imminent collision.

There’s a whole suite of optional electronics that can also take the monotony out of motorway driving. Specify adaptive cruise control, along with lane-assist with traffic-sign recognition and you’ll end up with a 911 that can drive itself down any road with a white centre line while autonomously observing the speed limit. It can even bring the car to a complete halt and make off again automatically when the traffic starts moving again.