What is it?
If it wasn’t for the influence of history, there might not be a Porsche Turbo Coupé or Cabriolet any more. Back in 1975, fitting a turbocharger to a Porsche 911 and widening the body to accommodate massively bigger rear wheels was a breathtaking thing to do, but that was when ordinary 911s only had 200-and-a-bit horsepower, plus knife edge-handling that meant the extra poke would have sent them backwards through a hedge.
Nowadays, the most basic 911 has 385bhp and every 911 is turbocharged and possesses a wide body anyway. Expanding the 3.0-litre to 3.7 litres and boosting power to 641bhp for the latest Turbo suddenly looks a bit excessive to some eyes, even when the whole vehicle weighs 1700kg, but the traditional existence of a Turbo as a variety of 911 means the demand keeps rolling.
It becomes a 205mph all-wheel-drive car with the astounding 0-62mph acceleration time of 2.8sec, mostly because of the class-beating traction of the rear-engined weight bias and the clever way the sophisticated traction control directs the right amount of torque to every wheel.
Suddenly, we have a car that can more or less match the very quickest supercars, beating them for quality (as Porsche always does) and selling from £168,127, a price that looks decent against McLarens and Ferraris of equal capability, even allowing for the barminess of Porsche’s option pricing, whereby you’re required to pay an extra £2180 for a sports exhaust, £1203 for adaptive cruise control (a gadget that comes free in many an upmarket Vauxhall) and an extra £434 for the best grade of headlight. Even so, our test car’s total of £178,414 still looks okay against others in the supercar realm.
Join the debate
Add your comment
Porsche 911 Turbo S Cabriolet
Over 6.5 feet wide and 1.7 tons! Not a "sports car" for the roads I enjoy driving.
Er...
No, they absolutely have not.
I am making a good salary