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The Ten Most Memorable Porsche 911s I’ve Driven in 40 Years of Testing It’s hard to wrap my head around it, but it’s been four decades since I first got behind the wheel of a Porsche 911. I remember the car perfectly: a white 3.0-liter Carrera with those iconic black Fuchs alloy wheels. It was a narrow-body model with no rear wing and no power steering, mated to a five-speed manual transmission. It was as pure a 911 as Porsche has ever built. I recall it being blisteringly fast but also flawed. At the time, I wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. Part of that confusion stemmed from the company I was keeping: I was testing it alongside a 944 Turbo. In my home country of Australia, the 944 Turbo cost nearly the same as the 911 Carrera, but it had more power, more torque, and felt faster on any road, with far less effort than its famous sibling. Yet, I found myself falling in love with the 911 all the same. The Heart vs. The Head After two days and 600 miles, I wrote in my notes, “I’m certain. I know the 944 Turbo is the better car. But I also know that if it came to the crunch, if I were agonizing over how to spend my money, I’d take the 911 Carrera home.” It wasn’t an easy decision. “The 944 Turbo is so competent, it can make a bad driver look good,” I said. “Its soaring, searing performance is superbly counterbalanced by a chassis of astounding ability.” But the 911 tugged at the emotions. “The gloriously imperfect 911 Carrera is a sports car of a different age and reflects different values. It’s not tailored to meet the needs of most drivers. It demands understanding and respect. That’s why I’d take it home.” The Modern Era of the 911 Since that first drive, I’ve piloted dozens of 911s. With every iteration—except perhaps the 964, which in the early 1990s hinted that the 911 idea might have reached its expiry date—I’ve marveled at how Porsche has refined its icon, keeping it relevant, exciting, and engaging. Four decades after that first encounter, it remains one of the few new cars I would still spend my hard-earned dollars on. Out of all the 911 models I’ve driven over the past 40 years, these are the ones that have truly stayed with me. The 1976 Porsche 930: The Original Widowmaker In the days when I drove that original 3.0-liter Carrera, veteran road-test journalists spoke of the original Porsche 930 Turbo in hushed, awestruck tones. They described it as a car that demanded the utmost respect when driven with intent. A car whose binary boost states made walking the traditional 911 tightrope between corner-entry understeer and corner-exit oversteer a task requiring quick hands and iron nerves. The 911 Turbo didn’t forgive mistakes, nor did it tolerate sloppiness. Many called it a widowmaker. It took me 35 years to finally get behind the wheel of an original 911 Turbo and discover the truth for myself. A Modern Drive of a Classic Beast The car I tested was one of the first 30 production Turbos ever built, now part of Porsche’s impressive classic fleet. Out on the road, fully aware of its legendary reputation, I took it very easy at first. I played with the throttle, felt the boost spool up, and watched the tachometer, trying to build a mental map of the power and torque curves. Surprisingly, the engine was remarkably tractable. It was happy to purr along at 2,000 rpm in top gear, keeping the 911 Turbo trundling along at 45 mph. But once the engine hit 3,500 rpm, there was a noticeable surge of acceleration as the turbocharger forced 0.8 bar into the induction system. To my surprise, the sledgehammer blow between the shoulder blades I had anticipated didn’t materialize. Mastering the 930 I learned the trick to smooth and quick progress in the original 911 Turbo was to keep the 3.0-liter flat-six spinning at 4,000 rpm or more to keep the turbocharger energized. Yes, there is turbo lag—very noticeable by modern standards—but it’s manageable. Even though it’s more than 50 years old, this 911 remains an impressively fast car on the road. First gear tops out at 50 mph, second at 90 mph, and third at nearly 130 mph. This means it can destroy most winding two-lane roads using only second and third gear. And while it might only produce 256 hp, it weighs just 2,513 pounds, allowing it to get into and out of corners with ease. Half a century ago, its performance was considered otherworldly. The 1994 Porsche 911 (993): The Last of the Pure Breed For Porsche purists, the 993 is the last of the line. The last of the truly air-cooled 911s. It’s the Porsche you drive with your knuckles grazing the dashboard, with the snarling, metallic clatter of an air-cooled flat-six at your back. But back in 1994, when I first drove it, the 993 was the 911 of the future—the first model to challenge the very laws of physics. Oh, sure, the 993 still had that pat-pat-pattery front end that demanded to be loaded on corner entry to ensure you hit the apex, and the rear end still danced through the rougher turns. But there was much more synergy between the front and rear. The 993 still did 911 things, but within a much wider margin of error. The Revolutionary Suspension System Key to all this was a revolutionary rear suspension system that replaced the semi-trailing arms of the past with a new multilink setup. This allowed for very slight initial toe-out on corner entry, followed by progressive toe-in as lateral loads increased, all while reducing the camber change that had been the Achilles’ heel of 911s since 1963. This innovation was combined with steering that, at 2.5 turns lock-to-lock, was 16 percent quicker, making the front end feel much more decisive. It also featured a new six-speed manual transmission that made the most of the 3.6-liter flat-six. The engine was more eager to rev to its peak power output of 268 hp at 6,100 rpm, thanks to lighter internal components, a Bosch Motronic 2.0 engine management system, and a new dual-exhaust system. A Leap Forward in Engineering Compared to the 964 model it replaced, the 993 was a revelation. It wasn’t just the engineering upgrades, carried out under the leadership of Ulrich Bez (who later headed Aston Martin). The exterior redesign, directed by design chief Harm Lagaay, corrected the visual flaws of the 964, a car he felt was too tall at the front and too low at the rear. The interior was cleaner, too, with fewer buttons in random locations. The 993 was a 911 that was faster and more forgiving than ever before. And, most importantly, it was more desirable. It represents a peak in air-cooled Porsche performance, a final, beautiful hurrah before the paradigm shift of water cooling. The 1997 Porsche 911 (996): The Game Changer At the time, it was considered heresy. Porsche’s decision to install a water-cooled flat-six in the tail of the 996-series 911 was, to the aficionados, the automotive equivalent of Bob Dylan ditching his six-string acoustic and picking up a Fender Strat at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. But the 996, the first clean-sheet redesign of Porsche’s indefatigable sports car in 34 years, was a hero car to me. It was the 911 that saved Porsche. Engineered and developed under the direction of Porsche R&D chief Horst Marchart, the 996 was a clever 911, not least because it shared 38 percent of its parts with an all-new, less expensive mid-engine roadster the world would come to know as the Boxster. Iconoclastic Porsche boss Wendelin Weideking knew the Boxster was needed to give dealers something else to sell when the aging 928 and 968 models went out of production. “We did two cars for the price of one-and-a-half,” design boss Lagaay said with a smile after the company unveiled the 996. More Than Just a Water-Cooled Engine But while media attention