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The 5 Best Porsche 911s I’ve Ever Driven After Four Decades Behind the Wheel It’s difficult to wrap my head around the fact that it’s been forty years since I first got behind the wheel of a Porsche 911. The car was a white, 3.0-liter Carrera equipped with black Fuchs alloys. Without rear wings, power steering, or a five-speed manual transmission, it was as pure a 911 as Porsche had ever built. While it was certainly fast, it was also flawed. At the time, I found myself questioning the hype, especially when I had the opportunity to test the Porsche 944 Turbo in the same week. In my home country of Australia, the 944 Turbo cost almost the same as the 911 Carrera. However, the 944 Turbo offered more power, more torque, and was significantly quicker around any road than its legendary sibling, but I still found myself falling in love with the 911. After driving the two cars for two days and covering 600 miles, I had to admit something profound. “I know the 944 Turbo is the better car,” I wrote. “But I also know that if it came down to it, if I had to decide how to spend my money, I would take the 911 Carrera home.” This wasn’t an easy decision to make, though. “The 944 Turbo is so competent that it can make even a bad driver look good,” I remarked. “Its soaring, exhilarating performance is superbly balanced by a chassis of astounding ability.” Yet, the 911 tugged at my emotions. “The gloriously imperfect 911 Carrera is a sports car from a different era that reflects different values. It isn’t designed to cater to the needs of most drivers. It demands understanding and respect. That is why I would take it home.” Since then, I have driven dozens of 911s, and with every iteration—with the exception of the 964, a car that in the early 1990s worryingly suggested that the 911 concept was past its prime—I have marveled at how Porsche has refined its iconic model, keeping it relevant, exciting, and engaging. Even today, four decades after my first drive, the Porsche 911 remains one of the few new cars I would actually buy with my own money. Out of all the 911s I have driven over the past forty years, here are five of the most memorable. The Original 911 Turbo Back in the day, veteran road test journalists spoke of the original Porsche 911 Turbo in awed tones. They described it as a car that demanded the utmost respect when driven with intent, a car whose binary boost states transformed the traditional 911 tightrope between corner-entry understeer and corner-exit oversteer into a challenge that required quick hands and a high level of skill. The 911 Turbo did not forgive mistakes and certainly did not tolerate sloppiness. It was, as they put it, a widowmaker. It took me 35 years to get behind the wheel of an original 911 Turbo and discover the truth. The car I drove was one of the first 30 production Turbos ever built, and it is now part of Porsche’s stunning classic fleet. Out on the road, fully aware of its fearsome reputation, I drove very cautiously at first, modulating the throttle, feeling the boost build up, and monitoring the tachometer, trying to develop a mental map of the power and torque curves. The engine was remarkably docile, happily humming along at 2,000 rpm in top gear as the 911 Turbo cruised at 45 mph. However, once the engine reached 3,500 rpm, there was a noticeable surge in acceleration as the turbocharger forced 0.8 bar into the intake system. But the sledgehammer blow to the shoulder blades that I expected wasn’t there. I learned that the key to driving the original 911 Turbo smoothly and quickly was to keep the 3.0-liter flat-six spinning at 4,000 rpm or more to maintain turbocharger momentum. Yes, there is turbo lag—very noticeable by modern standards—but it is manageable. Even after more than 50 years, this 911 is an impressively fast car on the road. First gear reaches 50 mph, second gear 90 mph, and third gear nearly 130 mph, meaning it can easily navigate winding two-lane roads using only second and third gears. And while it may only have 256 horsepower, it weighs just 2,513 pounds, allowing it to handle corners with ease. Half a century ago, its performance would have seemed otherworldly. 993-Generation Porsche 911 For Porsche purists, this is the last of the line, the last of the true 911s. It is the Porsche that makes you feel close to the road, with the snarling metallic clatter of an air-cooled flat-six behind you. But back in 1994, when I first drove it, the 993 was the 911 of the future, the first in the lineup to challenge Isaac Newton’s laws of physics. Sure, the 993 still featured the responsive front end that demanded to be loaded on corner entry to ensure a precise apex, and the rear end still danced through rough turns, but there was much better synergy between them. The 993 still performed classic 911 maneuvers, but with a much wider margin for error. Key to its success was a new rear suspension that replaced the semi-trailing arms of the past with a new multi-link setup that allowed for very slight initial toe-out on corner entry and then progressive toe-in as lateral loads increased, all while reducing the camber change that had been the Achilles’ heel of 911s since 1963. This was coupled with steering that, at 2.5 turns lock-to-lock, was 16 percent quicker and made the front end feel much more decisive, along with a new six-speed manual transmission that made the most of the 3.6-liter flat-six, which revved more eagerly to its 268-hp peak at 6,100 rpm thanks to lighter internals, a Bosch Motronic 2.0 engine management system, and a new dual-exhaust system. Compared to the 964 model it replaced, the 993 was a revelation. It wasn’t just the engineering upgrades, executed under the leadership of Ulrich Bez, who later headed Aston Martin: The exterior redesign, overseen by design director Harm Lagaay, corrected visual flaws in the 964, which 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. And, most importantly, it was also more desirable. 996-Generation Porsche 911 At the time, it was seen as heresy. Porsche’s decision to install a water-cooled flat-six in the rear of the 996-series 911 was, to the aficionados, the automotive equivalent of Bob Dylan switching from his acoustic guitar to a Fender Stratocaster at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. However, 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 that the world would come to know as the Boxster. Porsche boss Wendelin Weideking understood that the Boxster was necessary to provide dealers with something else to sell once the aging 928 and 968 models were discontinued. “We built two cars for the price of one and a half,” design director Lagaay remarked with a smile after the company unveiled the 996. But while the media focused on its relationship with the Boxster and its water-cooled engine, the 996’s true significance ran much deeper. In 1994, it took Porsche 130 hours to build a 993-series 911; the 996 took just 60 hours to build. The modern 911 had arrived: roomier and equipped with all the features expected of a late 20th-century sports car, yet still recognizably Porsche’s icon. Most importantly, it still drove like a 911. Only better. Yes, there was a new veneer of sophistication in how it went about its business, but the 996 retained the delicious tactility and urgent response that had made the 911 a sports car like no other. Along with the original Boxster, it saved Porsche from extinction. 991.2-Generation Porsche 911 Carrera Of all the 911s I have driven, it was a base 991.2 Carrera that truly stole my heart. It stole everyone else’s too, judging