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40 Years Behind the Wheel: The Five Porsche 911s That Defined a Legend It’s difficult to wrap my head around the fact that forty years have passed since I first got behind the wheel of a Porsche 911. The memory is etched in my mind: a pure, unadulterated 3.0-liter Carrera in white, rolling on black Fuchs alloys, with no rear wing, no power steering, and a five-speed manual in hand. It was fast, yes, but it was also flawed. To be honest, when I drove it, I questioned the hype. Back then, in my home country of Australia, I was testing it alongside a 944 Turbo—a car that cost virtually the same as the 911 Carrera. The 944 Turbo was quicker, torquier, and fundamentally faster on any road I threw at it. Yet, despite the superior performance of the Porsche 944 Turbo, I fell head over heels in love with the 911. “After two days and 600 miles,” I wrote, “I’m certain. I know the 944 Turbo is the better car. But I also know that if it came to the crunch, that if it were me agonizing over how to spend my money, I’d take the 911 Carrera home.” It wasn’t an easy decision, though. “The 944 Turbo is so competent, it can make a bad driver look good,” I confessed. “Its soaring, searing performance is superbly counterbalanced by a chassis of astounding ability.” But the 911 was different. It 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.” Since that initial encounter, I’ve driven dozens of Porsches. With every iteration—barring the 964, which in the early 1990s suggested the 911 concept might be reaching its expiration date—I’ve been astonished by how Porsche has refined its icon, keeping it relevant, exciting, and engaging. Four decades on, the 911 remains one of the few new cars that I would spend my own hard-earned dollars on. Of all the 911 models I’ve driven in the past forty years, these five stand out as the most unforgettable. The Original 911 Turbo (930) Even back when I drove that first 3.0-liter Carrera, seasoned road-test journalists spoke of the original Porsche 911 Turbo in hushed tones of awe. They described it as a car that demanded the utmost respect when driven with intent, a car whose binary boost characteristics transformed the traditional 911 tightrope walk between corner-entry understeer and corner-exit oversteer into a task requiring quick hands and nerve. The 911 Turbo was merciless; it tolerated no mistakes and no 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. The car I drove was one of the first 30 production Turbos ever built, now proudly displayed in Porsche’s breathtaking classic fleet. Aware of its fearsome reputation, I initially drove with extreme caution, teasing the throttle, monitoring the boost pressure, and watching the tachometer to build a mental map of its power and torque curves. The engine was remarkably tractable for the era, happy to purr along at 2,000 rpm in top gear as the 911 Turbo cruised at 45 mph. However, once the engine hit 3,500 rpm, there was a distinct surge in acceleration as the turbocharger shoved 0.8 bar of boost into the intake system. But the brutal sledgehammer blow I’d been warned about simply wasn’t there. I soon learned the key to smooth and rapid progress in the original 911 Turbo was to keep the 3.0-liter flat-six spinning above 4,000 rpm to keep the turbocharger energized. Yes, there’s turbo lag—a very noticeable turbo lag by modern standards—but it’s manageable. Even after half a century, this 911 is an impressively quick car on the road. First gear reaches 50 mph, second hits 90 mph, and third goes almost to 130 mph, meaning you can blast through most winding two-lane roads using just second and third gear. And while it only boasts 256 hp, it weighs just 2,513 pounds, allowing it to carve through corners with relative ease. In its day, this level of performance would have seemed otherworldly. The 993-Generation Porsche 911 For Porsche purists, this generation represents the last of the true line, the final iteration of the authentic 911. This is the car you drive with your knuckles grazing the dash and the snarling, metallic clatter of an air-cooled flat-six right behind you. But back in 1994, when I first experienced it, the 993 was the 911 of the future, the first model in the lineage that dared to challenge the fundamental laws of physics. Oh sure, the 993 still exhibited the familiar “pat-pat-pat” feel from the front end, requiring precise loading before corner entry to ensure you hit the apex, and the rear end still exhibited its characteristic rhythmic movement through rough turns. However, there was a newfound harmony between the front and rear. The 993 still did all the things you expect from a 911, but it did them within a much wider margin of error. The secret behind this transformation was a new rear suspension design. It replaced the old semi-trailing arms with a modern multilink setup that allowed for a very slight initial toe-out during corner entry and then a progressive toe-in as lateral loads increased. Crucially, this engineering feat significantly reduced the camber changes that had been the Achilles’ heel of 911s since 1963. This was complemented by a steering system that, at 2.5 turns lock-to-lock, was 16 percent quicker, making the front end feel far more responsive. Additionally, a new six-speed manual transmission allowed drivers to make the most of the 3.6-liter flat-six, which zipped to its 268-hp power peak at 6,100 rpm thanks to lighter internal components, a Bosch Motronic 2.0 engine management system, and a new dual-exhaust setup. Compared to the 964 model it replaced, the 993 was nothing short of a revelation. It wasn’t just the engineering upgrades, carried out under the leadership of Ulrich Bez (who later became the head of Aston Martin); the exterior redesign, executed under the direction of design chief Harm Lagaay, corrected the visual shortcomings of the 964, a car he considered too tall at the front and too low at the rear. The interior was cleaner, too, with fewer buttons scattered haphazardly. The 993 was a 911 that was faster and more forgiving than ever before. And, most importantly, it was more desirable, too. The 996-Generation Porsche 911 At the time, it was pure heresy. Porsche’s decision to install a water-cooled flat-six in the rear of the 996-series 911 was, for aficionados, the automotive equivalent of Bob Dylan ditching his six-string acoustic guitar and picking up a Fender Strat 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 in my eyes. It was the 911 that saved Porsche. Engineered and developed under the guidance of Porsche R&D chief Horst Marchart, the 996 was a clever 911, not least because it shared 38 percent of its components with an all-new, less expensive mid-engine roadster that the world would soon come to know as the Boxster. Iconoclastic Porsche boss Wendelin Weideking understood that the Boxster was essential to provide dealers with another product to sell once 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. But while the media focused on its relationship with the Boxster and the introduction of water cooling, the 996’s real significance ran much deeper. In 1994, it took Porsche 130 hours to build a 993-series 911; the 996 took just 60 hours to assemble. The modern 911 had arrived: roomier and equipped with all the features expected of a late 20th-century sports car, but still unmistakably Porsche’s icon. Most importantly, it still drove like a 911. Only better. Yes, there was a new veneer of sophistication to the way it conducted its business, but the 996 retained the delicious tactility and urgent response that had