The Definitive All-Time 911 Ranking: Five Porsches That Defined a Legend
After four decades of hands-on experience behind the wheel, the debate over the “best” Porsche 911 is less about horsepower and more about soul. I’ve driven them all—the raw, the refined, the digital, and the drifters. When you spend enough time with the iconic rear-engine silhouette, certain models etch themselves into your memory, not just as cars, but as experiences.
I first encountered the legend forty years ago during an automotive test in my native Australia. A simple white 911 Carrera with black Fuchs alloys. No spoilers, no power steering, just a five-speed manual box. It was fast, but raw—unforgiving in ways a modern driver might find alarming. Next to it sat the newly minted 944 Turbo, the technical darling of the era. It was faster, smoother, and easier to drive. Yet, in the end, my choice was clear. As I wrote in the original MotorTrend test review: “The 944 Turbo is so competent, it can make a bad driver look good… 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.”
This sentiment has never left me. In the 40 years since, I have witnessed the evolution of this automotive icon. Through countless generations—excluding the awkward 964 era which once made me fear for the 911’s future—Porsche has consistently reinvented the wheel, keeping the 911 at the cutting edge of performance while retaining its unique identity. Four decades on, it remains one of the very few new cars I would still buy with my own money.
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The Definitive All-Time 911 Ranking: Five Porsches That Defined a Legend
After four decades of hands-on experience behind the wheel, the debate over the “best” Porsche 911 is less about horsepower and more about soul. I’ve driven them all—the raw, the refined, the digital, and the drifters. When you spend enough time with the iconic rear-engine silhouette, certain models etch themselves into your memory, not just as cars, but as experiences.
I first encountered the legend forty years ago during an automotive test in my native Australia. A simple white 911 Carrera with black Fuchs alloys. No spoilers, no power steering, just a five-speed manual box. It was fast, but raw—unforgiving in ways a modern driver might find alarming. Next to it sat the newly minted 944 Turbo, the technical darling of the era. It was faster, smoother, and easier to drive. Yet, in the end, my choice was clear. As I wrote in the original MotorTrend test review: “The 944 Turbo is so competent, it can make a bad driver look good… 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.”
This sentiment has never left me. In the 40 years since, I have witnessed the evolution of this automotive icon. Through countless generations—excluding the awkward 964 era which once made me fear for the 911’s future—Porsche has consistently reinvented the wheel, keeping the 911 at the cutting edge of performance while retaining its unique identity. Four decades on, it remains one of the very few new cars I would still buy with my own money.
From the widowmaker mystique of the early Turbos to the razor-sharp aerodynamics of today’s GT3 RS, this rear-engine symphony has been played in many keys. But through all the changes, some performances stand out. These are the five Porsche 911s that have left the deepest impression in my four decades of testing.
The Original 911 Turbo (930): The Widowmaker Unleashed
Before my 2018 test drive, the original 911 Turbo had passed into automotive legend, spoken of in hushed, reverent tones by veterans of the golden age of road testing. They described a car that demanded absolute respect, where the switch between corner-entry understeer and corner-exit oversteer was a razor’s edge, requiring quick hands and even quicker judgment. It was a car that punished mistakes, a car known as the “widowmaker.”
It took me 35 years to finally get behind the wheel of an original 911 Turbo. It wasn’t a standard road car. This was one of the first 30 production Turbos ever built, now a pristine piece of Porsche’s historic fleet. Approaching this legend, aware of its fearsome reputation, I started cautiously. I played with the throttle, feeling the turbo’s response, trying to map the power and torque curves mentally.
To my surprise, the engine was remarkably tractable at low RPM. Cruising at 45 mph in top gear, the engine hummed contentedly at 2,000 rpm, behaving like any ordinary car. But then came the shift at 3,500 rpm. The 0.8-bar turbo boost kicked in. It wasn’t the expected sledgehammer blow to the back of the neck, but a powerful surge of acceleration that pushed me deep into the leather seat.
The secret to navigating this icon is simple: keep the 3.0-liter flat-six spinning at 4,000 rpm or higher. Yes, the turbo lag is significant by modern standards, but it is manageable. Even after fifty years, this 911 is ferociously fast on the road. First gear rockets to 50 mph, second tops out at 90 mph, and third reaches almost 130 mph. This means you can tear through winding backroads using only second and third gear. With only 256 hp but weighing just 2,513 pounds, the 930 handles corners with astonishing agility. Half a century ago, this performance was simply otherworldly.
Today, the original Porsche 911 Turbo price is astronomical, but its legacy is undeniable. It was the car that proved a turbocharged engine didn’t have to be lazy. It set the benchmark for high-performance sports cars and remains one of the most sought-after classic Porsches on the market.
The 993-Generation Porsche 911: The Peak of Air Cooling
For Porsche purists, the 993 is the end of an era, the last of the “true” 911s. It’s the car that connects you intimately with the machine—your knuckles brush the dash, and the snarling, metallic roar of an air-cooled flat-six engine echoes behind your head. Yet, back in 1994, when I first drove it, the 993 was the 911 of the future, the first generation to truly challenge Isaac Newton’s laws of physics.
Sure, the 993 retained the characteristic front-end agility that demands careful load-up on corner entry to hit the apex. The rear end still danced through rough turns. But the 993 brought a new level of harmony to the chassis. It still felt like a 911, but with a significantly improved margin of error.
The revolution was the new rear suspension system. Porsche replaced the traditional semi-trailing arms with a sophisticated multilink setup. This ingenious design allowed for very slight initial toe-out on corner entry, followed by progressive toe-in as lateral forces increased. Crucially, it also reduced the camber change that had been the Achilles’ heel of 911s since their inception.
This innovation was combined with a new steering system. At just 2.5 turns lock-to-lock, the 993 steering was 16 percent quicker, giving the front end a much more decisive feel. Furthermore, Porsche introduced a new six-speed manual transmission that made the most of the 3.6-liter flat-six. Lighter internals, Bosch Motronic 2.0 engine management, and a new dual-exhaust system allowed the engine to zing harder, reaching its 268 hp peak at 6,100 rpm.
Compared to the 964 it replaced, the 993 was a revelation. It wasn’t just the engineering upgrades under Ulrich Bez (later the head of Aston Martin). The exterior redesign by Harm Lagaay corrected the visual issues he perceived in the 964, which he considered too tall at the front and too pulled down at the rear. The interior was cleaner, too, with fewer buttons scattered randomly.
The 993 was a faster, more forgiving 911. But most importantly, it was more desirable. It successfully bridged the gap between heritage and modernity, setting the stage for the next chapter. The 993 Carrera price has seen a massive surge in recent years, with pristine examples now fetching prices that rival modern supercars, cementing its status as a collectible Porsche.
The 996-Generation Porsche 911: The Hero That Saved the Brand
At the time of its release, the 996 was sacrilege. Porsche’s decision to install a water-cooled flat-six engine in the tail of the 996-series 911 was, for the purists, akin to Bob Dylan trading his acoustic guitar for a Fender Stratocaster at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. But the 996, the first clean-sheet redesign of Porsche’s legendary sports car in 34 years, was a hero car to me. It was the 911 that saved Porsche.
Engineered under the direction of Porsche R&D chief Horst Marchart, the 996 was a brilliant piece of engineering, not least because it shared 38 percent of its components with an all-new, lower-cost mid-engine roadster we would come to know as the Boxster. The iconoclastic Porsche boss, Wendelin Weideking, knew the Boxster was essential to keep dealerships busy once the aging 928 and 968 models were discontinued. “We did two cars for the price of one-and-a-half,” design boss Harm Lagaay later remarked with a smile after the company unveiled the 996.
But while media attention focused on its relationship with the Boxster and the water-cooled engine, the 996’s real impact was far deeper. In 1994, it took Porsche 130 hours to build a 993-series 911; the 996 took just 60 hours. The modern 911 had arrived. It was roomier, equipped with all the features expected of a late 20th-century sports car, yet still unmistakably Porsche’s icon.
Most importantly, it still drove like a 911. Only better. While the 99