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Porsche 911: A 40-Year Evolution of the Unforgettable Icon It’s hard to believe it’s been four decades since I first got behind the wheel of a Porsche 911. I remember it vividly: a white 3.0-liter Carrera, black Fuchs alloys, no rear wing, no power steering, and a five-speed manual. It was as pure as a 911 could get. But in the same company was a 944 Turbo, then in my home country of Australia, costing about the same. The 944 Turbo had more power, more torque, and ate up winding roads with far less effort. Yet, I still fell 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. “The 944 Turbo is so competent, it can make a bad driver look good. 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.” Since then, I’ve driven dozens of 911s, and with every generation—apart from the 964, which in the early 1990s seemed to suggest the 911 idea was past its prime—I’ve marveled at how Porsche has polished its icon, keeping it relevant, exciting, and engaging. Four decades after my first drive, it remains one of the few new cars on which I’d spend my own hard-earned money. Of all the 911s I’ve driven over the past 40 years, here are five of the most memorable. The Original 911 Turbo: A Legend Forged in Turbo Lag When I drove that 3.0-liter Carrera, veteran road testers spoke of the original Porsche 911 Turbo in awed tones. It was, they said, 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 job that required quick hands and courage. The 911 Turbo did not forgive mistakes, did not tolerate sloppiness. It was, they said, 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, now part of Porsche’s mouthwatering classic fleet. Out on the road, aware of its fearsome reputation, I took it very easy at first, playing with the throttle, feeling the boost come in and watching the tachometer, trying to build a mental map of the power and torque curves. The engine was remarkably tractable, happy to murmur at 2,000 rpm in top gear as the 911 Turbo trickled along at 45 mph. Once the engine hit 3,500 rpm, though, there was a noticeable acceleration surge as the turbocharger huffed 0.8 bar into the induction system. But the sledgehammer blow between the shoulder blades I expected wasn’t there. 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’s turbo lag—very noticeable turbo lag by modern standards—but it’s manageable. It might be more than 50 years old, but even today this 911 is an impressively fast car on the road. First gear runs to 50 mph, second to 90 mph, and third to almost 130 mph, which means it will destroy most winding two-lanes using only second and third. And while it might have a mere 256 hp, it weighs just 2,513 pounds, which means it readily gets into and out of corners. Half a century ago its performance would have seemed otherworldly. 993-Generation Porsche 911: The End of the Air-Cooled Era For Porsche purists, this is the last of the line, the last of the real 911s. It’s the Porsche you drive with your knuckles grazing the dash and 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 of the line to sidle up to Isaac Newton and argue about the laws of physics. Oh, sure, the 993 still had the pat-pat-pattery front end that demanded to be loaded on corner entry to make sure you hit the apex, and the rear end still rhumbaed through the rougher turns, but there was much more simpatico between them. The 993 still did 911 things, but within a much better margin. Key to it all was a new rear suspension that replaced the semi-trailing arms of old with a new multilink setup that allowed 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 combined with steering that at 2.5 turns lock-to-lock was 16 percent quicker and made the front end feel much more decisive, plus a new six-speed manual transmission that made the most of the 3.6-liter flat-six that zinged harder to its 268-hp power peak at 6,100 rpm thanks to lighter internals, a Bosch Motronic 2.0 engine management system, and a new dual exhaust system. Compared with the 964 model it replaced, the 993 was a revelation. It wasn’t just the engineering upgrades, done under the leadership of Ulrich Bez, later the head of Aston Martin: The exterior redesign, executed under the direction of design chief Harm Lagaay, corrected visual problems with the 964, a car he thought was too tall at the front and too pulled down at the rear. The interior was cleaner, too, with fewer buttons in random locations. The 933 was a 911 that was faster and more forgiving than ever. And, most important, it was more desirable, too. 996-Generation Porsche 911: The 911 That Saved Porsche At the time, it was 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. But while media attention focused on its relationship with the Boxster and the water-cooled engine, the 996’s real story ran much deeper. In 1994, it had taken 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 the all the features expected of a late 20th-century sports car but still recognizably Porsche’s icon. Most important, it still drove like a 911. Only better. Yes, there was a new veneer of sophistication to the way 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. And along with that original Boxster, it saved Porsche from extinction. 991.2-Generation Porsche 911 Carrera: A Purist’s Dream Car Of all the 911s I’ve driven, it was a base 991.2 Carrera that truly stole my heart. It stole everyone else’s too, judging from the feedback I got