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40 Years of Automotive Mastery: The 5 Most Memorable Porsche 911s I’ve Ever Driven It’s difficult to believe it’s now been four decades since I first got behind the wheel of a Porsche 911. The experience remains etched in my memory: a white 3.0-liter Carrera with classic black Fuchs wheels, a narrow body, no rear wing, and a five-speed manual. It was about as pure a 911 as Porsche has ever produced. At the time, it was fast but flawed, and I must admit I initially wondered what all the fuss was about. This confusion was largely due to the company it kept during my test—a 944 Turbo that cost almost the same as the 911 Carrera in my home country of Australia. The 944 had more power, more torque, and could be driven faster with far less effort on almost any road. Despite this, I fell deeply in love with the 911 all the same. “After two days and 600 miles,” I wrote in my review, “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 a conclusion I reached easily. “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.” Yet, the 911 tugged at the heartstrings. “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.” I’ve driven dozens of 911s since then, and with every iteration—with the notable exception of the 964, which in the early 1990s worrying suggested the 911 concept was past its sell-by date—I’ve been amazed at how Porsche has polished its icon, keeping it relevant, exciting, and engaging. Four decades after my first 911 drive, it remains one of the few new cars on which I would spend my own hard-earned dollars. Of all the 911 models I’ve driven over the past 40 years, here are five of the most memorable. The Original 911 Turbo (930) Back in the era when I drove that 3.0-liter Carrera, veteran automotive 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 vehicle whose binary boost states turned the traditional 911 tightrope—the delicate balance between corner-entry understeer and corner-exit oversteer—into a high-stakes operation requiring quick hands and nerves of steel. The 911 Turbo did not forgive mistakes, nor did it tolerate sloppiness. It was, they claimed, a widowmaker. It took me 35 years to get behind the wheel of an original 911 Turbo and finally discover the truth behind these tales. The car I experienced was one of the first 30 production Turbos ever built, now a prized part of Porsche’s mouthwatering classic fleet. Out on the road, aware of its fearsome reputation, I took it very easy at first, carefully feeding the throttle, feeling the boost engage, and watching the tachometer, trying to build a mental map of the power and torque curves. The engine was remarkably tractable, happy to murmur along at 2,000 rpm in top gear as the 911 Turbo trundled along at 45 mph. Once the engine hit 3,500 rpm, however, there was a noticeable surge in acceleration as the turbocharger dumped 0.8 bar of pressure into the induction system. But the sledgehammer blow between the shoulder blades I expected was absent. I learned that the trick to smooth and swift progress in the original 911 Turbo was to keep the 3.0-liter flat-six spinning at 4,000 rpm or more to maintain turbocharger responsiveness. Yes, there’s significant turbo lag—incredibly pronounced by modern standards—but it is manageable. Even today, more than 50 years after its debut, this 911 is an impressively fast car on the road. First gear reaches 50 mph, second gear extends to 90 mph, and third gear propels the car to nearly 130 mph, meaning it can dominate most winding backroads using only second and third gears. And while it possesses a mere 256 hp, it weighs just 2,513 pounds, allowing it to charge into and exit corners with confidence. Half a century ago, its performance figures would have seemed otherworldly. The 993-Generation Porsche 911 For Porsche purists, this is the last of the line—the last of the true 911s. It is the Porsche you drive with your knuckles brushing the dashboard, the snarling metallic clatter of an air-cooled flat-six roaring behind you. But back in 1994, when I first drove it, the 993 was the 911 of the future, the first of the lineage to challenge Isaac Newton’s laws of physics. Sure, the 993 still possessed the characteristic pat-pat-patter of the front end that demanded proper loading on corner entry to ensure you hit the apex, and the rear end still exhibited its signature rhumba dance through rough turns. However, there was a much greater harmony between the front and rear. The 993 still performed all the things that made a 911 a 911, but it did so with a much greater margin for error. Key to this transformation was a new rear suspension that replaced the antiquated semi-trailing arms with a modern multilink setup. This innovation allowed for very slight initial toe-out on corner entry, transitioning to progressive toe-in as lateral loads increased, all while significantly reducing the camber change that had plagued 911s since their inception in 1963. This advancement was combined with a steering system that, at 2.5 turns lock-to-lock, was 16 percent quicker, making the front end feel far more decisive. A new six-speed manual transmission made the most of the 3.6-liter flat-six engine, which roared harder toward its 268-hp power peak at 6,100 rpm thanks to lighter internals, Bosch Motronic 2.0 engine management, and a revised 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 became the head of Aston Martin). The exterior redesign, overseen by design chief Harm Lagaay, corrected visual issues he perceived in the 964, a car he felt was too tall at the front and disproportionately low at the rear. The interior was cleaner as well, with fewer buttons scattered in random locations. The 993 was a 911 that was faster and more forgiving than ever. Crucially, it was also more desirable. The 996-Generation Porsche 911 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 acoustic six-string for a Fender Strat at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. However, the 996, the first ground-up 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 direction 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, more affordable mid-engine roadster the world would soon know as the Boxster. Iconoclastic Porsche boss Wendelin Weideking understood the necessity of the Boxster to provide dealers with an alternative product to sell once the aging 928 and 968 models were discontinued. “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 water-cooled engine, the 996’s true significance ran far deeper. In 1994, it took Porsche 130 hours to build a 993-series 911; the 996 required just 60 hours to assemble. 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, it was better. Yes, there was a new veneer of sophistication to the way it conducted its business, but the 9