   2013 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S. Click image to enlarge |
Review and photos by Jonathan Yarkony
With this latest generation of Porsche Cayman winning over enthusiasts and armchair racers with its engaging character, I thought I’d take a minute to set the record straight: The 911 is still the best Porsche money can buy. Yes, it costs more money, but that is because it is better. Bigger, faster, and better.
Now, you are free to your opinion, even when it is wrong, but I thought I’d share some of my experiences in the 911. We’ve had countless reviews of pretty much every flavour of 911 (wouldn’t you?), but rarely do we put it to the ultimate test: taking it to the track.
Well, I did. And it was a religious experience.
For starters, it came dressed in a crisp, pure white paint job (no charge colour!). It also featured Porsche’s seven-speed manual transmission (also no charge), which meant I would actually have to drive the car. Not surprisingly, pedal placement is perfect for what mangled heel-toe shifting I could come up with.
Anyhow, before getting on the track, I had to drive there, and that meant over an hour of cruising on the highway. Here the 911 benefits from that tall seventh gear, purring along at low revs (2,200 rpm at 120 km/h) and sipping gas at an estimated 9.0 L/100 km (26 mpg) on the highway according to the EPA or 7.5 if you trust the Canadian Energuide ratings (which we don’t). EPA estimates city consumption at 12.4 L/100 km (19 mpg), while Energuide suggests 11.3. Neither offers estimates for track consumption, though in my experience it is significantly higher, since you are essentially going nowhere while consuming significant quantities of fuel. Still seems like good value to me, though. Between a week of commuting, the highway drive out, the track day and the ride home, the 911 landed at 13.9 – prior to the track day it was in the high 11s.
   2013 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S. Click image to enlarge |
I doubt many people arrive at the Porsche 911 as an automotive solution if L/100 km is high on their list of criteria, so let’s get back to the drive. In addition to its efficiency, the 911 is also comfortable and quiet for a sports car – you might almost mistake it for a luxury car – but still louder than many average sedans and SUVs. That flat-six behind the rear seats does love to wail… or perhaps it is that I was constantly downshifting in order to listen to it wail. There is nothing quite like the sound of a Porsche flat-six screaming in your ears, except perhaps the even more raw and unfiltered aural attack of an air-cooled 911. V8s rumble and turbo-fours whine, but nothing says ‘racecar’ to me like the rising staccato of Porsche’s signature engine layout.
And after a couple hours keeping this thoroughbred reined in, we arrived at the cold, wet, and sparsely populated track – funny how rain keeps many track rats away, huh? Frankly, I likely would have refrained from this event if the 911 in question wasn’t graced with a 4 on the tail. I was driving the Carrera 4S, affectionately known as C4S, with Porsche’s all-wheel-drive system (PTM) distributing torque between the front and rear axles (the rear axle always receives some portion of the power, the front only as much as necessary to aid traction) and Porsche Torque Vectoring (PTV), standard on S models, managing the side to side power transfer. In manual-equipped cars, this is mechanically engaged, whereas in PDK-equipped cars it is managed electronically.
