For those who cry out for a car that celebrates the raw, unfiltered driving experience that Porsche’s famed for delivering, here’s to you.
Porsche has listened, and unveiled a special 911 at the Geneva Motor Show that honours the old ways. Its loud, light, has the 911 GT3’s 373kW engine, a manual shifter, is predictably very quick, even has a couple of stripes, and will sell in limited numbers (991 units).
Some people resist change, either in big or small ways. To the Porsche nostaligist, Zuffenhausen’s decisions over the past two decades or so have perhaps filled their hearts with quiet dread, straying away from the driver-focused and decidedly analogue sports cars that it built its name upon.
What with Porsche's efforts in SUVs, luxury saloons, turbocharging, the slow purge of manual transmissions and hydraulic power steering - they do have a point.
Back to this new 911 R, which takes its name from Porsche’s limited-run homologated road racer from the late 1960s, it sports all the right ingredients to make even the most hardened Porsche cynic soften their stance.
On the outside, it’s hard to ignore the 911 R’s paintjob, with its pronounced dual red stripes running along the otherwise white body. It even inherits the tastily dished centre-locking forged matt aluminium wheels from the GT3. The base 911's overall silhouette, however, remains largely untouched as Stuttgart felt the R doesn’t need the fixed-wing treatment to aid in aerodynamics.
Porsche has lifted the 4.0-litre high-revving (8250rpm) naturally-aspirated flat-six engine from the GT3 RS as well as several key lightweight components from the GT3, leaving its 373kW and 460Nm to have to deal with just 1,370kg. That figure, astoundingly, means this 911 R undercuts Porsche’s (now previously) most lightened offering, the 911 GT3 RS, by 50kg.
Other measures to trim fat from the conventional 911 Carrera have been taken for the R. The rear seats are gone, of course, and the remaining two front seats are carbon fibre. For the finnicky owner, they’ll be glad to know that, among other things, the door handles have been replaced by pull straps while even the radio and air conditioning can be dropped from the options list.
All that lightness means 100km/h mark comes up from standstill in just 3.7 seconds, give or take, depending how handy the driver is at shifting on his or her own with the short throw, close ratio 6-speed manual transmission – possibly while wearing a huge grin - on to the 911 R’s top speed of 323km/h (201mph).
Along with a mechanical locking differential, stopping power has also been rethought with 911 R featuring carbon ceramic brakes (410mm front, 305mm rear).
How can you not get excited about a car as objectively ‘right’ as this? Disappointingly, word is that all allocated units that are due to be headed to Australia by the tail-end of 2016 are already sold out. Sigh.
