Expert Car Review : 2007 Porsche 911 Turbo

You can almost plot the evolution of mankind over the last 30 years by looking at the porsche 911 turbo. In the beginning (1974, to be exact) the fastest 911 was ragged, rugged very fast and not especially responsible.
And throughout the 80's it was more of the same,only wilder.
Then in the late 1990s Porsche reaslised that there should be more to the 911 turbo than pure excess.As the world was getting richer and more sophisticated ,so did the Turbo, reaching its zenith in Y2K. By replacing the fast but still furious 993 Turbo with the altogether more rounded and yes, faster still 996 Turbo, Porsche produced what was arguably its best road car upto that point-and not surprisingly it sold in way bigger numbers than any previous Turbo had.

Design and engineering:
Central to the technical advances Porsche has made with this car over its predecessor is the development and evolution of the Cayenne. When developing their Range Rover rival, porsche's engineers realised just how beneficial a cutting edge four wheel drive system can be when trying to deploy large amounts of power and torque. As a result, the new Turbo features much of the all wheel drive technology pioneered on the cayenne.

It has three electronic control systems that interact to maximize the Turbo's traction, handling and stability, and unlike the previous model that actively react to what the car is doing on the road. These are Porsche traction management (PTM), which controls torque split between front and rear axles, Porsche Active suspension management (PASM), which adjusts the electronic dampers accordingly, and porsche stability management (PSM), which uses the brakes, throttle and rear diff to control understeer and oversteer.

The driver can also select sport mode,which firms up the dampers, pulls back the PSM and ABS thresholds and raises the rev limit.

Ofcourse, none of this would be necessary were the 911 turbo not equipped with a monstrous amount of power and torque from its twin turbo flat six engine. Capacity remains at 3.6 litres but, thanks largely to the development of a new Borg Warner variable-geometry turbocharger for each bank of three cylinders( a first for a petrol engine), power jumps from 414 to 473bhp at 6000 rpm, while torque rises from 413 to 457lb ft. More important still, this torque peak is delivered all the way from 1950rpm to 5000rpm, endowing the 911 with a phenemonal amount of flexibility.

If thats not enough, yet more torque is available if a customer specifies the optional sports chrono pack. This in effect provided an overboost period that allows torque to swell under full throttle to 502lb ft between 2100-4000rpm-for all of 10sec.

Two transmissions are available: six speed manual or tiptronic. Porsche's officials figures suggest the tiptronic car is quicker-slightly- than the manual under acceleration.

A 911 turbo wouldn't be a 911 turbo without the monumental set of brakes, and the new car is no exception. Standard stoppers are 350mm cast iron ventilated discs front and rear, with six piston capillars at the front.

Visually the turbo can be distinguished from lesser 911s by its bespoke 19in wheels, its deeper front valance featuring numerous new cooling ducts, and by its bigger twin-wing rear spoiler, the upper section of which deploys at 75mph and lowers at 37mph.

Porsche has also worked hard on aerodynamics. The drag factor is the same as before at 0.31, despite the many new cooling channels required by the more powerful engine, but it now produces a small amount of downforce at the rear(17 kg at 150mph).Both of these are improvements over the old car.Tyre sizes have risen fractionally at the front to 235/35 ZR19s with significantly wider 305/30ZR19s at the rear, supplied by Michelin or Bridgestone.

Performance and Brakes:
The Turbo's braking ability is predictably immense , especially when fitted with the PCCB option. It takes just 2.5 sec to stop from 60mph and covers just 44.4m in getting from 70-0mph. These are phenomenally good results. But, as ever, its the level of feel through the pedal and the total absense of fade that most impress. If anything,it stops even better than it goes.

Handling and Ride:
Porsche's intention with this car is clear:despite its monumental performance, the 911 Turbo is meant to be a car you can drive and live with everyday,largely without compromising ride comfort and long distance refinement.
And in the main it hits the bull's eye on all counts. First thing you notice is how amazingly calm and sophisticated the ride is. Encounter a speed hump and the crash you're expecting to reverberate through the chasis never arrives,instead, the dampers soak up most road scars as if they didn't exist.
Thats the first surprise. Second is how well damped the steering is, to the extent that there is virtually no kickback through the rim, even when you run over relatively large potholes.
Overall this is both a good and bad thing. Good because it means the Turbo is an amazingly refined and civilised car to drive,seemingly irrespective of the conditions underfoot. Bad becasue, like all 997s with variable-rate assistance, the seam of communication between car,driver and road surface has unquestionably faded a little. Instead of providing a delicious stream of feedback, the steering reacts to and erases an inconsistencies in road surface before they are relayed to the wheel which is great if you merely want to sit back and go as fast as possible, but less welcome if you relish the sort of steering interaction a 966 Turbo used to deliver.

Everything else about the Turbo's chassis is so close to perfection, however, that you don't miss the absence of steering feel as much as you'd think. From the way it's damped and so controlled at speed to the way it clings to the road seemingly oblivious of weather conditions, It's hard to think of a car that can cover ground more quickly or in such security.

Although there's some movement of the body when you really lean on it in a quick corner, this rarely develops into anything more than just that. A controlled and very slight movement, and although the tail will eventually let go if you back away from the throttle sharply into a tightening bend,it never just snaps away as of old. There's always a sense of balance to the chassis, even if you provoke it into a slide. And in any case, that's only if you swicth all the stability and traction control systems off.

What isn't so impressive is the amount of tyre roar it generates, especially from the rear over coarse surface above 60mph-in other words, on motorways. This is no doubt the result of those bigger 305-section rear covers. It's a shame because it's one of those things that spoils the Turbo's credentials as a mile-eater.