There, I said it.
And now, allow me to explain why.
There is usually an inverse correlation between a performance car’s ultimate abilities and its practicality. Too often, fast cars are fun to drive on the open road, where you can wring them out to their capabilities. But as anyone who’s ever spent any time in, say, a Lamborghini, Lotus or even some Corvettes will tell you, there are usually huge tradeoffs in functionality.
Whether its exterior visibility or cockpit space and ergonomics, performance cars can flat be difficult and uncomfortable in daily commuting. And that’s where the 911 Turbo truly is transcendent.
This is a car that has a 500-horsepower turbocharged engine, accelerates from zero to 60 miles per hour in a staggering 3.2 seconds, and has a top speed of 194 mph. It handles like a slot car, with ultimate limits far in excess of the vast majority of drivers. In fact, you will almost certainly run out of nerve and/or talent with this car long before the car runs out of grip.
And yet, the 911 Turbo is as docile as the family minivan in traffic. It even delivers the same fuel mileage – 17 mpg city/25 highway – as a Honda Odyssey. It idles smoothly, is happy running at normal speeds and is the ultimate in no muss, no fuss.
A huge part of the credit for the street-friendly civility of the 911 Turbo goes to the Porsche-Doppelkupplungsgetriebe (PDK) seven-speed dual clutch transmission. Basically, with this transmission, you can either put it in drive and let it shift itself or use the Formula 1-style paddle shifters mounted on the steering wheel.
While some will doubtless think of it as heresy to drive a Porsche without a full-on manual gearbox, get over it. If semi-automatics are good enough for Formula 1 cars – and they are – they are plenty good for a high-performance Porsche.
It should go without saying that one of true defining characteristics of all 911 models is the brakes. The 2010 911 Turbo is no exception, with six-piston monobloc calipers up front, front discs that measure 14.96 inches by 1.34 inches (380 mm by 34 mm) and rear discs that are 13.78 inches by 1.1 inches (350 mm by 28 mm).
The suspension is equally stellar. Up front is a McPherson design with spring strut axles with separately mounted longitudinal and track control arms, conical stump springs with an inner damper, and twin-sleeve gas-pressurized dampers.
In the rear are Porsche's five-arm, spring-strut suspension with longitudinal and track control arms. The rear coil springs have co-axial, single-sleeve gas-pressure inner dampers.
There are also a whole host of electronic controls that work synergistically to optimize handling, braking and acceleration. Let’s cut to the quick here: You could spend a month reading about all the technical elements of this car, but the bottom line is that it corners as if it’s on rails. As noted earlier, the limits of this car are higher than the limits of 99.9 percent of the drivers out there.
The cockpit is damned near perfect, too. I’m 6-foot-4 and not at all thin, yet I had all the room I possibly needed behind the wheel. And even with the easy-to-operate convertible top up, visibility in all directions was excellent.
The build quality of the 911 is absolutely top notch, with high-grade materials and excellent ergonomics. Everyone who got into the cockpit did exactly the same thing as they sat down: ran their hand over the dashboard and went, “Oooh.” Fit and finish was to die for, and in truth, the cockpit was much more comfortable than I would have expected.
Last but certainly not least, there’s the whole question of aesthetics. The 911 Turbo has iconic lines that trace directly back to the first 911s in the mid-1960s. This is a stunning design, sexy but elegant with lines that have and will withstand the test of time.
None of this comes cheap, of course. The “base” price of a 911 Turbo Cabriolet is $143,800, and our tester topped out at a little over $172k. That’s far more than most of us will ever be able to afford, but I will say it represents an excellent value.
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