First drive reviews of the brand new Porsche Cayenne have been popping up across the credible motoring sites and the reception is generally excellent. Porsche flew lots of reviewers to Crete for the European launch, which won’t have done their feedback any harm, but what the journos are saying makes sense.
The new Cayenne shares its platform with the Bentley Bentayga, Audi Q7 and forthcoming Lamborghini Urus. The Cayenne S has abandoned the beautiful big Porsche-built V8 that my old bus uses and gone to a group-derived 434bhp, twin-turbo V6 with eight-speed automatic transmission.
The 2.9-litre engine has an exceptional torque curve, with 405lb ft on tap from 1800 to 5500 revs! That is really something else and a chunk more than a standard V8 S, which had 310lb ft from 2500-5500. Mine has been ECU flashed, so maybe makes a bit more, but would love to try this twin-turbo with a car trailer on the back.
Matt Bird at Autocar gave the new truck just shy of a five-star rating, calling it “fairly tremendous at a great many things. The Cayenne’s cabin is a triumph, comprised of sumptuous materials, seamlessly integrated technology and considerable style.” The Autocar review goes on to rate the chassis pretty highly:
“Our test Cayenne S featured carbon ceramic brakes, adaptive air suspension, rear axle steering and 21in wheels. When you bear in mind that a standard car would use steel springs, half the amount of steered wheels, smaller rims and iron brakes, you can see how it is hard to make a definitive judgement on the standard Cayenne S. As you might expect, however, the test car delivered a stellar dynamic performance.”
I can’t say that ceramic brakes or rear wheel steering would be essential additions on what I use my Cayenne for, but if you want to hoon it while the kids are in the back trying to Snapchat each other then good luck to you – don’t forget to tick the wipe clean upholstery box.
For the 500 miles a year that a family man might get to really thrash a Cayenne hard with no one else in it, and given how well mine goes on steel springs and steel brakes, not to mention the lack of complexity, I think I would just spec it as standard, but that is not the press fleet way. If you’re going to fly hundreds of road test heroes to Crete at great cost, you must give them air suspension and 21-inch wheels to caress.
Meanwhile, regular people with cash will buy the S with nice paint, simple leather, smaller wheels and reasonable spec. The huge central screen is a must. Pano roof also nice but big glass roofs have a name for playing up in the long term. I don’t miss a leaky, creaky sunroof on mine.
Porsche has announced the new 911 Carrera T: a 911 that is 20 kilograms lighter than the regular Carrera, has a bunch of sporty touches and is sold in a range of bright colours. T stands for Touring, but the car is built with lightweight glass, RS-style pull loops in the doors and a shorter final drive ratio: all hallmarks of a sports purpose machine. The T badging is curious.
The Carrera S (S for Sport) does not come as standard with a shorter final drive, seven speed manual or limited slip differential, while the Carrera T (T for Touring) has all of those things. Twenty-seven litres of fuel equates to twenty kilograms. One could theoretically short fill a Carrera by 27 litres and have a car weighing the same as a Carrera T on full tanks.
The Touring Carrera also comes with less sound deadening (?), no rear seats and an unladen weight of 1425 kilograms. It has a chassis lowered by 10mm (four tenths of an inch), Sport Chrono but without the dash clock (which everyone loves and is sort of the point of Sport Chrono), a gearknob with red shift pattern, something else and some other stuff.
It has a power-to-weight ratio of 260hp per tonne. This is supposed to be viewed as exciting, and it probably is. But I have a twenty year-old BMW M3 sedan with full sound deadening and rear seats (seat belts for five people) that is not a million miles away from this figure. One could get the weight down pretty easily and stick a rocket up the power-to-weight, but that would defeat the point.
Yesterday, I drove a 911R recreation/celebration by the boys at EB Motorsport. It weighs 804 kilograms with a single seat, skinny R wheels and tyres, fully oiled up with a quarter tank of fuel. The twin-plug, 2-litre engine makes 220 horsepower, which gives a power-to-weight ratio of 275 horsepower per tonne (more on this car later).
OK, the Carrera T is £86k and the EB 911R is at least £100k more than that, but if you’re going to market something as lightweight, then it should not weigh the same as 23 people (average adult weight globally is 62 kilograms). The average weight of a (female) cow is 720 kilograms, which is two Carrera Ts. A five-foot Steinway ‘City’ grand piano weighs 252 kilograms, which means that a 911 Carrera T with some fuel weighs roughly the same as six Steinway grand pianos.
“Improved power to weight ratio delivers enhanced performance,” says Stuttgart, and no doubt the 0-60 time of 4.5 seconds – one tenth quicker than the standard Carrera – is quicker than a baby grand, unless the piano is travelling downwards in a straight line towards the pavement. I also like the cool range of colours including Racing Yellow, Miami Blue and Lava Orange: difficult to choose between those three. But something is not right with this T badge.
Everyone knows that the volume sellers are where Porsche makes its money: Macan, Cayenne and Panamera. The 911 remains a desirable car, but are these editions serious, or are they just preening for press releases? The truth is that, these days, if you really want a lightweight Porsche – and trust me, you do – you have to build it yourself. For the £85k cost of a standard Carrera T, one could easily build a lightweight air-cooled 911 and have enough left over to buy a nice grand piano or two. Now that’s an idea I can get with.
The new 911 Carrera T is available to order now from Porsche Centres in the UK and Ireland priced from £85,576.00 RRP inc VAT. First deliveries begin in January 2018, at which point, journos will be freaking out over the transformative effect of the shorter final drive and claiming this as a credible alternative to a GT3 Touring.
News update: my 1976 911 has a shorter final drive, as does every 911 rally car ever. When the national speed limit of 70mph is being ever more rigorously enforced, it is not rocket science to shorten the final drive and have more fun getting to a lower top speed.
I would like to drive this T: I suspect it actually will be rather more invigorating than a standard Carrera. Group test pitch for GT Porsche magazine: my 1020-kilo 3-litre 911 versus six grand pianos with 370 horsepower. Simon will love it.
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Stuttgart loves a special edition and another Macan has just joined the list: the Turbo Exclusive Performance Edition. The styling reminds me of a Volkswagen Polo ‘Beats’ Edition, but that is not a bad thing: everyone knows the VW Polo is one of the best cars in the world. Even Alois Ruf agrees with me on that.
Based on the current Macan Turbo with Performance Package, the 3.6-litre Turbo produces 440 horsepower. Porsche sticks a lot of extras on the standard model and carries the changes out at the ‘Exclusive Manufactur’ department in Leipzig, so the base price corresponds to that: £86k including VAT in the UK. Adding colour-to-sample paint and the other options could quickly take it to over £100k – a ton of cash for a mid size SUV.
Standard equipment includes 21-inch 911 Turbo Design wheels with lateral spokes painted in Black (high-gloss), LED headlights and tinted LED rear lights. The front seats, rear seating and steering wheel are heated as standard.
Custom Exclusive parts created specifically for this Macan include aero add-ons on the front spoiler, rear apron and side blades painted in Carmine Red. The Macan Turbo model designation on the tailgate is also painted in Carmine Red underneath PORSCHE lettering in high-gloss black.
Inside, there are more black and red accents through the black leather interior with Alcantara elements. The Garnet Red bolsters for the front seats are bespoke for this car. The colour is used also for the contrasting stitching, embroidered Turbo script on the headrests, seat belts, Sport Chrono stopwatch bezel and the vehicle key wallet.
The aluminium PDK gear selector is finished with Garnet Red leather in Garnet Red, and a “Macan Turbo Exclusive Performance Edition” logo has been added to the customised door entry trim strips and the dashboard trim. Well done Leipzig for fitting that into one plaque.
Porsche Macan Used Prices UK
A £90k soft-roader is obviously never going to have a place in my life but the colour to sample in Voodoo Blue looks pretty cool. I keep looking at Macans and wondering when they will get affordable as secondhand buys – not sure that day is coming any time soon. Of the 310 Macans on Pistonheads, the cheapest is a fairly boring 2014 2-litre PDK model with 15k miles up for £37k. Next cheapest car is an 82k-mile diesel for the same money.
Official Porsche Centres offer decent spec TDI PDKs with metallic paint, sensible mileage and the worth-having used Porsche warranty from £41k and that might be the best place to start looking. An independent petrol offering at £38k struggles to compete with that package.
Porsche has unveiled a triptych of new special-edition 911s celebrating three British racing drivers who have taken Porsche to the top step of the podium at the Le Mans 24 Hours. The British Legends series honours Richard Attwood, Nick Tandy and Derek Bell.
British Legends: Richard Attwood
Richard Attwood helped claim Porsche’s first Le Mans victory in 1970. Driving a theoretically outdated 4.5-litre 917 in the Porsche family colours of Salzburg Racing, Attwood and partner, Hans Herrmann, outlasted many other competitors including the newer 4.9-litre 917s to reach the finish first. Just sixteen of the original fifty-one starters took the chequered flag.
Herrmann – a Porsche factory driver from the early 1950s – had promised his wife that a Le Mans win would be his last ever race. After the race, he kept his word and retired, much to the surprise of his Salzburg team bosses. Attwood raced another 917 at Le Mans in 1971, finished second and retired at the end of the season. Attwood currently features in a Porsche 928 racing video.
British Legends: Nick Tandy
After a blistering early career in Ministox and single seaters (Formula Ford and F3), Bedford-born rockstar and Porsche tart extraordinaire, Nick Tandy, first blipped on Weissach’s radar with an exceptional Carrera Cup debut at Dijon for Konrad Motorsport in 2009. Despite no testing beforehand, Tandy finished second in this round of the highly competitive Carrera Cup Germany, so Konrad invited him back for the Abu Dhabi race, where he impressed them again and earned himself a full season Carrera Cup drive for 2010.
Tandy went from strength to strength in 2010, narrowly missing the title to Rene Rast, who was insanely quick: the pair were the class of the field. The championship was Tandy’s in 2011, at which stage he shifted to the world stage, ending up in Porsche’s LMP programme and taking his first Le Mans win for Weissach in 2015 alongside Earl Bamber and Nico Hülkenberg. He continues to be a key part of the Porsche works driver squad.
British Legends: Derek Bell
Born in leafy Pinner in 1941, Derek Reginald Bell went on to claim five wins at Le Mans – four of them with Porsche – and remains Britain’s winningest Le Mans racer.
Bell’s first Le Mans 24 was in 1970: the same race won by Richard Attwood in a Porsche 917. Driving alongside Ronnie Peterson in a works Ferrari 512S, the duo was forced to retire from the race, but Bell stayed on afterwards to help his friend Steve McQueen film the classic: “Le Mans”. The 512 used in the film caught fire with Bell in it, and he narrowly escaped with minor burns.
DB’s most memorable successes at La Sarthe came when teamed with Jacky Ickx. The pair claimed victory for Mirage in 1975 and then for Porsche in 1981 and 1982. Bell’s other Porsche Le Mans wins came in 1986 and 1987, alongside Hans Stuck and Al Holbert.
Carrera GTS ‘British Legends’
The ‘British Legends’ 991s are based on 991 Carrera 4 GTS models and come with options including LED headlights, Sport Design body styling and satin-finish mirrors, lots of carbon and a Union Jack badge on each car with the driver’s signature alongside. Porsche says:
“Using the design of the winning race cars as the starting point of each car, joint workshops between Porsche Cars GB and the drivers ensured their passion was built-in to each 911. The ideas were then taken forward by the design team at Style Porsche in Weissach and the craftsmen at Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur in Stuttgart.
“Each British Legends Edition is finished intricately by hand in the new Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur workshop. Special features such as the Satin finish black door mirrors, carbon floor mats with Alcantara edging and a steering column casing in Alcantara make their first appearance on this 911.”
The 911 Carrera 4 GTS British Legends Edition is on sale from 9 October, priced at £122,376 inc VAT for Attwood Red – add an extra £900 for Tandy White or Bell Blue paint. A bargain! Whatever about the cars, there is no doubt that all three drivers are proper Porsche legends so it’s great to see them get the hat tip of a special edition. Watch the video below – it has some nice archive stuff in it:
Leaked pics of the new Porsche 991 GT2 RS are currently doing the rounds online ahead of the car’s official release, which apparently is happening this weekend. Presumably that will be at Goodwood.
Some people get very excited about new top-end Porsches. While the car looks great, I see what happens with these cars after they are delivered and a life of rarified storage is nothing to freak out about. For a few months after launch, journos rave about them, snappers glorify them, magazine readers drool over them but what does it all add up to? Ultimately this is just another quick Porsche in a world of quick Porsches and most will never go far.
I know a couple of people who buy these things and drive the crap out of them (fair play, and I look forward to the passenger rides), but it’s also the case that lots of the people who manage to acquire one of these upper-atmosphere supercars tell me they are ultimately bored by them. Once they’ve had it delivered and done a few miles, they are just new cars with too much driver-isolating technology to be consistently interesting at regular speeds. Hence all the low mileage examples sitting around in showrooms five years down the line.
Much of the time, the thrill was in the chase: getting one’s name in the order book. The car eventually arrives, sits around going up in value and comes back to the market at double the price, then another manufacturer releases their latest and greatest new model, prices for the older toys start to go soft and the whole game starts again.
Some people eventually get fed up with it and want to get off the dealership treadmill. It’s a bit like the iPhone upgrade cycle. Eventually the gains are so marginal and the upshot in ownership experience so minimal that you just stay where you are, or maybe even go backwards. Dump the new tech for old tech: Apple Watch goes for a Rolex, GT2 RS gets sacked for an early 911 instead.
I get regular emails asking about the ideal spec for a light, fast, no-frills early 911 and am currently involved with a 911 hot rod build for a chap who has owned just about every hypercar you can imagine. He has all the money a person could want – certainly much more than I would ever want – but finds nothing in new cars to hold his attention. Now he just wants something with character and an old Porsche is the ideal first step. After that it might be a trick little Alfa, old BMW or maybe an E-Type with muscle car running gear.
The true thrill of driving does not need a new GT2 RS. A person can find it in plenty of other places without needing to do the order book rain dance. But as there is no doubt that it is a badass automobile, here are some pics!
Porsche has been showing its 991 GT2 RS to a select group of journalists in Germany. Auto Motor & Sport put out a video showing the launch control in action, but it seems that no one actually got to drive it; everyone rode in the passenger seat. Gone are the days when Porsche gave Kacher the keys to a prototype for the weekend.
The fastest production 911 ever has not yet been fully homologated, so the numbers are vague. For the sake of discussion:
0-60: under 3 seconds
0-124: under 9 seconds
Power: more than 650bhp
Weight: under 1500kg
Weight savings include using smartphone Gorilla Glass
Lightweight Weissach pack lifts 30 kilos and will cost a small fortune
GT2 RS will cost more than the house I am writing this in
Looking at 911R/GT3 RS trends and allowing a bit for the GT2’s rarity, we can roughly predict what will happen with prices.
Say the GT2 RS sells at £250k including Weissach pack, it will top £450k within 6 months of release, probably over twice list price for a while. There is no doubt of this. City traders are earning well over a million quid a year now in the City of London and a GT2 RS will be the big thing. The hunger for GT2 will be strong, so £500k is totally happening.
Once they’ve gone through a 12-to-18-month honeymoon, prices will settle somewhere around £100k or so over list, as the next big thing will be out. If you don’t buy one of these cars brand new, you will probably never be able to buy it for list price. So why should you care about this particular example?
Well, look at the photos. This is a mule: a GT3 RS finished in Lava Orange with a tweaked engine from a 991 Turbo S installed. Engineers hacked the tail about a bit, vinyl wrapped the whole thing in black then screwed some bits to the sides to cover the turbos, drilled a load of heat holes in the rear bumper, made a swanky exhaust and the boss ragged it back and forth from home to work for a few months. It is sweaty, scratched and slathered in duck tape: everything a production GT2 RS will never be.
The new GT2 RS in a showroom will just be another unobtanium Porsche that gets professionally detailed twice a year to take the dust off and occasionally turns up at cars and coffee meets to entertain those who don’t get proper old cars. But the GT2 RS development mule – that is a hot rod from Stuttgart and these are the sex kings.
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