The GT3: ‘Porsche’s purest and most psychotic 911’

Driving a Porsche GT3 on public roads like using a flamethrower to toast a marshmallow — only slightly more absurd.

Magnificent: the Porsche 911 GT3

Only a person with a Jackass-like desire to make a spectacle of themselves would use a flamethrower to toast a marshmallow, or a hedge trimmer to slice bread, or don scuba gear to walk in the rain. But frankly, driving Porsche’s purest and most psychotic 911, the GT3, on public roads seems only slightly more absurd.

The clues that this big bewinged beast is built for the race track are many, from what looks like a very expensive Meccano set where the rear seats should be (it’s actually a roll cage) to the fire extinguisher in the passenger footwell and the ridiculous carbon-fibre seats. Many fast cars are embarrassing to climb in and out of, but the racing buckets in the GT3 are so deep and stiff-sided that it feels like you’ve been dropped into a stormwater drain each time you try to lift yourself out of them.

I often ended up panting on the ground as if I’d just attempted to do yoga for the first time. My daughter, on the other hand, found them so low that all she could see out the windscreen was a patch of sky, which might be why she felt sick every time we went for a spin. Or not.

Then there are the racing harnesses; they’re fabulous on a race track, but on a public road most people seem to feel a strong force telling them not to use them (handily, the GT3 comes with normal seatbelts as well). I call this our Anti-Wanker Sense, and no, not everybody has it – I’ve even known some people to wear racing sneakers in their road cars. Driving around with a large lump of metal between your legs (the locking mechanism for your six-point harness just sits there, unused) is strange and led me to ponder the anatomical correctness of The Terminator at some length.

Then there is the sound-deadening material, or rather, there isn’t. Anything unnecessary or frivolous has been ripped out of the 911 GT3, to make it lighter and thus faster. What this means is that, in the real world, the road noise is so bad that they should have thrown out the Bluetooth functionality as well, because no one can hear you on the phone. It’s so loud in there on broken or rough public roads that at one stage my wife assumed I had become trapped in a concrete mixer and was calling her for help. This didn’t seem to stop her from laughing, for some reason.

While most Porsches display an admirable, almost magical balance of magnetic road holding and supple suspension compliance, the GT3 has been designed to excel on surfaces as smooth as a baby’s bum. This means that driving it on a concrete crap shoot like the Hume Highway is pretty unpleasant; the fact that the gearbox is missing the overdrive eighth gear – again, to save weight – is also slightly draining.

I have been fortunate enough, however, to drive previous iterations of this incredible vehicle on a race track, where it belongs, and each time it was one of the most invigorating experiences of my life. All Porsche 911s possess steering that approaches black magic – an ability to communicate both road feel and tactile, torsional pleasure that is unmatched. In a GT3, however, you realise that most 911s filter that directness ever so slightly; in this most hardcore of versions it feels completely raw and samurai sharp. Generally, I don’t remember much about a car’s brakes, but the combination of stopping power and modulation in this track weapon is sublime, too.

It is the engine that really makes this GT3 remarkable, though: a 4.0-litre naturally aspirated flat six that reminds your ears what a wonderful place the world was before the invention of turbocharging, and makes a howling 375kW and 470Nm. It means this car will hit 100km/h in 3.4 seconds and easily exceed 300km/h on the right track.

What you can’t do on a race track, of course, is drive your GT3 through a tunnel, and that is a shame because the sonic experience of doing so is exultant.

Overall, in our few days together, I spent quite some time cursing the stupidity of driving a $369,600 car like this on public roads – but then I came to a largely empty, mainly dry and sweetly surfaced road called the Macquarie Pass in NSW’s Southern Highlands, and the next half-hour of driving was so utterly blissful and deeply immersive that I forgot every single criticism of this incredible, indelible 911 GT3. I didn’t just like it, I loved it, deeply.

It might not make much sense to regular drivers, it might be as over-the-top unnecessary as its rear wing, but every now and then, even on a public road, it is magnificent.

PORSCHE 911 GT3

ENGINE: 4.0-litre six cylinder (375kW/470Nm). Average fuel 12.6 litres per 100km

TRANSMISSION: Seven-speed dual-clutch automatic, rear-wheel drive

PRICE: $369,600

STARS: ★★★★