This EV sports car hits 100km/h in just 2.4 seconds

This is quite possibly the fastest car I’ve ever driven – at least in a straight line – which makes it a useful tool for impressing and occasionally terrifying other people. But it does not make it my favourite vehicle ever.

The counterintuitively named Porsche Taycan Turbo S.

There are definitely times when speed, and getting there as fast as possible, is all that matters – like on a long-haul economy flight, for example, when your will to live has become as soggy and jaundiced as the breakfast eggs. When it comes to cars, however, pure speed is a bit like being handsome (a cross I’ve long had to bear), meaning it’s eye-wideningly alluring at first, but often lacking in depth.

The counterintuitively named Porsche Taycan Turbo S – it has no turbo, being electric – is quite possibly the fastest car I’ve ever driven, at least in a straight line, which makes it a useful tool for impressing, compressing and occasionally terrifying other people, but it does not make it my favourite vehicle ever.

Its ability to perform ludicrous launch control leaps to 100km/h in just 2.4 seconds (a full half-second faster than a Ferrari 296 GTB) really is as absurd as it sounds. It feels like being thrown backwards off a tall building, in a fun way. I’m not sure I would ever get sick of listening to passengers scream in fear when subjected to this lunch-lurching experience, but it’s also only half the story.

This car’s ability to perform ludicrous launch control leaps to 100km/h in just 2.4 seconds.

I happened to be invited for a “Saturday morning run” (it’s what enthusiasts call going for a drive together, but in separate cars) to somewhere scenic while I had the Porsche – and it was certainly illuminating for the other attendees, with their mere-mortal cars.

These people had spent a lot of money, and emotional effort, on their beloved vehicles, which included a schmick BMW M3 and a classic Mitsubishi Evo. They thought the Porsche would be fast, given its ridiculous outputs of 700kW and 1110Nm, but were still shocked when it simply disappeared from view in front of them, like an Elon Musk rocket leaving the atmosphere.

Inside the Porsche Taycan Turbo S.

The experience that really amused me, however, was following a racy motorcyclist up a winding road. I used to be one of these suicidal idiots and I well remember the feeling that, no matter what kind of car was chasing me, I would not let it past, because to do so would be to admit the superiority of four wheels over two.

Sure, this kind of intransigent assholery is made tricky by the fact that a bike is going to be slower through bends, but then no car can get close to a motorcycle as it fires out of that bend and into a straight. No car, except this Taycan Turbo S.

I swear I could hear the poor man’s brain trying to explode out of his helmet as he kept looking with disbelief at his mirrors and seeing me still there, taunting his thrashing acceleration with my seamless surge of electrons. Eventually I let him go, but only because I realised I’d lost my new friends and I needed to slow down and wait for them so as not to seem rude.

Given that this Porsche is a properly luxurious machine that seats five and is also suitable for more sedate tasks like taking your son and three of his mates to their Year 12 formal, I was hugely impressed by how good it was at going around corners. It’s a seriously large car, and weighs close to 2.3 tonnes, so you would expect it to be a little lumpen and resistant to changes of direction, but thanks to its clever Active Ride system (which it also deploys to raise and lower the car when you open the door, for ease of egress) it can remain surprisingly flat and stable despite the application of serious g-forces.

This Porsche is a properly luxurious machine.

Porsche describes Active Ride as being able to perform “Curve Tilt” and “Helicopter Mode” functions; so it leans forward during hard acceleration, and back under fierce braking, like a helicopter.

And it can lean the car’s body into corners like a motorcycle, only much faster. In science speak, it reduces lateral and longitudinal forces during rapid driving, and you really do feel it.

In just about every way, then, this Taycan Turbo S is very good at going very fast, and it also has lovely Porsche steering feel and feedback, but it’s still not even my favourite Porsche, because it’s just too much car. Too big, too heavy, too lacking in emotion.

As I’ve said before, when Porsche puts all this tech and performance into something smaller and lighter with two seats, it’s going to be a game changer, and those cars are coming soon.

Incredibly, what’s already here is an even madder version of the Taycan, the Turbo GT, which is officially the fastest and most powerful car offered for sale in Australia (815kW, 1340Nm and 0 to 100km/h in 2.2 seconds). That one will cost you $416,600, while you can have this entirely ample Turbo S for just $374,200.

I guess I’ll have to drive the faster one at some stage, but I’m in no great hurry.