Yes, I’ll admit this Porsche is janky (now that I know what that means)
The S/T has been described as Porsche’s 60th birthday gift to itself, but frankly, on paper, it feels like it was built for me. But here comes the Roald Dahl twist ...
As much as I love English – reading it, hearing it (particularly the vowel language used by New Zealanders) and torturing it in print – I can become hotly offended when it presents me with a new word, or idiom, particularly when delivered by a salty teenager.
My level of rage was ratcheted recently when my son dared to declare that the vehicle I was giving him a lift in – the spectacularly expensive and special Porsche 911 S/T – felt, to him, “a bit janky”. Now I don’t think you even need to know the meaning of the word to get the immediate sense that it is of a critical bent (Google tells me it’s a slang term for “something run down, of poor quality, or unreliable”), but I was outraged.
Despite the fact that my son now has his driver’s licence – a fact that fills me with an unsettling mix of pride and fear – he remains as uninterested in cars as I am in his TikTok viewing, but if there’s one thing he knows for sure it is that I love the Porsche 911 dearly. Because I’ve told him for years that my goal is for him to one day be rich enough to buy me one.
No Porsche, in my experience, exhibits even a jot of janky, and in this case his ungrateful ass was riding in the lightest, most expensive and ostensibly greatest version of the glorious 911 ever. The S/T has been described as Porsche’s 60th birthday gift to itself (the first 911 was unveiled at the Frankfurt International Motor Show in late 1963), but frankly, on paper, it feels like it was built for me.
Harking back to an old 1970s S/T model that enthusiasts would no doubt get all in a frot over, the badge basically translates as “rock-hard core”, which means this version has thinner glass in its windows, magnesium wheels, no rear seats and lots of other weight-saving measures, which make it the lightest version of the current 911 you can buy (if you have a whopping $660,500 to spare, and can get your hands on one; only 1963 will be made).
To take advantage of that lightness it also gets the most extreme Porsche engine, the 4.0-litre flat-six from the 911 GT3 RS, which revs to 9000rpm and makes 386kW and 465Nm, which is a lot for its unique, close-ratio six-speed manual gearbox to deal with.
Despite the fact that manuals, like human beings, are inherently slower than robotised things, it will still scream its way to 100km/h in 3.7 seconds. Apparently the car also features some sacrilegious software that will blip the revs on down-changes for you, and I’m truly glad I didn’t find this, or know about it, until I’d given it back, because I would probably have set fire to the car in disgust if I had.
Honestly, getting a gear change right in this car – with its unusually heavy clutch, and a gearbox with a notchy, mechanically wonderful throw that feels like you’re popping a Transformer’s shoulder back into its socket – provokes the kind of elation that is impossible to explain to non-car enthusiasts, who say things like “Why would anyone drive a manual when automatics are so easy?” To which I am tempted to reply, “Why don’t you just eat baby food and shit in a nappy, you ignorant fool?”
But let me try anyway. Snapping a down-change and matching the revs while heel-and-toeing at high speed in this Porsche is as satisfying as nailing a putt from 30 feet, getting genuine praise from your boss, riding a giant wave, landing a prize fish or picking the correct lottery numbers. But in this car, you can experience that sensation 20 times just on your way to the office.
All of this might make it sound like I’m in love with the 911 S/T, or that I want one, but here comes the Road Dahl twist (yes, Road, see what I did there?). This car is intense, furiously fast and stupidly loud at all times, but it’s also just a tiny bit janky, which, and I know this because I questioned my teen intensely about it, refers to the fact that it feels like some of the suspension components might have been left out. It is firm, almost to the point of being jumpy at times, at least on broken roads.
On perfect surfaces, it might well be the perfect 911, but we do not live in a perfect world, and one of the advantages of the lesser, and less-expensive Porsche 911s is that they offer a brilliant balance of road holding and suppleness.
And while it’s beautiful inside, the S/T also has big bucket seats, which are impossible to get out of without making old person noises and looking like you’ve just dropped your wallet and are scrabbling after it.
Then there’s the price. Our test version came with $54,780 of options, pushing the asking beyond $700K – an amount for which I would normally expect a Ferrari, and change, rather than yet another rare variant of a 911. On the plus side, the S/T does make entry-level Porsche 911s, way down in the $250K to $300K range, look like a justifiable luxury to have in your life.
Porsche 911 S/T
ENGINE: 4.0-litre six-cylinder (386kW/465Nm)
FUEL ECONOMY: 13.8 litres per 100km
TRANSMISSION: Six-speed manual, rear-wheel drive
PRICE: $660,500
RATING: ★★★★
