Porsche 911 Turbo 50 Years: Jeremy Clarkson’s review

For years I’ve pretended to dislike the Porsche 911, if only to wind up my Top Gear colleagues. But now I’m coming clean.

Classy: the Porsche 911 Turbo

By and large the people who run car industry PR operations are smooth, unflappable and endlessly generous with the G&Ts and the “thank you for coming” branded anorak freebies. Malcolm Tucker they are not.

Occasionally, though, things go wrong. I remember being flown to Galway on the west coast of Ireland to sample the new Vauxhall Senator. Lovely. Except all of the cars we were meant to be driving were stuck at the docks in England. We just sat around for a couple of days drinking Guinness and then we were flown home again.

Then there was the launch of the Alfa Romeo 75 in the far north of Scotland. The PR found a lovely 500km route and had pootled around in advance making directional notes we could all follow. Great. But we didn’t pootle. On those magnificent roads we took that magnificent V6 engine to the red line between every gear change. And as a result, all of us ran out of petrol.

I don’t go on car launches any more. Today I simply rely on the industry PRs to send a new car round every Monday morning. It works like clockwork. But Porsche sent some kind of new, Thunberg-friendly Panamera hybrid last week, and 15 minutes after it arrived I got a call saying, “Do not drive it.” Apparently, some terrible fault had been found and a model-wide recall was in force.

This seems to be a thing with Porsche at the moment. They recently announced that on several different models the wheels could fall off at any moment. Hilariously, Richard Hammond has been caught up in this. His brand new GT3 has been taken away “for months” and they’ve lent him a ­hilariously white Cheshire-spec BMW X5.

Anyway, they duly took away the wonky Panamera and, in its stead, left me with a different version of the same car. A model that wasn’t affected by the recall. Wonderful. Very smooth. But the next morning, when I tried to drive it, a warning flashed up on the dash saying, “Hybrid coolant level too low. Please park and allow to cool.”

I was a bit baffled by this as it had been parked all night, outside, in early November. So how cold would it need to be for it to be happy? No idea. Whatever, that car too was taken away and replaced, this time with a 911 Turbo S. Mercifully this didn’t have a hybrid drive, so when I turned the ignition key there were no nonsensical messages on the dash. In fact, after a series of beeps to tell me all sorts of things I didn’t need to know, there was nothing but the reassuring sound of petrol exploding and various rods whizzing round. It was the sound of yesterday and, like a ’70s radio station, I liked it.

On the road

But what of the car? Ah, well, that’s interesting. For the past two decades I have hosted a motoring show on television with two chaps who absolutely love the 911. And as the show was on the BBC, where balance is important – soft left, left and hard left are all treated with an equal amount of love – I felt duty bound not to like it at all.

I used to argue that it shared its air-cooled, rear-engined roots with the godawful VW Beetle, which was the brainchild of Hitler, and of course this is true. But it’s also irrelevant. If you meet a fat man in an Iron Maiden T-shirt and he tells you he’s descended from Warwick the Kingmaker you don’t call him “my liege”. Because his lineage is not relevant.

The 911 isn’t air-cooled any more. It uses water, as it should. And the engine is not right at the back. It has crept forward so it sort of sits in the middle, which is better. It therefore has as much in common with the Beetle as I do with Genghis Khan.

So here goes. I quite like the 911. It feels as well put-together as Lincoln Cathedral. And I must say the car they sent me was exquisitely tasteful. Dogtooth upholstery and a ton of leather they probably call “tan”. It’s actually brown but there’s nothing wrong with that. Brown’s a thing in cars right now.

There’s a dollop of sensibleness too. This may be a low-slung roadgoing racer but even I could get in without folding my head into my chest and dislocating my legs.

And there’s more. Most cars are like other people’s kitchens; nothing is ever where you expect it to be. Not the Porsche. Even the touchscreen control panel works properly. The only slight gripe? Maybe the steering wheel is too big. But maybe that’s so it can house an airbag for those with bigger faces. I bet they thought about that. What if Eric Pickles buys one and crashes? Or Jay Leno?

Inside the cabin

Now we get to the crux. What it’s like to drive. I’m well aware, because Richard Hammond has told me a thousand times, that the 911 is meant to be a sports car and the top-of-the-range Turbo S version just isn’t. He says it’s so powerful and so complicated that it’s actually a supercar. And that if you want a supercar you should buy something Italian.

I take his point. This is not a sports car. But it’s not a supercar either. I drove it on greasy country roads, at night, in the fog, and in conditions like that using a supercar is like using a military-grade flamethrower to make toast. But the Turbo S dealt with everything. It even had four-wheel drive. Some say it’s too stable and predictable and 911s should be more wayward and exciting. But if that’s what you want, buy a cheaper model.

I absolutely loved the way this car handles. Even at low speeds you sense the sure-footedness, and you also sense that over your shoulder there’s a muscle. Because every time you so much as graze the throttle, you can feel it becoming tumescent. If you stamp on it, it’s like liquid Viagra is flowing through the fuel lines because it just explodes. It’s not stupid fast, but it’s close. I loved that too.

You can’t buy this exact car, alas, as it’s being released as a special edition to celebrate the 911 Turbo’s 50th anniversary. The new version is identical except it has a sports exhaust, lightweight glass and a plaque above the glove compartment bearing the individual number of each of the 1,974 cars made (as in 1974).

It costs £200,600 ($400,845), but then the Turbo has always been pricey. And it’s still revered as a true motoring icon. And thanks to the fact that I no longer have to counterbalance May and Hammond on the BBC, I’m finally able to say I can see why.

Porsche 911 Turbo 50 Years

ENGINE: 3.7-litre, six-cylinder, twin-turbo petrol

PERFORMANCE: 0-100km/h 2.7sec, top speed 330km/h

PRICE: $400,845

STARS:★★★★