With a spring arrival of the 2004 Porsche 911 GT3—and the introduction
of the outrageous Carrera GT supercar later this year, Porsche is reasserting
its position as a premier sports-car builder. Could this year's offerings
be penance for its Cayenne sport-ute? Maybe not, but the GT3 is a 911 to brag
about, a naturally aspirated, 375-hp version of the $183,765 twin-turbocharged,
456-hp Porsche 911 GT2. It will sell for about $84,000 less than the GT2—figure
an even $100,000—and will fill the rather wide performance and price
gap that existed between the $82,565 911 Carrera 4S and the $118,265 911 Turbo.
Now there's a vast array of 911 models, from the base $69,365 Carrera to the
extravagant GT2. Read
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It's not the $440,000 Carrera GT's absurdly fast top speed that awes you—we were aboard yet had no fear as Porsche's test driver clocked 208 mph (with a tailwind) on a Soviet-era military runway in the former East Germany.
It's not this Ferrari Enzo fighter's equally absurd accelerative force, either: Porsche modestly claims a 0-to-62-mph time of 3.9 seconds, but it's probably more like 3.5 seconds.
It's not even the otherworldly strength of the gigantic ceramic brakes that made the greatest impression on us, although they are strong enough at full clamp to lift the passenger fully away from his leather-covered, carbon-Kevlar seat and hard against the locked seatbelt. Read More
Follicles straining, hair tugged backwards, eyes squinting from the flow of air surging over the top of the windscreen. Any closer to this Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet's 190mph top speed and I could risk going totally bald.
I'm sampling the bouffant-demolishing potential of the fastest 911 drop-top
to date. A bee implodes on the windscreen - it's just met with the forces
generated by this car's twin-turbocharged, intercooled, 3.6-litre flat-six
engine. A mighty 420bhp is unleashed at 6,000rpm, accompanied by 413lb ft
of torque available from 2,700rpm; that's sufficient to despatch 0-62mph in
4.3 seconds. For the record, the only time Porsche has brought us a production
911 Turbo Cabriolet before was 16 years ago; it generated 300bhp, covered
0-62mph in 5.2 seconds and topped out at 161mph. Read
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