With a six-cylinder twin-turbo powerhouse pushing you along sitting low to the ground behind one of the greatest sports-car badges known to man it’s always going to be a good day. That’s my experience for the week behind the wheel of the Porsche 911 GTS – in bright yellow.
Sorry, “Racing Yellow” is the correct name for this stunner and it’s a polarising thing – some people love it, others certainly don’t – but I’ve gotta be honest – if I owned a 911 I’d want it to stand out.
Before you think you’d consider this car as your mid-life crisis, the standard 911 GTS price is $314,800. With every option thrown at this particular vehicle, including things like the Race-Tex interior, Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control (PDCC), Decorative Stitching, Electric Seats, lifting system, rear-axle steering and much, much more – including the colour matching key – this one is $371,750 – plus on-roads.
Of course I didn’t come close to the 311km/h top speed, and I doubt I managed close to the 4.1 second 0-100 speed (in the manual – 3.4 in the auto), but what I did do was give this a solid crack in all on-road conditions.
To the shops and back it’s an excessive thing to drive, as an old, and fat bloke getting in and out was less than elegant. But it didn’t worry me at all:)
From the suburbs to the city, thanks to the PDCC I could choose a decent ride for the different roads. Out on the freeway even as a manual the cruise control was fantastic, though lacking adaptive radar cruise meant paying close attention to the gaps.
Where I really fell in love was out in the country. Driving the twisting, turning and winding roads over the Barrington Tops in the dark of night I felt at one with the car and the road.
This thing sticks to the road like nothing before it. Go-Kart like handling through turns did nothing but fill me with confidence. I pushed hard through turns – harder than I thought I should, but never once had that “oooh that was too much” feeling. In fact, if it was a race track I’d have headed back out knowing I’d left time out there.
The manual gearbox has short but very clear shifts, and was a joy to drive – except in city traffic.
A responsive throttle and huge brakes give you a genuine sports car feeling, while not being too much in daily driving.
I would imagine this car being garaged but for the weekends, but it really wasn’t anything to put me off using it daily, other than the choice of manual gearbox.
The rear-spoiler is set to auto deploy, but in sports mode you can throw it up whenever you want and it’s a subtle little wing of which there is no trace when it’s retracted.
In Coupe and Cabriolet mode the GTS is a Rear Wheel Drive, and while All-wheel-drive sounds exciting in the Carrera 4, and Targa 4, I’d take the rear-wheel feeling every day of the week.
A week with the 911 strengthened my resolve to lapse into a mid-life crisis as soon as possible. My challenge is funding it, I suspect a Matchbox version is as close as I’ll ever get, but still – one can dream.
