The Road Tripp

It all started with the glow of the keys. On a rare Sunny Seattle afternoon, the black beast revealed itself with a majestic roar. As I cautiously engrossed myself into the purpose-built mechanical scalpel of a car, the golden-bronze Porsche logo gazed at me. It whispered “Drive me”; awestruck, I was hypnotized by the growling flat six.

​Porsche has been producing the 911 models since the mid-1960s. It initially shared most components and the manufacturing process as its predecessor, the 356. Over the initial years, the 911 developed into its own. Evolving into the 911 that we know and love today – there is so much beauty in “practice makes perfect”. The 911’s path was not always lined with praise and breathtaking performance; when the original 901 was released to the public back in the Fall of 1963 at the Frankfurt Motor show, the car could not even be driven under its own power.

‘Hold on Jay, I found a typo, you just said 901’ – yes butno. The 911’s moniker was originally the 901, however with the French manufacturer Peugeot throwing a hissy fit about their naming conventions, Porsche substituted the one for the zero. 1 -0 Porsche… ha-ha! But I digress.

Fast forward 51 years and 9 generations later, the Porsche911 has earned its place amongst some other household supercars: Ferrari, Lamborghini, and the like. Literally no other manufacturer has taken the recipe for a great performing car and made iteration after iteration perfecting every little aspect of its being. Like the British cycling team in the early 2000s undercoach Dave Brailsford, if it played a role in performance, it was improved. Just one percent improvement on every facet adds up quickly to make a monumental aggregate difference in how a car performs.

​Put the 997-generation next to the 991, the subtle differences slowly start to reveal themselves. The wheelbase is longer in 991, yet the composite materials helped the 991 with its diet and brought the weight below 3,050 pounds. The second iteration of the PDK (Porsche Doppel Kupplungs Getriebe or Porsche Double Clutch) transmission, features a telepathic shifting experience – and that paired with a Six-Hundred-and-Seventy horsepower (560 from stock) boxer, the power delivery is extremely smooth. 

Smooth… for the most part it does have quite a bit of a turbo lag; it is a 9-year-old car. It also does not have apple car play, and the screen lags each press of the controls – the same way a eight-year-old vending machine does where you press the same button twice then have to bend over to look at the screen with your hand cupped over it to make sure that the item you selected is vending. The paddle shifters are mounted to the steering wheel so it moves around as you steer, and the seat controls are jammed between the seat rails and the ledges on the cockpit tub which makes it very difficult to know if you’re controlling the lumbar support or the ejector seats. Most annoying of them all, the hood – or rather the trunk lid – does not have anywhere for you to put your hand on to properly latch the mechanism. I found that the only way to close it without leaving ugly fingerprints all over the gorgeous deep black paint was to make a fist, specifically with my left hand, and to press down with the same form I use on a decline bench press. I couldn’t even use both hands, and now my pecs are uneven!

Let’s get back to the great things about the 911, for there are many. Firstly, the seats have airbags in them. No, not the kind of airbags that pop out when you accidentally run through a brick wall – or a child – but rather the kind of airbags that inflatethe bolsters to hold you up straight through corners. No, it does not adjust to the steering angle and the lateral G’s, but personally I prefer this as I get to choose how comfortable I want to be in the seat. If I want to be coddled in the supple German leather, I can air it all out and be cocooned with my heated AND cooled seats on. Or, if I am feeling rather frisky, and want to carve some canyons, I can air them up and be strapped in to the heavily bolstered rocket as it launches…

Secondly, there are the brakes. If you plan on going FAST, you better be able to stop fast too. This car achieves just that. Porsche’s massive 10 piston brakes not only deliver a running-into-a-concrete-wall kind of braking force, that braking force stays consistent under heavy braking with very minimal heat-soak. Good thing too because this is a seriously fast machine-definitely for it’s time, but is still no slack for 2023.

Just shy of thirty-two hundred rpm, that’s when you feel the floodgates open up and, simply put, overcome you withadrenaline.

Boom – you’re at a hundred miles per hour. One-Twenty. One-Thirty-Five. One-Forty. Does not stop.

Sure this is by no means a “stock” vehicle: some tasteful modifications puts it in the stage 4 category, whatever that means. Modified or not, the point stands with the 911. It is the absolute poster child of the old adage, practice makes perfect. Perhaps my affinity for the Porsche originates from the fact that their values align with mine. It doesn’t matter what Ferrari is doing next door, it doesn’t matter if Lamborghini just released 4 different limited-run models last year. We do what we do best and focus on that with a single purpose-to make our results speak louder than any showboating that anyone else may do. Rather than focusing on the appearance or trying to impress others, we do what we need to do to with no distractions.

This was an ode to Porsche.

Thank you for checking out my review!