So. They finally did it, didn’t they?
Porsche followed the lead of Ferrari (with either the California T or 208GTS, depending on your awareness of history) and Ford (with the Fiesta EcoBoost, of course) by making the entry-level 911 a small-displacement turbo. It had to happen, because in its successful quest to become primarily a manufacturer of unibody “trucks” Porsche became too large to reasonably plead an indulgence, er, exemption from Europe’s state religion of carbon-emissions laws. By the way, the next time you’re reading about the sale of indulgences and all of the other ridiculous behavior practiced by Christian Europe six hundred years ago and you’re feeling very smug about living in era where reason holds sway over craven superstition, take a nice long look at this and tell me how much difference you truly see between now and the era of Leo X.
Will Porsche’s switch to smaller, force-fed engines counterbalance even an hour of one region of China’s use of coal for power? It’s best not to think too much about that. Could Porsche accomplish a similar amount of carbon-production reduction by changing the engines in the Macan and Cayenne, perhaps giving them all ludicrous-pressure four bangers like the one in the AMG CLA 45 and therefore leaving the naturally-aspirated sports cars alone? We really don’t want to think about that. It would be like a husband wondering why his wife comes to bed in curlers but insists on a manicure before his brother stops by for dinner. Could it be that he’s no longer the most important member of the family?
This is not a train that we, the occasional Porsche buyers of America, can stop. And it especially is not a train that you, the person from the Internet who has never bought a Porsche but plans on picking up a Carrera G50 some time in the next ten years if the prices come back down, can stop. All we can do is look back at a few great Porsche Turbos and Monday-morning quarterback Porsche’s new product line.
Let’s do that, shall we?
Perhaps the saddest thing about the new lineup is that it marks the official end of the “turbo magic”. Strictly speaking, it’s been a very long time since a 911 Turbo was the coolest car money could buy — I have to think that the arrival of the Ferrari F355 put a nail in that particular coffin twenty-one years ago, assuming the Corvette ZR1 didn’t do it in 1989 — but the lower-case italic turbo logo stayed ice cold long after the cars to which it was attached lost alpha status. For nearly forty years, ownership of a Porsche Turbo was an unmistakable statement of success, taste, and masculinity, although the various tuners and the 996 Turbo S Tip Cab did a fair amount of damage to the automatic validity of those last two qualities. I’d personally love to own a 911 Turbo and I wish I’d bought a 1996 Turbo instead of a 1995 Carrera back in 2001 when the difference in the money wasn’t a hundred grand like it is today.
Regardless, “Porsche Turbo” has always meant something, and here are the reasons why. We’ll leave the race cars out because racing is not real life and that’s why the Plymouth Neon was not the finest compact sedan of the Nineties. Without further ado:
1975 Turbo Carrera 3.0
Nominally speaking, this was a three-liter turbocharged six with about 20 percent more power than the naturally-aspirated Carrera preceding it. Sound familiar? What made the first 911 Turbo such a big deal was simply this: it was meant for the road. It was luxury-appointed, designed for the Autobahn instead of the racetracks that had inspired its Carrera predecessors. Just kidding. What really made it a big deal was Porsche’s unwillingness to certify it for the United States in any kind of volume until 1986. Mix that in with a few stories of Turbos exiting corners backwards on their Pirelli Cintuartos and poof! there’s the legend.
1988 944 Turbo S Silver Rose
Last year, I lived my childhood dream of racing a 944 Turbo and it totally lived up to my expectations. The truth is that, judged solely on contemporaneous expectations, the 944 Turbo is probably the greatest Porsche ever built. It was wickedly fast and superbly sure-footed at speed. It was comfortable and quiet and stylish and got decent mileage and carried a lot of cargo. It liked to eat Ferraris and Corvettes for lunch, or so I was told. It was probably the best performance-for-dollar deal Zuffenhausen ever offered.
The best of them was the Silver Rose 1988 Turbo S. It had 247 horsepower delivered like the proverbial hammer to the forehead. The interior was as good as those cars ever got, meaning better than a 911. There was plenty of tire width on stunning polished wheels. The plain Turbo of the following year got most of the improvements but it wasn’t as cool as the debut Silver Rose model. It took Porsche fifteen years to come up with a non-911 that was actually faster; that car was the Cayman S, good used examples of which can be had for less than what you’ll pay for an original-condition ’88 Silver Rose.
1996 993 Turbo
The 1994 911 Turbo 3.6 was a great car in a straight line but it was simply another incremental improvement. The 993 Turbo was, by contrast, a rethinking of the Porsche Turbo concept that also returned to the core idea of the most usable high-performance road car possible. It was fast. It was easy to drive. It looked stunning. The market has spoken on this one and a low-mileage example is worth more than a brand-new GT3 or 991 Turbo. There’s nothing else to say.
2011 GT2RS
My time behind the wheel of an 800-horsepower tuned 997.1 GT2 was enough to convince me that here, finally, was a car to make all the turbo hoopla a reality. Porsche’s take on the same idea, the center-lock-wheel, lightened-and-stiffened, 620-horsepower GT2RS, probably wasn’t quite as scary but it was certainly the most powerful 911 variant to ever leave a showroom in stock form. If the 993 Turbo was the Last Real 911(tm), then the GT2RS was the Last Real-Ish 911(also tm).
Is the COEXIST bumper sticker now standard equipment?
By the way, the next time you’re reading about the sale of indulgences and all of the other ridiculous behavior practiced by Christian Europe six hundred years ago and you’re feeling very smug about living in era where reason holds sway over craven superstition, take a nice long look at this and tell me how much difference you truly see between now and the era of Leo X.
I’ve also heard greasing the right political palms can shave off time in purgatory.
Leave it to Porsche to come up with turbo-charged sport cars that will not disappoint. Quicker around the race track and better fuel economy, who wouldn’t want that? As a matter of fact, ‘Porsche turbo’ stood for the legendary über Porsche in the 911 series men used to drool over.
The early 911 turbos weren’t just widow makers in legend. The 930 Turbo was the subject of a number of lawsuits after fatal accidents, resulting in Porsche offering driving classes to owners of those cars.
It just won’t get better looking than that 993. That was the best! Before they put them love handles on a diet.
Silver Rose sounds like a Sting song title, but I still like the simplicity of design in the 944 as well. And I’m sure it’s lots more affordable.
Here I was thinking China and Estonia were the same place
“Will Porsche’s switch to smaller, force-fed engines counterbalance even an hour of one region of China’s use of coal for power? It’s best not to think too much about that.”
Some of do think about it, and we’re upset. Here in the land of fruits and nuts, renewable energy mandates cost citizens thousands of dollars a year in increased energy costs. Some estimates say, on a global basis, we’re wasting $4billion / day on mandates resulting from attempts to curb CO2 emissions.
Just wait. CO2 emissions = consumption = standard of living. The radical egalitarians and de-growthers are going to come after any and every Western luxury that results in CO2 emissions. Air conditioning at home? Forget about it. Ice in your soft drink? That’s a luxury the planet just can’t afford…
Call me crazy, but it will come to pass if we continue to “not think too much about it.”
.
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I have long thought that “global warming” was going to be the stick with which the wealthy beats the middle class into submission.
Rather the opposite: it will be the stick with which the global middle class will beat the global poor into submission. It’s not Americans who are going to suffer the most from sea level rise (although inhabitants of Miami will need to cough up for some expensive infrastructure changes), but people in places like Bangladesh and coastal Nigeria.
I think you’re deliberately missing the point.
The religion of AGW is used by the one percent to curtail consumption and control behavior beneath them.
The net value of all the property in coastal Nigeria is minimal compared to what’s being extracted in tribute from working people.
It’s nice to know somebody else gets it.
How astonishingly self-centered.
All that valueless property in coastal Nigeria is also home to a population of about 100 million, which will have nowhere at all to go, and no way to survive except at the mercy of others, when it is turned into salt marsh almost in its entirety. You know those few hundred thousand desperate migrants causing chaos in Europe? Imagine a hundred times that number of people. Meanwhile, the “tribute” you complain is being extracted from you, in the very most stringent proposals put forth, would probably be about $1 extra per gallon on your gasoline — which you could pay for entirely by replacing your V6 Accord with a four-cylinder one, or maybe by indulging in a little less Ketel One.
I get that it seems like we pay for everything without involving our super-wealthy. I really do. And I’d do a lot of things to change that, starting with actual taxation of the super-wealthy, who largely don’t pay taxes under the current system. But saying that the impact on the American upper-middle class of proposals to address global warming is more severe than the impact of actual global warming on impoverished delta populations is just horrifically blind.
“How astonishingly self-centered.”
But humping like bunnies until you’re 6 layers deep on land that can’t even grow mold, beating and mutilating any woman who won’t do her “duty”, that’s not self-centered.
If the $4B daily figure quoted elsewhere is accurate, then yes — you can fix Nigeria’s problems for $1.3T a year. The whole country has never seen that kind of money. You could give each of those 100m (really) migrants $13,000 to re-settle.
Two issues: 1) a lump-sump payment will hardly allow tens of millions of people to resettle within a country where the remaining viable land is already occupied by a very large number of hostile people of different tribes and religions, or to be accepted in other countries not wanting immigrants, and 2) you have shifted the basis of your argument from the amount of “tribute extracted from working people,” presumably in developed countries, to the cost of all efforts to reduce or mitigate global warming everywhere in the world.
To accept the conclusion that the cost of existing or seriously proposed mitigation efforts is an intolerable burden, you pretty much have to accept the premise that global warming is a hoax, or at the very least overstated by an order of magnitude, as demonstrated by Master Baiter above. That’s considered loony conspiracy theory thinking literally everywhere in the world except the United States, for good reason. Here, though, we have a set of incorrect arguments that get recycled by endless numbers of websites citing each other, all of which can be refuted by studying current IPCC publications (which, while imperfect, are a fair summary of the current state of knowledge) for five minutes. Using these sources, people delude themselves into thinking that global warming is some kind of plot to crush them under the bootheels of the sinister establishment. It’s precisely as reasonable as hysterical warnings of U.S. black helicopters.
@rideheight, I have been visiting this site for a long time (since before Bertel) and have never felt the need to create an account until now. You sir an arrogant asshole, that is all.
The Middle Class that’s shopping for a new Porsche Turbo?
The definition of “middle class” for just about anyone, including people very far into the top 1%, is always “everyone who isn’t poor but also isn’t that much richer than I am.” It’s a useless term unless backed up with numbers, which it usually isn’t, because most of the people claiming to be “middle class” in order to sound sympathetic really aren’t.
It’s one of many sticks….NAFTA/TPP, zirp, open borders, perpetual war, etc.
Haha… It’s a trick question — *everything* is the stick with which the wealthy beats the middle class into submission. It could just as easily have been global cooling or global staying the same. Having more money is better than having less.
BTW do you know what color that green 930 is? I had a 1980 gray market 930 that had been repainted black, but started off as Oak Green Metallic. The only remaining paint was inside the door (and, spoiler alert: there’s no good reason to be looking *inside the fucking door*) so it’s hard to have a sense of what the full car looked like in all of it’s original splendor. Super cool car, but it definitely wanted me dead.
When we hand the government the power to regulate the bi-product of human respiration, that’s pretty much the end of liberty. It’s also the result of animals we eat or merely enjoy the company of, our ability to heat or cool or environment, or light it, and, as relevant on TTAC, to travel freely. Carbonated beer might be next on the list, who knows? The production of CO2 is essential to virtually everything humans do.
Next up, government mandated flat soda. Of course, ADM will never let that happen!
“Will Porsche’s switch to smaller, force-fed engines counterbalance even an hour of one region of China’s use of coal for power?”
I think the burning of what is practically asphalt in the giant container ships bringing crappy toys from Asia to the US (and oil from our friends in the Middle East and Venezuela) is also a huge factor. I read, but sadly can’t cite, that the emissions of one tanker is equal to all the road-going cars in the US combined.
My Cell phone, desktop and sneakers imported from China/Taiwan are not crappy. They have worked well for years. We need to rethink some of this stuff!
Turbo = less control no? That is my main concern, then again, I’m not Fernando Alonso.
Way to miss the point. Your parents should ask for a refund on their property taxes.
http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/
So the stat is for sulfur emissions only, not all emissions. Maybe someone more in the loop (and I don’t think one qualifies just for watching cable news all day) can fill us in on the specifics of the sulfur cycle.
I vaguely recall that Freakonomics suggested releasing sulfur as a hedge against global warming, but odds are 50/50 that I’m wrong.
Edit: I was correct about Freakonomics and sulfur, however that chapter was written with the intent of selling books. The authors are not scientists (one is an economist…discuss!), and they do not claim to be.
They know it’s a problem there are regulations starting
here is some reading on it
http://gcaptain.com/tag/ship-emissions/#.Ve-cyflViko
Bunker C is nasty stuff but any one ship doesn’t burn a consequential amount of it. There may be some trace pollutant that’s not present in gasoline at all to get to that statistic but even if so that’d only be of academic interest.
Assuming carbon-dioxide is completely harmless holds no benefit for mankind. Anthropogenic Global Warming theory should not be confused with the authoritarians who are using it to suppress the disruptive artisan bourgeoisie and the immoral miscreant lower-classes.
A hammer can be used to bludgeon someone or it can be used to build shelter. This is not the fault of the hammer.
If you want to defeat the authoritarians you have to lead their sheeple towards something better. Doing nothing will only ensure that sheeple panic reaches dizzying new heights. Global warming can be used to build a better economy just as easily as it is used to impose zero-growth on the capitalist class and proletariat.
Day and a half late here, but unless you believe NA engines reduce chinese coal fired power plants the reduction is a reduction. The increase in power usage making a more complex turbo motor vs the vehicles emmisions is a more valid question, but leans heavily in favor of EU mandates. Not liking emitting less carbon is understandable, but pointing at every one else is childish spoiled behavior. I’m done believing you can’t follow the evidence on AGW. We (all humans) are releasing so much gaseous carbon that it’s meaningfully changing the absorption and reflection properties of the planets atmosphere. Most of the processes that have allowed us to grow such a large, prosperous, knowledgeable, capable population controbute to this. We need to move toward processes that allow us to continue to be and do what we want and should do while not ruining our ability to do the same because we don’t want to give up any of the handful of cookies we have as long as that other kid has a cookie or two too. It’s time to grow up a little.
The transition from sports cars to plush, overcomplicated turbocharged GTs is not inevitable. These vehicles are built to satisfy a generation of people who will not be on the earth for much longer, and who enjoyed the benefits of socioeconomic primacy. The auto manufacturers want at least one more run at the dying-generation’s wallets before they abandon overwrought, overpriced complexity. Since the manufacturers are incapable of attracting buyers younger than 50, perhaps they feel that they have no choice.
Singer Porsche is the future. Minimalism executed with the highest-quality materials and craftsmanship. Okay, air-cooling won’t survive the emissions cull, but the concept and materials will. The manufacturers can’t add more weight and power. It’s reached it’s natural conclusion–malaise and regulatory interference. Lightweighting and minimalistic efficiency were always the bleeding edge of sportscar motoring. No generational edict can reshape the market for long.
” (and I don’t think one qualifies just for watching cable news all day)”
But , but ~ it’s _FOX_ ‘ fair and balanced ‘ news ! .
You’re all just haters , me I want to go watch/listen to some 911’s roaring ’round Willow Springs at full chat , lovely sounds , quite out of my driving skillset .
-Nate
911s on a track beat cable news. Any cable news. The cable news channel that agrees with me more often is just as bad as the one that disagrees with me almost all the time.
Like Snoop said:
Get your money, whip ya hair
Executive branch blow my smoke like a player
Yeah in the club, yes it cracks
Cute little mama, but they stack with backs
I’m smokin’ great purple urple
You and Doggie world come and join my circle
I’ll break down herbal til I move like a turtle
My money is green [b]and my Porsche is turbo[/b]
In hot pursuit, come rock with Snoop
Maybe it’s the lawyer, her body’s the truth
In 1975 the best 911 one could buy was a 3.0 liter turbo.
In 2017 the worst new 911 one will be able to buy will be a 3.0 liter turbo.
Regardless of AGW the turbo base 911 is probably going to be better. Everyone prefers the I3 Fiesta turbo to the regular I4. Some things that are “encouraged” by the state do end up helping performance (e.g. fuel injection), and it looks like that is the case with widespread turbocharging.
However, unlike the localized smog that fuel injection was a response to, global warming is not something people will be able to change in any meaningful way. Global warming does let people with power complexes feel good about themselves for telling other people how to live.
If we really care about global warming then we need to stop fooling around with meaningless solutions and institute Chinese-style population control:
“A 2009 study of the relationship between population growth and global warming determined that the ‘carbon legacy’ of just one child can produce 20 times more greenhouse gas than a person will save by driving a high-mileage car, recycling, using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs, etc. Each child born in the United States will add about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent. The study concludes, ‘Clearly, the potential savings from reduced reproduction are huge compared to the savings that can be achieved by changes in lifestyle.\'”
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_sustainability/climate/
A person that reproduces is 20 times worse for the environment than a person that leads an “inefficient” lifestyle.
Anyone that says global warming is a problem that requires government action, but that is not suggesting population control, is not a serious, honest person. That person is just a control freak that wants to tell you to have a smaller house and a smaller car, but that does not actually care about meaningful solutions.
“Clearly, the potential savings from reduced reproduction are huge compared to the savings that can be achieved by changes in lifestyle.”
My H2 is more fuel efficient than your honor student.
The most effective method of “population control” is not government restrictions, but education. Educate people of both genders across all societal classes and birthrates quickly drop to near or even below replacement rate.
Problem is that method of birth control isn’t available in most of the world and pretty soon the useless eaters outnumber the enlightened folks. Not exactly sure what would happen next in such a scenario but I have an idea.
Have a look at these numbers:
http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Publications/Files/Key_Findings_WPP_2015.pdf
Fertility rates are steadily dropping (and are expected to continue doing so) in most of the underdeveloped world. Education is a big part of the reason.
Thanks for the link.
Funny how I knew from the lead pic and the first 7 words that this was Jack Baruth.
I know this is cliched but modern sports cars are way over-engineered and over-marketed. I’d even go so far to say that a Camry is a more honest car in what it represents and what it actually delivers.
As the owner of one of those Silver Rose 944 Turbos, I should mention that they *are* non-trivially complicated and over engineered for their era. I don’t recall them being over-marketed, but I was a broke teenager in a rural town when they came out, and I’m pretty sure they weren’t advertising to me.
They are wonderful, though – a fantastic combination of daily-driver usability and a performance envelope that was nearly unbeatable for the time. Plenty of cars with bigger performance numbers on paper struggle to set the same lap time as a properly set-up 944 Turbo.
What you should do Mr. Silver Rose owner, is upload some nice pics to somewhere so we can have a look!
I’m 5-10 years too old to have an Instagram account that I know what to do with, but at some point I will do it!
Just like BMW and Mercedes, I think these new turbo models won’t be marketed as such. They’ll just be smaller-displacement engines filling in for the non-turboed cars from the previous years. The “turbo” will live on as a larger displacement engine with a turbo. Over time Porsche will stop making a 3.8L engine and so the “Turbo” car will have to be the result of taking their smaller engine and boosting the turbochargers to a higher level. This is the fate of the newest BMW M3, which is now the 3.0L engine block from a 335i with extra boost and other go-fast goodies.
Will these smaller engined boosted flat sixes have the same character as the current larger displacement non-boosted? Probably not, but then again the vast majority of buyers are going to buy the cars with automatic transmissions, fancy audio systems, “infotainment,” and power-everything. They aren’t buying the cars for the unique driving experience. If they were buying for the driving experience, they would be buying the Cayman GT4 or Carrera GT3, which are remaining non-boosted.
I knew it was the beginning of the end for Porsche when they got rid of the simple “turbo” scribble and replaced it with “PORSCHE: 911 turbo” crowding up the rear deck. What made it cool was it felt it didn’t need to shove a brand name down your throat. You already know what car this is, and its a turbo! Even for non car people who don’t know what a turbocharger is, they do know that turbo is fast. It fit that German engineering snobbiness to a T.
Oh well, it’s all about the Caymen now anyway.
Next up: All PDK, all the time. Then it’s on to robot Porsches.
Smaller displacement, over boosted, direct injection engines are overstressed, expensive power plants. They cost a fortune, and they won’t last very long. This is turning into a farce. That’s the point BTSR is trying to drive home, and he’s right.
As somebody who designs these things, I’ll risk my two cents to say that you’re wrong.
The small turbo direct injection spark ignition engines won’t put modern cars in their graves. They have to pass their manufacturers’ durability cycles as well as tests of turbo-specific abuse (cheapo oil, very hot operation, 87-octane gas). In addition, they’re less likely to be cut any slack in development and preparation for release for the simple reason that they cost three times as much as the aspro/port injected engines they’re replacing!
The bell (mechanical) and bathtub (electrical and plumbing) curves apply, so any widespread, major issue will start showing up on our warranty costs. All three Detroit automakers have been badly burned within the past 20 years (GM Northstar, Chrysler 2.7, Ford/Navistar 6.0) and all of them saw the wave coming in testing and under warranty. Each of those failures had a three-comma bottom line effect – not counting the likely permanent loss of customers who had to eat an engine after warranty.
An increase in the failure rate of a $10,000 system of three percentage points (from 1% to 4%) costs $300 per car even with no value assigned to the customer’s satisfaction. That’s the sort of thing that gets executives fired. Not reassigned or quietly set aside to retire in a few years. Canned.
The new stuff won’t all make it to 20/300 like the B&B want. Infotainment/security system issues will overload every electrical tech in the country and park intact vehicles for good. Crappy crash repairs on mixed-material cars will corrode out some more.