Last lap for a legend

The king is dead, long live the king. At the beginning of next year, the current Porsche 911 (codenamed 997) will be superceded by a harder, better, stronger and faster model - the all-new 991.

Of course in the flesh it'll be more or less identical to its predecessor and still have its flat-six boxer engine mounted in totally the wrong place but, hey, why screw around with an oddball formula that's been thrilling sports car fans for the last 48 years?

No, the real question we need to ask ourselves is just how the white-coated lab men at the Porsche factory plan to finesse and improve upon a product that, in its latest incarnation, is pretty much faultless. Especially the radical 911 Carrera 4 GTS you see on these pages.

Last hurrah

Representing the proverbial "last hurrah" of the soon-to-be extinct 997 range, this special edition is probably one of the finest normally aspirated Porsches you could ever hope to get your greasy little hands on.

A number of subtle performance tweaks make it so but the most important has to be that block of multi-cylindered magic hanging atop the rear axle.

Now just some 20kW down on the old GT3 model that sought such high critical acclaim, it is responsible for giving the GTS fairly brutal performance. You know, the sort of horizon-pulling credentials that make your internal organs go all soft and gooey.

Around town it feels as benign as some luxurious über-saloon but show the GTS a lonely stretch of country road and you'll discover that this 911 can gobble up the asphalt quicker than cars twice its price.

It plays to all the right senses while it's at it too; that honey of a motor proving to be one of the most satisfying bits of machinery we've thrashed all year.

At lower revs it chugs nostalgically like an air-cooled 911 of old. But keep that throttle pedal welded to the firewall and those six pistons beat out an operatic wail of pure fury.

Maximum muscle

Pandering to a dying breed of puristic motoring enthusiasts who still dig working for their reward, a brand new variable resonance intake system means that maximum muscle is now flexed at a heady 7300rpm.

Coupled to a standard sports exhaust system, this makes the business of going fast even more visceral as every red-blooded charge towards the rev-limiter is amplified to racecar-esque proportion.

Yep, field the red mist behind that perfectly positioned steering wheel and you suddenly feel like you're piloting one of the Flying Lizard Motorsport Porsches that often kick butt in the annual Le Mans 24-Hour.

Heightening this "lookout-I'm-a-racing-driver" vibe is the optional seven-speed Porsche Doppelkupplungsgetriebe (PDK) transmission.

Brilliant as an automatic in heavy traffic, it really comes to life when you stick it into Sport or Sport Plus mode and swap cogs manually using either the paddles mounted behind the steering wheel, or the traditional gear stick sitting atop the transmission tunnel.

Most double-clutch systems are enviably quick these days but Porsche's efforts take things to a whole new level, snicking through those lengthy ratios quicker than Ayrton Senna at the Monaco Grand Prix circa 1990.

Though blisteringly quick when you want it to be, the thing that impressed me most about the new GTS was its handling prowess.

All 911s are sharp driving tools to begin with, but the combination of a wider track (2mm front, 32mm rear) plus some extra sticky 19-inch tyres means that this one hugs the road like a leech.

And even though our car was fitted with Porsche's all-wheel drive system, (something that can euthanise a car's appeal at the limit) it never detracted from the driving experience.

To be expected, there was a dab more understeer on initial turn in but once you hit the apex and get back on the gas, it soon subsides.

From that point onwards, and depending on just how big your balls are, it's easy to get that rump to step out by playing with the throttle.

So, an all-wheel drive sports car that rewards the enthusiast but still offers superior levels of bite in extreme conditions? Yep, contrary to what Audi has us believe, it really is possible.

There's a ton of feedback been stirred into the mix too. Quite a few machines that inhabit this rung of the highperformance ladder can come across as being a tad aloof - not so in the Porsche.

For like some seismic shockwave rippling across the Pacific Ocean en route to Japan, every nuance of its relationship with the tarmac is telegraphed through that beautifully weighted steering and adjustable (PASM) suspension setup. This culminates in a car that feels like a car and not some digital apparition lifted from a Playstation game.

Appeal

At this stage of such a positive review I would, in an attempt to avoid sounding like an in-house PR man, try and balance my observations by pointing out a few quibbles.

But in the case of the 911 Carrera 4 GTS, I simply cannot think of a single thing that detracts from its incredible appeal. Well, except for the questionable tan interior and colour-coded wheels Porsche Centre thought fitting to pimp out their test unit with. Yeah, to avoid looking like victims of midlife crisis we'd stick with the standard black Alcantara.

Stitching explosive velocity and racecar-like reflexes into a usable and competitively priced package, there are few cars capable of leaving such an impression.

A testament to the Teutonic brilliance of the 997 that's already been with us for the last seven years, it's hard to imagine how Porsche will be able to better the recipe in their forthcoming 991.

The Specs:

Engine: 3800cc flat six

Power: 300kW at 7300rpm

Torque: 420Nm at 4200 - 5600rpm

0-100km/h: 4.4-seconds (claimed PDK)

Top Speed: 306km/h (claimed)

Fuel Consumption: 10.2l/100km (combined) 14.7l/100km (achieved)

: 240g/km (PDK)

Price: From 1269000

We like:

Lip-curling acceleration

A finely honed driving tool

Oozes class and sophistication

We don't like:

The optional tan leather interior

The fact that I'll probably never own one