Porsche's New 911 in Germany

"I don't think I'd vacation in Germany," declared our British photographer and now German resident, Tom Salt, as we poured along the A7 autobahn in a 2020 Porsche 911 Carrera S at a blissful 130 mph.
 

Salt's words echoed in my head, but he didn't get an amen or even a response from me. My plans for a return trip were already forming.

Why wouldn't I want to come back? Germany is a magical place where courtesy, lane discipline, paying attention, and adhering to rules give human beings the freedom to use their judgment and drive as fast as their cars will go.

Not that there was ever any doubt, but traveling only a few miles in Germany reveals the vast cultural differences between American and German drivers. Germans check for traffic in their mirrors, use their turn signals religiously, and don't panic when you fly past them at well over 150 mph. And—this might blow your mind—they treat pretty much anyone who wants to go fast as if he were an ambulance driver. Zero animosity, no high-beam flashing, no middle fingers. No one seems to take your speed to be a personal affront to their delicate ego.

Many Germans enjoy driving cars hard, something abhorrent to the average American. And unlike us, Germans have to weigh their love of speed against premium that costs $8.00 a gallon, and, bless them, many of them decide that a pegged speedometer is worth the money. That's love.

Speaking of love, we're warming up to the new 911. Internally, Porsche calls this generation the 992 to make it easier to differentiate it from its predecessor, the 991.2. And this 911 does look a lot like the outgoing car. There's a different treatment at the rear, and the front end is slightly reshaped, but the design is unmistakably familiar.

Big speeds are easy to call up when the autobahn goes from the nominal 130-km/h (81 mph) speed limit to unrestricted. As we opened up the 911 on a straight and empty stretch, the digital speedometer indicated a likely optimistic but unerringly stable 196 mph. Optional carbon-ceramic brakes keep you from leaving sweat stains on your shirt and stopped our Racing Yellow bar of soap from 70 mph in 140 feet. Ease into them or jump on them, the brakes simply don't mind being asked to absorb 150 mph's worth of energy when a Nissan Qashqai (Dutch plated, of course) suddenly pulls into the left lane.

If opening the engine cover actually revealed the engine instead of some cute little fans, you'd see a heavily revised 443-hp 3.0-liter flat-six hiding behind the rear bumper. Roughly the size of three shoeboxes, the compact flat-six has two turbos like its predecessor, but those turbos are now mirror-image twins, allowing for symmetrical plumbing on the two cylinder banks. The intercoolers have also been relocated to improve their cooling capacity and reduce—but not eliminate—turbo lag. From a stop, the engine isn't exactly a softy, but the real neck bending starts at 3000 rpm. That delay is apparent in our 5-to-60-mph test, which meas­ures acceleration from a roll (i.e., without the benefit of launch control). Stomping on the throttle in that test results in a 4.2-second run. We're not imagining it. The lag is meas­urable and costs this 911 four-tenths of a second compared with the last-gen 911 GTS, which made seven horsepower more.

The seven-speed dual-clutch automatic—the only gearbox currently available, though a manual is promised—brings launch control, which avoids the lull below 3000 rpm by revving the engine to five grand before engaging the clutch. Just try not to giggle when the rear tires hook up. And feel free to do it again and again; the dual-clutch is only too happy to accommodate. Using this procedure, we hit 60 mph in 3.0 seconds and passed the quarter-mile in 11.3 at 125 mph.





CARANDDRIVER