For B-Line and, For the Rest of Us...

[motordavid]

that merely long for a new Turbo PCar: pretty well done art., non-auto mag style, from Sunday's NewYawkTimes. Maybe I could take out a home eq. loan? Screw the Kidz...I Want One!
BR,mD

Behind the Wheel
2007 Porsche 911 Turbo: Kinetic Art That Really Moves You

The 911 Turbo gets 480 horsepower and a new all-wheel-drive system.

By TED WEST
Published: September 24, 2006
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y.

A Porsche at home on racetrack or street.

You'd better be careful. Porsche's Stability Management system is almost certainly a better performance driver than you are.
CREATING a rocket-fast, world-class supercar that is also usable, dependable and workaday-sensible is like persuading an abstract expressionist to paint by the numbers. He might do it for a moment or two if you asked politely, daubing cobalt blue on “5” and burnt umber on “23.” But all the while, he aches to fling gobs of paint at the canvas — not by the numbers, but by the bucket.

Which brings us to the 2007 Porsche 911 Turbo. However expensive and exotic it may be, relative to a Camry or a Cobalt, it was still meant to be a paint-by-numbers kind of car — reliable, solid, steadfast. It must run in heat, cold and ice, year after year after year.

Then why are the Turbo, David Murray and I raging down the pit straight on the grand prix course at Watkins Glen raceway at full racing speed, wide open at 155 miles an hour? One explanation could be that David Murray is a professional racer and knows what he’s doing.

But he isn’t driving! He’s carrying on a running commentary, while behind the wheel, I monitor myself for early signs of an infarction.

“Really great, isn’t it?” Mr. Murray says in his easy Georgia drawl. “If this car had slicks,” he adds, referring to racing tires, “it’d lap here just as fast as my racecar!” His racecar is a Porsche 911 GT3, the fastest racing 911 there is.

At the first turn after the pits, I stand on the brakes hard — but way too early. The Turbo’s huge 14.96-inch ceramic discs stop us as if we’ve hit a bridge abutment.

“Rocks, doesn’t it?” Mr. Murray says, beaming.

It rocks.

This entirely tractable daily driver performs like a purpose-built racecar. It accelerates with the explosive power of a rifle shot, then stops like a bullet hitting a tree. The Porsche Turbo combines Jackson Pollock with painting-by-the-numbers. It will dither around town at 30 m.p.h., daubing cobalt blue on “5” like the Golden Years painting class down at the senior center. But say the word and it slings buckets of paint manically, like a Pollock imitator who has had too much coffee.

This new car reinvents Porsche’s legendary Turbo line. Since the first 261-horsepower Turbo in 1975, Porsche has released a new, hotter version every few years. In 1995, the Turbo had 408 horsepower, and in 2000, 450 horsepower. This latest Turbo delivers a sensational 480 horsepower at 6,000 r.p.m., combined with a similarly sensational 460 pound-foot of torque, available uninterrupted from 1,950 to 5,000 r.p.m.

And a special Turbo 10-second-at-a-time overboost function produces a positively prurient 505 pound-foot. It’s the work of the devil.

“The last Turbo was so great,” Mr. Murray says. “Then they make this much improvement. It makes you wonder what more they can do.”

Mr. Murray is a Porsche driving instructor, so his sympathies are clear. But his remark is more than mere advertorial. Besides adding raccoon tails and mud flaps, what more can Porsche do? More outrageous performance in a volume production car is hard to fantasize.

Central to harnessing the Turbo’s explosive thrust is all-wheel drive, and that was never truer than with this new model. With all four wheels driving, the Turbo’s 3,572-pound curb weight (with the Tiptronic S five-speed automatic, or 3,495 pounds with a six-speed manual) zaps to 60 m.p.h. in 3.4 seconds. That’s frightfully close to the immortal world-champion Porsche 917K racecar, which got to 60 in 2.8 seconds.

Startlingly, the automatic is quicker than the manual, which reaches 60 in a turtle-ish 3.7 seconds.

Tiptronic S can be left in fully automatic mode or shifted with thumb buttons on the steering wheel. Either way, its lightning-quick shifts keep the twin turbochargers blowing at full gale, commanding the engine’s maximum power. Tip S is so good that on the track Mr. Murray said, “Just leave it in automatic — it’s faster.”

Without prompting, Tiptronic S downshifts when you’re braking or climbing, and if the tires lose grip in a corner (they did), it automatically upshifts to reduce wheelspin and restore grip. Working in conjunction with all-wheel drive and the Porsche Stability Management system, control is restored before you know anything is amiss.

This new all-wheel-drive hardware, replacing the earlier viscous-coupling system, is gear-driven and electronically controlled, delivering astounding stability even when I, as the driver, was making a mess of things. After a few laps, I began thinking, “Hey, I’m pretty good.”

Wrong. It’s the Turbo’s drive systems. They’re utterly brilliant.

Yes, but what about making the Turbo behave as mundanely as the paint-by-the-numbers art class? The best easel on the East Coast for testing the Turbo’s tolerance for everyday situations is Interstate 95 — hours of it in high summer season, on the way to Cape Hatteras, N.C.

The speed limit is 65 m.p.h., but squadrons of solid citizens hurtle past at 85 — easy breathing for the Turbo.

Kept in top gear — my I-95 Turbo had the manual gearbox — the engine pulled effortlessly from 1,500 r.p.m. and would have gone straight to 193, the car’s top speed, if I’d let it. Yet, over 288.9 miles in top gear with the cruise control set at 75 m.p.h., I got 23.5 miles per gallon. Not bad for a liquid-fuel rocket.

In keeping with its elite nature (and elite price: $123,695 base, $142,510 as tested), the Turbo’s creature comforts are lavish. The test car’s sand-beige leather seats were snug and supportive, with lumbar support that was a boon after hours on the Interstate. It had a DVD-driven navigation system and a superb Bose audio unit.

To avoid state trooper interviews in a car this effortlessly fast, cruise control is indispensable. But the cruise control is not adaptive — that is, it doesn’t monitor the gap between you and the car ahead. Adaptive cruise might be nice in a $142,000 car, but Porsche adheres to the notion that sports car drivers should pay attention to the traffic around them. A quaint notion, I know.

A tap of the cruise-control stalk adds or subtracts exactly 1 m.p.h. The large analog speedometer ranges to 225 m.p.h., but on that scale the distinction between 70 and 75 m.p.h. is all but unreadable. The digital speedometer in the center of the gauge cluster is vital.

The Turbo’s air-conditioning was excellent during an entire 102-degree day. Among other features, on the center console next to the rear spoiler adjuster there is a shock-absorber rate adjustment. In a trice, the shocks go from comfortable to racetrack-harsh. Set to “sport,” the control lets the car slide more before the stability system applies the brakes and throttles back the engine.

If you think you’re really good, Porsche Stability Management can be shut off altogether until the Turbo detects panic braking.

But careful. P.S.M. is almost certainly a better performance driver than you are.

Arriving in North Carolina without legal escort, I listened to the exhaust system and the twin turbochargers cool off, tik-tik-ting. The enormous front tires and even more enormous rear tires (their inflation pressures monitored as you drive) lurk beneath bulging, muscular fenders, giving the Turbo the stance of a bona fide Ferrari-beater. The movable spoiler, which rises automatically to become a two-element wing, is aerodynamically necessary at speed.

My test car’s Cobalt Blue Metallic paint shimmered with an elegant, purplish luminescence that made me look again and again. That gorgeous paint, and the rest of the 911 Turbo, can be made to move as timidly and obediently as the golden agers’ painting by the numbers. But when circumstances permit, the 911 Turbo will sling colors as big and bold and bodacious as any high-performance car on earth.

INSIDE TRACK: We have liftoff.