Porsche 911 Carrera 2012 review: road test

Would that on Porsche's encyclopaedic option list there was a box for "weekly track day" - preferably at Sydney Motorsport Park.

The renamed, extended and curvingly enhanced Eastern Creek track is one of the decreasing stretches of hardtop on this continent where Porsche's 911 can be enjoyed to anything approaching the extent that its nature demands.

VALUE

Explore the 2012 Porsche 911 range

• Porsche 911 Carrera and Carrera S 2012 review
• Porsche 911 Carrera and Carrera S cabriolet 2012 review
• Porsche 911 Carrera 2012 review: road test
• Porsche 911 Carrera coupe 2012 review
• Porsche 911 Carrera 2012 review

While one car presented by Porsche at this showcase for the entry level 911 Carrera and Cabriolet variants is optioned from its $235,850 starting point to a few bottles of Grange under $300K, the item that most impresses is the one least embellished. 

Yet even in basic form - if anything priced from 230 grand can be so called - the 911 subverts Carsguide's dearly held tenet that less is more.

TECHNOLOGY

The - ahem - base Carerra's 3.4 flat six now realises 350 horse power in older and perhaps more meaningful terms, or 257kW and 390Nm. With 400cc more, the S makes 294kW/440Nm.

Both achieve 100km/h from standing in less than five seconds, blazingly fast for roads cars and seemingly all the quicker from this cockpit on such wide open straights and a tightly sinuous series of corners where the truly prodigious levels of mechanical grip have to be felt to be believed.

Much - much too much - has been made of the move to 100 per cent electric steering. 911 acolytes deplore this as a desecration and will bore about it till plants wither and birds drop stunned from the skies. As one whose life hasn't been spent in a 911 and whose driving life is spent in the real world, I say it's here, it's staying and it's brilliant - fulsome, alive, life enhancing.

DESIGN

The real world motif is worth recalling when putting the Cabrio between the Park's new set of plunging and rising apexes. Altogether softer and less sled like than the Coupe, you're in danger of regarding it as less than an unalloyed joy until you remember the invocation of former foreign minister Gareth Evans when addressing the Greens - "in the real world ..."  Still it'll be keenly interesting to see how the new and reportedly much advanced Boxster - released next week - stands in Porsche's open top order of things.

As a showcase for enhanced sophistication the Cabrio is hard to fault - be it an innovation as simple as the wind deflector that can be automatically raised and lowered as opposed to being hauled out of the nose and manually erected, or intelligent engine mounts that respond via magnetic fluid to the car's movement for optimum weight distribution.

DRIVING

What will surely be Porsche's conventional manual transmission is the first to come with a seventh gear. Why? Well, on the daily 250km/h autobahn commute (I've met people who do this), this tall override ratio allows the flying German executive to achieve what would in this country be terminal velocity. Moreover it does it at an engine speed not much greater than that required by a less exotic car at this country's soporific speed limit.

To access seventh, and to avoid ham fisted upshifts, it's necessary to travel via fifth or sixth. Suffice, that while none come within three cogs at this track day presentation, the manual now matches the incredibly adroit twin clutch auto PDK for gears, if not outright speed off the mark or - if you happen to care - fuel consumption. Then of, course, there's the ongoing matter of Porsche Doppelkupplung, the PDK twin clutch auto that changes gear and adapts so rapidly there's barely cause to trouble its shifting paddles.

Indeed, when my opponent in a launch control activated drag along the main strait thought to change up of his own volition rather than allow PDK to work its own magic, Carsguide's ability shy pilot took an unlikely chequered flag. Yes, it's special alright, especially in Sport where it's quite amazingly anticoatory, tastefully blipping the throttle on downshifts, enhancing the 911's ability to make us amateurs feel like champions. 

But is it more fun? That's between you and your left foot. While fewer than one in five will opt for the conventional manual, a slickly short throwing model of the species, it's hard not to agree with the head of another German maker of fine driverly car who laments the dying art of nailing a gear  shift for yourself. "We've lost something, haven't we?" No you can't stop progress, it's just that unlike the 911, you might like to slow it up a bit.

VERDICT

Our abiding principle is that less - less stuff, less expense -  can be more. The purest Porsche proves it.