Sports cars - page 192

If you’ve been keeping tabs and following the story on the upcoming all-electric Boxster, by this point, you’ve already seen extensive coverage of camouflaged prototypes on tests. They’ve been spotted across a number of locations from the Nürburging in Germany, and winter weather runs up in the Arctic circle to more recently, the streets of San Fransisco. But have you ever wondered what lies under the heavy cladding of the 718 EV? Well, a rendering based on the spy shots we’ve seen so far, could be a great way to decipher these details and that’s exactly what we have here.

Porsche’s 911 GT3 has long been the choice for driving purists seeking the ultimate road-legal track car. After being absent for the 2017 model year, it reappeared for 2018 with some crucial upgrades to improve its already-compelling racing pedigree. Gone was the 3.8-liter engine! A 4.0-liter naturally aspirated derived from the GT3 Cup racer motivated it with 500 ponies of might, capable of revving up to 9,000 rpm. A seven-speed PDK was standard, but a six-speed manual made a comeback for purists.

Bonhams is set to auction a very special 993-generation 911 Turbo at Goodwood Revival Collectors’ Motor Cars And Automobilia. Officially named ’The Last Waltz’, it is the last air-cooled Porsche to be built and released from Zuffenhausen. An important milestone in the brand’s history, the Last Waltz was built at the factory on March 27, 1998. It’s too bad that I was only eight years old and completely oblivious to history unfolding. It was commissioned via the Sonderwunsh program for German Author Clauss Vanderborg. Jerry Seinfeld’s famed 993 Carrera 4S Cabriolet was finished and delivered on 31st March, shortly after the Last Waltz came off the line. However, the latter spent six months with the special wish wing of the brand getting specially kitted out with a bunch of aesthetic and mechanical modifications.

When it comes to reimagining and modifying Porsche cars, there is no shortage of great names that specialize in the art of making the German company’s performance models even more capable than they already are. Such treatment is not limited only to the Porsche 911 and 718 models though. The German company, Friedrich Performance Manufaktur (FPM) offers performance-enhancing treatment for all Porsche models, and one of its latest kits is dedicated to making the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT faster than the latest, most powerful 911 we have. Of course, the 992.2 update is about to bring even more radical variants of the iconic, rear-engine sports car, but the Friedrich Performance package for the Cayenne GT gives it a 36-percent bump in power with a bit of extra torque. As you may expect, the numbers are impressive, but even more surprising is how little it takes to unleash that extra power from the Porsche SUV.

Unfortunate circumstances are just as likely to hit cars as they are people and I recently stumbled upon one such build on the web and this one is bound to raise a few eyebrows, among the classic Porsche 911 community. Air-cooled Porsches are one of those things that are considered art. Altering any aspect of them is the automotive equivalent of blasphemy. Unless, of course, you are Singer, Tuthill, or one of the other names, dealing in reimagined 911s. Essentially, what you are looking at is a Frankenstein of a car. It started as a 1976 model that was turned into a race car, and eventually, thanks to a landslide, it required a powertrain transplant. Chris Ashton from Ruffian Cars is the man behind the crazy Porsche 911 race car, and what he had to say about this build and how it um... evolved, was quite the story. More importantly, the Tesla powertrain is not where the madness of this classic 911 build ends. This also raises the question - is it better to let something die or save it through unconventional methods?

Regardless of the generation, beyond the 911 Turbo models, the GT range is the next natural step. These track-bred cars have continued to evolve since the late 90s and early 2000s with the introduction of even more hard-core models with the likes of the GT3 RS and GT2. Given how most of these track-bred cars are limited-run models, they tend to command a premium over your average run-of-the-mill Carreras. I was curious to see how the GT3 market in particular has been faring over the past few years, given the wild ride we had with regard to pricing, through the pandemic, and here’s what I found.

Sharing production costs between models is not uncommon in the modern-day automotive industry. It seems even Porsche’s iconic sports cars are no exception and the Porsche 981 and 991 models are a perfect example. The 911 doesn’t need an introduction as it has been Porsche’s flagship sports car since 1964, after succeeding the 356 - Porsche’s first sports car, since the company officially became a brand. That said, Porsche’s financial troubles from the 1990s, prompted the company to give us a budget-friendly model. In came the 986 Boxster, and it immediately became clear it was a cut-price, mid-engine 911, minus the rear seats. This was not the last time Porsche did this. Australian YouTuber and Porsche aficionado, Jeff Richardson took a deep dive into the 981 and 991 Porsche models to examine how much they have in common. He also bought a flooded 981 Boxster solely to dismantle it. One thing became clear to him – the extent of the similarities between the 911 and Boxster/Cayman is a lot more than you initially may have thought, and it doesn’t stop with these two models.

Porsche’s 987 generation of the Boxster arrived for the 2005 model as a successor to the highly criticized 986 generation. Four years after the 987’s launch in 2005, Stuttgart introduced the 987.2 generation in 2009. For its new generation, the roadster gained a new 2.9-liter engine with a horsepower rating of 255 and a seven-speed PDK (dual-clutch) automatic transmission.

The Porsche 911 has finally taken the hybrid route for 2025, setting the tone for future sports cars of the German carmaker. The next-generation Porsche 718 goes even further by becoming fully electric, but the company is adamant that the 911 will feature an internal combustion engine for as long as possible, especially on the 911. While Porsche’s T-Hybrid powertrain, effectively, schooled sports car manufacturers on how to properly hybridize a performance car without making it too heavy, many people frown upon the notion of an electrified sports car. With the 992.2 Carrera GTS being able to match and, in some aspects, even surpass the 992.1 Turbo S (starting MSRP of $230,400), the 992.2 Turbo S will also rely on the same hybrid setup, although with around 710 horsepower, instead of the 532 seen in the GTS. That said, if you are looking for something that has the pedigree and performance but doesn’t come with a complex hybrid powerplant, here are three Porsche 911 Turbo S alternatives that will deliver the thrills.

There is an obvious pattern when it comes to Porsche introducing its new 911 variants. There is a version of the rear-engine sports car for everyone, but when a new 911 comes out, we don’t get all variants at once. Things are not much different for the 992.2 update, although there is one big difference. For 2025, we got the first Porsche 911, powered by a hybrid powertrain, and this changes a few things in the Porsche 992.2 lineup. Models that are typically offered from the start will now take longer to arrive, and this includes the best-selling 911 variant – the Carrera S. This has everything to do with Porsche’s hybrid 911 variants, which sometime in the next two years, will be joined by the first hybrid Porsche 911 Turbo. Despite working on keeping the internal combustion engine alive for as long as possible, Porsche is really pushing the hybrid 911 agenda, and here’s what this means for the next-generation 992.2 Carrera S.

Sometimes I like imagining purely hypothetical competitions about some of my favorite things- Godzilla vs Kong, Edison vs Tesla, Autobots vs Decepticons, etc. I also like to imagine the odd supercar match-up from time to time, something I am sure we are all guilty of. The question of whether one car is better than another is a question that is as old as automobiles itself. And while we can only compare spec sheets or watch the drag races of some of our favorite supercars, some of us are fortunate enough to take it a step further.

If you’ve ever wondered how a classic car would fare around one of the most iconic racetracks in the world, driving instructor and local Nürburgring dweller/ YouTuber, Misha Charoudin gave us an answer, through a video he shot in what started life as a 1972 Porsche 911 T/S. There is no shortage of reimagined, restored, or resto-modded classic Porsches these days, but this one seems to be ticking all the right boxes. You wouldn’t be able to tell at first glance, but the car has been tastefully done up. I suppose that’s the proper way to know if a car has been modified properly when it looks bone stock. Under the hood lies the most pleasant of surprises, thanks to which the classic 911 now packs substantially more power. The engine is also much larger than the original 2.3-liter Carrera S mill. In a way, this is the Porsche 911 equivalent of a muscle car, and this particular example started life as a race car, according to the owner.