It's not always easy to get the right feel for a car. Sure, the first impression is there. But what if he is wrong? If the essence behind the car is not recognizable at first glance, multi-layered, discreet and yet wonderful? We like to miss something like that today. Because the message has to go out fast, it does not necessarily matter what's in the news, it's "live". We are not friends of this development, but we can not always avoid the whole. So now a new category of driving experiences that really deserves this title.
These are really special, personal, but above all intense thoughts about special cars, which you have to pay attention to a little more than half a morning. It starts with an 911 Carrera RS of the vintage 1992 with its ideal successor to 2016, the Porsche 911R. Both cars accompanied us over the Swabian Alb for two days:
When sitting in the 964 then falls directly unequivocally on that I may have drunk in the last year maybe one or the other wholegrain water too much, at least the Recaros seemed to me earlier a little less closely. Otherwise, I seem a bit out of practice: insulted dies the three-acher after the first sloppy engagement. The feeling that it is a bit in the fog of automatic gearshifting, electronic throttle control and, in general, page-long algorithms in various ECUs.
Well, the Stuttgarter traffic offered but beyond the measure opportunity to let the right thigh right timing and decent endurance to find. At some point it was actually clear on the streets and it was then even more driving than riding. The RS was allowed to do what it was conceived for: shoot!
At the outskirts, therefore, quickly backshackled into the two - of course, not without a little wrong in the intermediate gas and have sent the boxer in almost ordinary speed heights - and given fire. You hear the attack immediately, because the three-axle is one of those very fine aggregates, which you can actually read the accelerator pedal position on the excitement of the eardrum. As the sound suddenly becomes hollow, because he wants to suck in all the air that stands between him, the speed cellar and the full ignition of all horsepower. As he digs up the scale, with good 4000 revolutions suddenly aufschnickt a resonant flap in the intake and even more frenetic jumps up, until suddenly in the area over 6000 drifts everything into hysterics.
It is, um, cool! Really intense, pure, dirty. The problem is that the camera car is hurried and the 911R in the rearview mirror is so big that you can see the plaque of your colleague.
What happened? Nothing, unfortunately. Because so purely objective, so not sitting in the eye of this pink hurricane, such a 964 even as a Carrera RS is no longer a very fast car today. The preceding Volvo is entrained in a turbocharged air and the R has certainly the upshift recommendation flashing.
All this, however, does not matter. Because we are not filing here at times, but to enjoy. And as it already works at the noise, so does the rest of the star ruby directly. How the front axle responds to every little input on the spindly steering wheel, how the penalty turns almost angularly and yet the next moment does not build up the grip that your grip-accustomed brain would expect. It's a dance, a hard, wild, unpredictable one. A bit like waltz. In knight armor. On freshly cleaned parquet.
You really have your hands full here. And it must fit if you want to be really fast, because it is still real craftsmanship that the RS demands. No net, no double bottom and no actor electronics that make you look like Heger or Alzen. This will be particularly interesting when the rain sets in and you have to somehow stay tuned to the others.
Because it's unbelievably hard to feel the limit in time in such an evil 911 - and the RS lightweight is really a polished weapon - when the reputation of the tire gets lost in the spray and in the low friction of the wet road. In the dry, you can still touch, feel, hear somehow. When it chirps, squeaks, delicately vibrates in the steering wheel, then you know: we are well on the way. You can forget all that in the rain. Since you suddenly have to know him well, especially his reactions, if you have to respond really fast, say: Too fast at the entrance, he starts the slide - and then? Lupfen? Much, tender? Or rather strong to the gas? How will he come across and, above all, how fast?
Questions for which you have no time to answer, because the RS is shockingly direct in his speech. There is no blurring, no hesitation, everything is stiff, rigid and immediate. If you parry wrong, then he tears off your head as usual.
So at the end of the ride you are also a little bit tense. Not only because the seat has become tight, but because you suddenly realize how tense you have been secretly. The deep contentment and satisfaction that you and especially the 911 can still do, outweighs of course, but: this small uncertainty that forces you to absolute concentration at any time, it can not be dismissed out of hand.
In 911R you feel nothing like that. How much trust depends on habit is unbelievable, because just because you sit in the new buckets rather than the old capital investments today, any self-doubt is blown away. The big hole in the center console, where normally navigation and automatic climate control are at home, would be the first question mark. Also, the shaking idle, the slightly out of round running of the boxer - somewhere deep inside you grow the premonition that you should better not weigh here in safety.
But the R simply makes it too easy for you. Thanks to clever engine programming, it also makes such a playful drive with the ultra-light one-off swing uphill without gas, that you would even trust your mother-in-law to do so. The gears of the six-speed gearbox can be easily switched, the pedal forces are tame and the steering also presents you with few problems. Even the background noise is somehow: normal.
So you get a bit rough with it, no 200m after boarding and in front of the town sign. It's the second gear, like a few hours earlier in the RS, when suddenly the Pandora's box is quite wide open. The tachometer pops into the sky without stopping, the cup tires spool on the wet road and the whole load whips with power over the full width of the road.
Where did that come from now?
The ingenuity with which the 4.0 liter boxer takes hold, stunned. I can not remember ever driven a sharper engine. If we only know the bad guys today with highly complex and clever machines, it is this manual gear lever that creates a connection and closeness that is simply irreplaceable.
You just have to recall that as a reference: the pink Carrera RS is a lightweight, only 1200kg at 260PS. Here and now in the R we are sitting on a bomb that has twice the power at the same weight. And it's not just the naked numbers. It is the power with which apparatus moves forward. The sound you could not imagine better from the RS - and yet, it's once again electrifying around worlds. Of course, tricks are at work, they direct the intake snorkeling in a membrane tube directly into the interior, the titanium exhaust is flap-controlled, as well as the resonance airbox. There is practically no insulation material left, even 5kg less than in the GT3 RS (!) And the rear windows are made of paper-thin plastic.
It's an orgy. For real. Full throttle in the small gears feels from 5000 revolutions actually as if you had opened the Pandora's box. And from 7000 jumps again an extra evil boxing clown. Wherever all the other engines run out of air, the R lays down so many coals that in most cases you really go out of gas in shock.
Because it's just not a computer game or such a moving pinball machine, in which you pull a lever after any shift light briefly, the automatic transmission fades the ignition and everything wraps so good until the clutch that you perceive the speed gifpel more so as alpine hut. The 911R bites. Quick as a flash. And he wants more, the next gear, more speed, more ecstasy. Woe, you're on the gas for a fraction of a second when you're tearing through, alas, you're too stupid, woe, you're making the slightest mistake. He forgives nothing.
Because we blasphemed about the GT3, the sharp Ferrari and wonderful McLaren have dismissed as emotion-cold egg files. That's why they put us through this madness. A precision machine that has been sharpened to the last detail, as good as you can possibly build, and then almost sarcastically say: now show what you can do.
To describe how the R drives on the road with really good steam on the boiler - that's where I get to the limits. It's flawless, it's impeccable in every move, that you just leave speechless and drive yourself into a solid intoxication.
So integrated, so focused, from a subtle aliveness and unshakeable satiety, from an ease that you have suddenly reached the limit of the conceptual speed of your senses. Because at some point in the R numbers on the clock, where not your body cramped, but your head.
It feels wonderful, fantastic, but eventually it snaps the fuse, it just can not be.
The 911R is technologically at a level that is hard to pack. All our wishes were heard, they built a car that could not be finer. And that's where his biggest problem lies. Because if something doesn't fit, it's not because of it. Then it's up to you. And that could unsettle some. Where we would be at the RS again ...
