You know that scene in the The Fast & The Furious where that one character drives really fast & furious? That’s what driving the 2015 Porsche Carrera S is like. Not to say that this Porsche is anything like a B-list action movie full of B-list actors. We mean instead that if you could put Red Bull, pure adrenaline, nitrous, and pixie stix powder into a cup, then gave that cup to a squirrel, and sent that squirrel into a laser tag facility (lots of black lights), you’d have a sense of what it’s like to drive this car.
At its base level, a Carerra S is already dangerous. It’s normal driving mode—without the “sport” or “sport plus” modes activated—is lively enough that it reminds us of an Audi S3 with all of its sport upgrades maxed out and running at full tilt. The S3 has a much smaller engine, however—a turbocharged four—while the Carerra S has that increasingly rare attribute: a naturally-aspirated six.
A naturally-aspirated six means that it has six cylinders—a larger engine—and creates its power without recycling its exhaust fumes (that creates a power boost but necessitates a slight delay in delivery). With natural aspiration, power is always available, from the moment you turn the key.
That naturally-aspirated six will zap you to 60 mph from a standstill in just 4.3 seconds. Its 400 hundred German horses will rip the cover off the U.S. air, stuff it into the combustion chambers, and vaporize it into a screaming triple-digit speed in less time than it took you to read this sentence. That doesn’t even get into the “sport” and “sport plus” modes.
Pressing “sport” is like giving your dog a 50 foot leash. “Sport plus” is taking him to the dog park. With no leash at all, the Carrera S is almost too much car, at least for the posted speed limits of a town like Cary. The engine is furious at the slightest provocation. The gentlest of prodding during parking lot maneuvers unleashes a barely contained quaking that is a bit much for picking up some stamps at the Post Office.
The on-ramp to U.S. Highway 1-South from Walnut St. is long and windy. We made sure to give the cars in front of us plenty of time to go first—not because we it was our boy scout deed of the morning, but because we didn’t want them in our way. The engine is already warring at 7,000 RPMs for no reason at all despite our pleadings to come down and join the rest of us like a normal person. As the light turns green, we let gravity do what it was meant to and send our foot to the earth like a piano onto Wile E. Coyote.
It was loud, it sure as science sounded like Judgment Day, and we very quickly discovered that having the engine in the back is something that needs to be managed and respected. Fortunately, we’d read up on first-time 911 drivers trying to merge onto highways while pedal-mashing and finding themselves several lanes further over than they’d intended. We got the top speed we wanted, felt a brief moment of numbness as the rear end twitched, then braked fast and early, bringing us back to the realm of mortal.
Flicking around the roads of Cary with sport plus activated is an exercise in watching for police cars. The engine is crying out for freedom with all the subtlety of a cat that is on fire. You’re really better off at the track with this mode. To test out the nav system, we keyed in La Farm Bakery and were soon attracting Mercedes’ and BMWs who looked over hopefully at stop lights before the light turned green.
On a normal day, and in a more controlled setting, we might have indulged them. Today, however, was macaroon day, which meant that La Farm was offering french treats at a discount. There’s no way we were going to let torching an AMG like a cedar stick get in the way of that.
Something else we should mention is that our Carrera S came equipped with PDK. This is Porsche’s take on an automatic transmission, something that even the most basic of 90s era Ford Taurus’s operate, except that the two are as alike as a paper airplane and an F-22 Raptor. No other transmission snaps off gear changes so ruthlessly, with endless capacity to supply peak after peak of power. It’s as if you’re a mountain climber with bionic legs; you bound up and up and up until the atmosphere itself begins to thin out and you realize that you’re nearing outer space.
There’s a reason why the 911 GT3 RS, the highest of Porsche’s 21 levels of 911 (the Carrera S is level 2, by the way) only comes with PDK. There comes when a point when you’re dealing with so much speed and power that the manual transmission simply isn’t adequate for driving. The Carrera S does allow for a manual, if you want it, but honestly, after trying PDK and reading so many auto journalists’ laudatory remarks, we understand why people prefer it. In fact, we might prefer it, too.
Besides that, the Carrera S comes with the standard Porsche engineering features that would make the fellows who built the Golden Gate bridge about want to stand up from the grave and applaud (assuming you’re into the zombie fad):
- Porsche Active Suspension Management – A system that manages each wheel’s interaction with the road. If you begin to drive aggressively, the suspension firms up to give you more control. If the road conditions worsen, the suspension takes that and your driving style into account.
- Porsche Torque Vectoring – A system the brakes the inner wheel of the car when cornering, helping the car to execute the turn faster and return to straight line position.
- Cross-Drilled Brake Discs – Improved ventilation and larger caliper sizes provide the balance needed to stop the 400-horsepower engine.
Out of politeness to you, we’ll stop here, but the list of standard engineering—things well beyond power windows and air conditioning—goes well beyond this. This particular Carrera S has about $30,000 worth of options added to it, things like Dynamic Chassis Control, Dynamic Lighting System, and SportDesign, which changes the front lip and rear spoiler to reduce air drag up front and increase it in the rear.
All in all, we totally get the allure of a 911. In an area like the Triangle, you’ll have no trouble running out for sprints to Durham, Chapel Hill and Raleigh. Even if you mainly tool around Cary like a boss, we guarantee that you’ll have a grin whenever you feel like it. Sport plus is only a touch away.
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