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.

The post Carrera S Review: The Bane of Cary Speed Limits appeared first on Leith Porsche Blog.

Photo: Dedesporsches

It’s a classic question: if you could own any Porsche, which would you choose? But that’s not really the question. The real question is not which Porsche, but which Porsche 911?

It seems strange to think that the 911 hasn’t existed for as long as cars have, or at least as long as Porsche itself. Newbies typically think that the 911 was the very first Porsche, the original DNA that everything has flowed out of.

In fact, Porsche did not produce the 911 until roughly 33 years after the company’s founding in 1931. What we find truly impressive is how close that first 1964 model came to perfection, to becoming the icon that is now tantamount to the Mona Lisa among Stuttgart diehards. But in terms of which 911 exactly is the best, the 911s of the early 1970s are becoming seen as the must-own 911s, at least according to market forces.

The Discovery Channel, of all people, says that the in the past 10 years, no other car from any automaker has seen its value skyrocket as high or as fast as the 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera 2.7 RS. It is the first example of Porsche’s philosophy on the track making its way into production. Lighter glass, a lighter body, fewer parts and a bigger engine make it arguably the purest expression of any 911 ever, so it’s small wonder that fans are getting into congressionally-unsanctioned bidding wars to have one.

They can be had, these days, for about $1 million. Jerry Seinfeld has said that he won’t part with his until he’s dead, if that makes any sense to you. We wouldn’t be surprised to see some owners buried in theirs like the Pharaohs of old. Forget the next generation: just embalm me and start cutting some stone.

You can see Steve McQueen drive his 1970 911S in the nearly 4-minute opening of Le Mans. We say “his” because McQueen had no intention of parting with his. In 2011 it sold at auction for $1.35 million.

So, dream big dreams about which Porsche is your ideal. In the meantime, Leith Porsche remains your Porsche dealer for North Carolina.

The post Better Get One Fast: Value of 1970s-era 911s Skyrocketing appeared first on Leith Porsche Blog.

Okay, y’all: let’s talk turbos. R&D Chief Wolfgang Hatz stepped out from the lab this past week to talk about how Porsche intends to meet increasingly stringent government fuel economy standards. His theme? Reality:

“If you look at euro per g/km then it’s turbo. Then at the end of the decade electrification has to be the next huge step.”

What he’s looking at is a big stack of EU and U.S. thou-shalt-nots that aim to stave off a Mad Max world by putting a lid on CO2 emissions. What does this mean? The 2018 and 2019 911s will probably use turbochargers. Possibly 2017, as well.

Then in 2020, 911s will begin to use plug-in hybrid technology, which means having a battery for partial electric power. The benefit of electric motors is that they deliver better off-the-line torque than any gasoline engine ever could. Period.

This will allow the 911 to retain its six-cylinder engines, keeping the four-cylinders far away in the Boxster, Cayman and Macan, at least so long as Hatz has a say. Inventive combinations of diesel, PHEV, gasoline and turbocharging will set the tone for the next 15 years or so.

All of this change is buttressed by miracles like the 918 Spyder, a hybrid that uses electric power along with its V8 engine to air-dry the tears of those clinging to their naturally aspirated flat-sixes. The 918 proves that Porsche is looking deeply into beating governmental fuel requirements.

Another halo car is the 911 GT3 RS, which Hatz said would only be trading its naturally-aspirated six-cylinder engine for another, more powerful, but still naturally-aspirated six-cylinder engine. Hatz affirmed that PDK will remain the only option for this track pearl, but allowed that a manual transmission sometime in the future isn’t an impossibility. Such artful phrasing.

To recap: future 911s will almost certainly get turbochargers, except for the GT3 RS, because of CO2 standards. It’s the world we live in.

For a Porsche for sale in Cary, visit Leith Porsche.

The post Porsche Will Likely Turbocharge Almost All Future 911s appeared first on Leith Porsche Blog.

Photo: Alex Tillman / Jalopnik

Last year saw the return of the 911 Targa, the perfect way to tell people that while you could have a convertible 911, you prefer a hardtop made out of glass. And while the retracting platform space opera of the Targa’s roof opening and closing is pretty cool, more than one person looked at all that gizmo and thought, “What a bunch of extra weight!”

Well, worry no longer. Following the Stuttgartian playbook, Porsche has revealed the 911 Targa 4 GTS this week at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Is it crazy? Yes. Is it necessary? Debatable. Is it more powerful? You bet.

What we do know is that flying though the Italian countryside, Algerian countryside, or any countryside, really, with a bottle of wine in the passenger seat and a glass roof in the back will be incomparably more joyous in the hardcore GTS variant. That’s just how life works, it’s science.

Head over to Jalopnik to bathe your GTS-deprived eyes in images of the new Targa GTS, then break out your checkbook. Summer will be here before you know it.

Photo: Alex Tillman / Jalopnik

The post NYIAS: Porsche Answers Prayers, Grants Targa GTS To World appeared first on Leith Porsche Blog.

On the one hand, it’s like watching Darth Vader being built. On the other, it’s like zooming around a very cold, grey version of Pee-Wee’s playhouse where no one talks and certainly no one screams the word of the day.

A new video showing how 911 engines are assembled in Zuffenhausen is exactly the type of hushed-tone, metals-clinking, pressurized-air jet zinging assembly line work that you would want to see regarding your 911.

What might surprise you is that it’s mostly work performed by people, albeit heavily aided by machines. Rarely do you see anyone seriously strain to perform an action. Even as they wield machinery that weighs hundreds of pounds, they do so as deftly as a piece of pie is passed from one person to another at a summer’s afternoon picnic.

A lot of tools seem to hang in the air from rubber hoses. A section of the engine swings into position in front of a worker who then performs his six or seven little tasks. He then swings it back and away it goes, whisked off to its next caretaker.

It’s a great example of how Germany rewards its high-tech manufacturing jobs. Though machines are instrumental, the skillfulness with which they are wielded comes only from a highly-trained worker. It’s also reassuring, as a Porsche owner, to see your future engine laboriously and meticulously put together by hand.

Toward the end you can even see pieces that a layman can identify: spark plugs inserted into their cylinders; throttle bodies sitting on top like a crown jewel; the central flywheel ready to meet its transmission; and air hoses all over the top to create the sonorous warble of a Porsche flat-six.

It’s enough to make to make a full-grown person suck in their breath. If only they let us hear one of these beauties! Better still, get yourself over to Leith Porsche in Cary to hear one for yourself in person.

The post Video: Seeing 911 Engines Built By Hand Is Too Awesome for Life appeared first on Leith Porsche Blog.

Not to be overly broad, but Porsche’s target demographic for the 918 Spyder is anyone with a heartbeat. It kind of looks like an Audi R8, which is one of the most gorgeous cars in existence. It has top-mounted exhausts that blast blue jet fumes like a rocket. It can go from stationary to 60 mph in 2.2 seconds. That’s Porsche’s way of saying, “Zero to sixty in one second? We are this close.”

It’s also Porsche’s way of saying that this is a car you can’t have. Imagine if Apple made a revolutionary iPhone 7, and then announced it would be making only seven of them. That’s great news if you already own a space shuttle. Not so great if you know what FICA is.

We hate to break it to you, but it’s hard enough just to get a Macan at this point. They’re sold out for months in advance. The other day, whilst driving to Durham, we saw a Rolls-Royce on the highway. We expect to have more sightings of Rolls’ in our lifetime than we do of 918’s.

Nonetheless, in an effort to show what you can’t have, and maybe inspire you to call up your mother whom you already don’t talk to enough, and berate her for not pushing you harder as a child because maybe if she had you would be the type of person who could think about going to the bank and asking for a loan that would allow you to pay off half of your 918 Spyder before you die and pass on the second half to your children and children’s children—in an effort to get all of that in motion, a video has emerged so that you can watch the 918 being assembled deep in Porscheland.

The post Video Shows 918 Being Assembled In Factory Where All Dreams Come True appeared first on Leith Porsche Blog.

The abominable snowman is a pain. Ice, cold, frostbite, snow: these are not appropriate for North Carolina.

However, they are appropriate for your Porsche.

“No!” you exclaim. “What about salt destroying the undercarriage? And crawling over ice on rear-wheel drive?”

To that, we would say, watch this:

Now that your fear of breaking your Porsche has been dispelled, let’s talk specifics. As the video says at the end, book your winter driving experience with Porsche now. Last year we had some events up in Vermont; who knows where we’ll be this year.

What we do know is that your Porsche is capable of handling winter environments with a properly trained driver. Learning to drive in the winter is also a lot of fun, owing to the exhilaration of mastering a new skill.

The second thing we know is that a trained driver will always want his or her car to be properly equipped for the season. Winter tires excel at keeping grip on snow or ice, and also what you’ll experience most of the time during the winter: cold asphalt. Summer tires are not optimized for these conditions, so protect yourself, your vehicle, and other motorists by putting the right tires on your Porsche.

Lastly, for those of you who elect to store your Porsche during the winter, we have tips for that, too. Check out this article about winterizing your Porsche from our Porsche Club friends up in New Jersey. They have an exhaustive list of steps to protecting your vehicle from all manner of winter challenges.

Call or stop by our service center to figure out how to get your Porsche ready for winter. We can even show you what winter tires you should have. We are your center for Porsche in North Carolina.

The post Porsche Says Book Your Winter Driving Experience Now appeared first on Leith Porsche Blog.

Photos: Motor Trend

A few weeks ago, we had heard about a special car that Porsche built for Motor Trend magazine. As part of an advance piece for the publication, Porsche had built two specially-equipped 2015 Cayman GTS’s, one for driving, and the other as a backup in case a bit of mud smudged the first one’s tailpipe, or something equally blasphemous.

As it turned out, the driving model was successfully delivered to Motor Trend who then had an obscenely fun time doing what every Porsche driver would love to do: taking it to a closed race track. Like any selfless, noble, casually disinterested third party, we happened to ask, just in passing, “Is anyone doing anything with the backup model?”

This Cayman is positively wicked. Since being introduced by Porsche in 2006, the Cayman—a two-seat, exceptionally well-balanced sports car—has received a variety of special versions: the Cayman S, the Cayman R, the Cayman S Sport and even a rumored—though never confirmed—Cayman RS. Never before, however, has Porsche thrown everything it has into its mid-engined sibling to the 911. This is the Cayman GTS.

Looking over its option sheet, it’s almost impossible not to sigh and offer thanks to what Porsche has been able to create in 2014: sport suspension, carbon fiber door guards, torque vectoring, ceramic composite brakes, 3.4-liter flat-six engine—the Cayman GTS weighs less than a standard Cayman, has more power, and rides substantially lower. A Cayman GTS gets Porsche’s Active Suspension Management System, which lowers it by 10 millimeters. Because ours has the sport suspension with analogue dampers, it gets lowered by an additional 10 mm beyond that, 20 overall.

As Autocar’s Steve Sutcliffe recently said, “If you are really into your subject matter, this is the Cayman GTS you would have.”

Going Nuclear

Later estimates would declare November 18, 2014 as the coldest morning in the United States since 1976. At the time, as we snagged the key and headed out to jump in our Carmine Red GTS, all we could tell was that it was properly cold. We barely had time to notice the exterior details that practically leapt into the arms of passers-by and curious fellow-drivers at stoplights.

This GTS has specially painted black accents all over to complement the GTS lettering on the sides and rear: the air intakes in the front, the headlight cleaners, the rear fascia, the wheels—all a deliciously liquid black to make the Carmine Red exterior truly pop.

“Let the brakes warm up,” one expert told us, referencing the carbon ceramics that are so indestructible that only the pads will ever need to be replaced, never the rotors. “They’ll break your collarbone.”

For a car like this, we knew that a jaunt around Cary would never do. This car needs somewhere special to go, some worthy backdrop that sets the right tone for a model so out of the ordinary, it is literally two of a kind. As we pulled up the navigation to look for an appropriate venue, our eye was drawn to a location that stood out from the Starbucks’ and shopping malls that cropped hopefully up to entice the masses for early holiday shopping and parking lot gridlock: just south of Apex in a maze of winding back roads lies the Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant.

We punched in the address, and let the car do the routing. This, we could tell, was going to be good.

The Bloodsport-Obsessed Kitten You Always Wanted

Turning the key in a Cayman GTS is enough to obliterate any sense you had of the day being cold. The GTS’s engine absolutely thunders to life in a way that makes us wonder if we haven’t climbed into a Cayenne by mistake. The sound is an all-encompassing extra passenger in the cockpit with you. If you come to the Cayman looking to find your quiet place, or a serene mountain lake in your mind’s eye, you should scuttle those notions right away. It howls. It screams. It wails and rails. It does not go quietly into that good night.

The second thing we noticed—after the sport seats, contrast red stitching, leather accents and the entirely suede Alcantara roof (who does that?)—was that this is the best steering wheel we have touched this year, hands down, maybe of all time. Have you ever been around a kitten and stroked its rib cage through its impossibly soft, downy fur? This is what our GTS’s steering wheel feels like. Also in suede Alcantara, it is the softest, downiest, most absolutely pleasant-to-touch steering wheel we have ever encountered.

Entirely devoid of controls for the audio and infotainment system, this wheel is for the purist, the one who is so devoted to the road that the only thing his or her fingers want to touch is the paddle shifters just behind. In fact, the only adornment to the wheel besides its textural nirvana of suede and aluminum are two pieces of dark glass that don’t catch the eye at all. It’s only when activating Sport mode, Sport Plus, or Launch Control that a subtle white text appears beneath the smoked glass, a silent reminder of what mode you’re in.

It’s an intoxicatingly restrained feature, one that reinforces the theme that for all the technology at work, Porsche went to great lengths to scale back on whelming the driver. It’s this kind of thoughtful reduction that makes this car incredibly focused on what it does best: driving.

Somewhere Out There, a Stretch of Asphalt Is Still Cooling Down

Going to the Harris Nuclear Plant is a good idea because A) it lets us blow by some bewildered economy cars on Highway 1, and B) its tree-lined back road circuit offers the perfect amount of fall leaves to streak by the windows like an autumnal golden smolder of a meteor in the air.

Many of the Cayman’s competitors have powerful engines. They warble and explode and generally have power instantly available the moment you ask for it. But you have to ask for it. What the Cayman GTS does so inextricably well—particularly in Sport Plus—is provide such a sense of being alive. It’s not just that the engine makes fantastic sounds—though it does—nor that the engine provides such a gravity-defying adrenaline rush of blitzkrieg—though it will.

The Cayman GTS has a quaking, shivering need to be pushed further and farther and faster and harder in a way that few cars are able to communicate. It is present in every tremor of its air, and in the very crackle of its aura. It is the storm about to break that makes the air seem heavy and thick. It is the pit in the bottom of your stomach before every significant moment in your life. It is the blood that pounds in your ears when you sprint flat-out, running for all that you are worth.

Alive is really the best word for it. The sounds, the smells, the tuning, the suspension—all of it conspires to make the GTS an enabler of the first degree—it is not the friend who will rein you in and keep you in check. This is the one who will push open the gate to an abandoned airplane runway and ask, “Why not?” This car feels lively to a degree that must make Porsche’s engineers, if they are reading this, sit back and clink glasses of some traditional German drink in vindication.

Conclusion

In the end, we didn’t visit the nuclear station itself. We could see its towering, steaming hulk beyond the security gates with the signs about protocol and surveillance, and we decided that they weren’t exactly open to casual visits. We did go by the Energy & Environmental Center, however, a geometrically interesting structure that resembled a cluster of crystals reaching out from the earth.

With a looping, semi-circular front drive that reaches its zenith at the main entrance of the Center, we paused for a second at the crest to look inside through our windows, not quite wanting to step out into the blistering cold.

At that moment, a man—younger guy—was hurrying out of one building toward another. Head down, neck up, no jacket, arms tucked under each other in futile protest, he saw us, and a funny thing happened.

He completely stopped. His back straightened and he stood normally for a second, exposing his neck and arms and ears to the freezing air. We gave a friendly wave, put it in Sport Plus, and as we took off down the long straight road to the highway, we could see him, still standing there in our rearview, immobile, watching our rear tires as we sped away.

The post Full Review: The 2015 Porsche Cayman GTS Takes North Carolina appeared first on Leith Porsche Blog.

Photo: Yahoo Autos

In the deep corners of our mind, we wonder: Where is the 918 Spyder constructed? How is it conceived? Can you eat a candy apple while you watch it being built?

Until recently, the only way you could see the special room where Porsche builds these gifts to humanity was to buy one. Plunk down the nearly $1 million needed for purchase and you were golden. Other than that, to see the 918 room meant that you had to leave more signals than an investment banker on a sales call, or own a very successful chain of dentist offices.

Thankfully, this has changed. Not for us gentle-folk, of course, but for the press. Now that all the 918 models have been sold—and Porsche literally made 918 of them—Porsche is allowing the rest of the world to see these last few babes in their natural habitat.

Car and Driver has an excellent collection of photos and interesting facts about the 918 from their experience there. Porsche is determined to let us see what happens after you give them a million dollars and ask for a racecar in return. That sounds like a lot of money, but really, it’s the result of nearly four years of planning.

After showing a little ankle in 2010, Porsche approved the development of the 918 and three years later the first production model was unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show. As Porsche’s flagship supercar for at least the next decade, small islands could probably have been bought and sold for what the company spent developing it.

At the end of last year it was reported that the steering wheel alone cost about $25 million to develop. Given that we’ve had steering wheels for about, oh, 100 years, we can’t imagine the total developmental costs for the entire car.

In any case, we heartily recommend taking this guided tour into the heart of Porsche, if only to see what is more than just a car: it’s an apex.

Leith Porsche remains your premiere Porsche dealer for Raleigh, Cary and surrounding areas.

The post Amazing Photos Show Factory Where 918 Spyder Is Made appeared first on Leith Porsche Blog.

Holy moly, y’all. A police precinct just got a custom Porsche 911 Carrera for its department, and we can’t imagine anything more fun than chasing down speeders in one of these. The car is actually still owned by Porsche and will be used more for parades and special events, the Iron Man suit of Australian Police, we suppose.

But holy mackerel if it doesn’t look fine; the officers of New South Wales must be better people than we…or at least more tortured. Can you imagine the temptation of living next to all that desert and not being able to let it loose? Sure, the Chief will take his wife out to dinner in it, but what about the regular guys, the shift guys, the guys working on a Saturday with nothing happening and those keys just hanging on a hook, jangling whenever someone slams a door.

The car, sophisticated as it looks, was actually designed by children, high school children actually, submitting designs in a competition run by Porsche. Too bad only Australian high schoolers get to ogle it in person now. Is it a deterrent against bad driving or does it inspire a want to be chased?

From what we’ve seen of high-speed pursuits, this is not a car that you would want to take. It would go plenty fast, but the need to box the pursued in with your own vehicle would undoubtedly be too much for many officers to bear. Which is more worth protecting: the law or the Porsche? Men weren’t built to shoulder these responsibilities.

We are simply glad that it exists and look forward to seeing it at the Stuttgart museum one day. In the meantime, stop by Leith Porsche to test drive a 911 Carrera of your own. You can play the outlaw or the police.

The post Lucky Police Station Gets Custom 911 Carrera On Loan appeared first on Leith Porsche Blog.