The Definitive List: My 5 Most Unforgettable Porsche 911 Experiences Over 40 Years
Forty years. It’s almost incomprehensible to think I first put hands on the wheel of a Porsche 911 that long ago. I still remember the car vividly: a pure white 3.0-liter Carrera. It had the iconic black Fuchs alloys, a narrow body, no rear wing, and no power steering—just a five-speed manual gearbox. Back then, it was about as pure a 911 as you could get. I remember it being fast, yes, but also flawed. Initially, I honestly didn’t understand the fuss.
Part of that skepticism stemmed from the company I kept that day. I was comparing it to a 944 Turbo, a car that in my home country of Australia, cost almost the exact same amount. The 944 Turbo was stronger, faster, and easier to drive hard on any road, surpassing its legendary sibling with far less effort. Yet, I ended up completely falling in love with the 911 anyway.
After two days and about 600 miles, I came to a difficult conclusion. I wrote, “I know the 944 Turbo is the better car. But I also know that if it came down to it, if I were agonizing over where to spend my money, I’d take the 911 Carrera home.” It wasn’t an easy decision to make. I acknowledged, “The 944 Turbo is so competent, it can make a bad driver look good. Its soaring, searing performance is superbly counterbalanced by a chassis of astounding ability.” But the 911 had a different kind of grip—an emotional one. I explained, “The gloriously imperfect 911 Carrera is a sports car of a different age and reflects different values. It’s not tailored to meet the needs of most drivers. It demands understanding and respect. That’s why I’d take it home.”
Since then, I’ve driven dozens of 911 models. With every iteration—with the glaring exception of the 964 in the early 1990s, which I felt was dangerously signaling that the 911 idea was past its sell-by date—I’ve marveled at how Porsche has polished its icon, keeping it relevant, exciting, and engaging. Even after four decades, the 911 remains one of the very few new cars on which I would actually spend my own hard-earned money. Looking back across the last 40 years of automotive testing, these are the five 911s that remain etched in my memory like no others.
The Icon: 1975 Porsche 930 Turbo
When I first drove that 3.0-liter Carrera, the veteran road test journalists I knew spoke of the original Porsche 911 Turbo in hushed, awed tones. They described it as a car that demanded the utmost respect when driven aggressively. It was the kind of machine where the binary boost states made the traditional 911 tightrope walk between corner-entry understeer and corner-exit oversteer a high-stakes job requiring both quick reflexes and serious courage. The original 911 Turbo didn’t forgive mistakes, nor did it tolerate sloppiness. The legend was clear: it was a widowmaker.
It actually took me 35 years to finally get behind the wheel of an original 911 Turbo and see if the legend was true. The car I drove was one of the first 30 production Turbos ever built, now preserved in Porsche’s mouthwatering classic collection. Out on the road, hyper-aware of its fearsome reputation, I drove very cautiously at first. I carefully experimented with the throttle, feeling the boost build and watching the tach, trying to map out the power and torque curves in my head.
To my surprise, the engine was remarkably tractable. At 2,000 rpm in top gear, the 911 Turbo purred along happily at around 45 mph. But once the engine hit 3,500 rpm, there was a noticeable surge of acceleration as the turbocharger forced 0.8 bar into the intake system. Still, the sledgehammer blow between the shoulder blades I had braced for simply wasn’t there.
I learned the trick to smooth, quick progress in the original 911 Turbo was to keep the 3.0-liter flat-six spinning above 4,000 rpm, keeping the turbocharger charged and ready. Yes, there’s turbo lag—very noticeable by modern standards—but it’s manageable. Even after more than 50 years, this 911 remains an impressively fast car on the road. First gear winds out to 50 mph, second to 90 mph, and third to nearly 130 mph, meaning it can destroy most winding roads using only second and third gears. And while it only has a modest 256 hp, it weighs just 2,513 pounds, allowing it to get into and out of corners readily. Half a century ago, its performance would have seemed nothing short of otherworldly.
The Purist’s Perfection: 993-Generation Porsche 911
For many Porsche purists, this is the last true 911. It represents the final generation where you drive with your knuckles grazing the dashboard, hearing the snarling metallic clatter of an air-cooled flat-six directly behind your head. But back in 1994, when I first experienced the 993, it felt like the 911 of the future—the first generation to truly challenge the laws of physics laid down by Isaac Newton.
Sure, the 993 still possessed that signature pattery front end, requiring you to load it properly on corner entry to ensure you hit the apex. The rear end still had that slight “rhumba” feel through the rougher turns. But the coordination between the front and rear became much more harmonious. The 993 still behaved like a 911, but within a much tighter margin of error.
The engineering marvel behind this improvement was a new rear suspension. It replaced the classic semi-trailing arms with a new multilink setup. This allowed for very slight initial toe-out during corner entry, followed by progressive toe-in as lateral loads increased. Crucially, it also reduced the camber change that had been the Achilles’ heel of the 911 since its introduction in 1963.
This advanced suspension was paired with steering that was 16 percent quicker—just 2.5 turns lock-to-lock—making the front end feel significantly more decisive. Additionally, a new six-speed manual transmission allowed drivers to maximize the potential of the 3.6-liter flat-six. Lighter internals, Bosch Motronic 2.0 engine management, and a revised dual-exhaust system helped the engine rev harder to its 268-hp peak at 6,100 rpm.
Compared to the 964 model it replaced, the 993 was nothing short of a revelation. And it wasn’t just the engineering upgrades—led by Ulrich Bez, who later headed Aston Martin. The exterior redesign, orchestrated by design chief Harm Lagaay, corrected what he perceived as the 964’s visual flaws, which he felt were too tall at the front and overly low at the rear. The interior also felt cleaner, with buttons organized more logically. Ultimately, the 993 was a 911 that was faster and more forgiving than ever before. And, perhaps most importantly, it was far more desirable as well.
The Savior: 996-Generation Porsche 911
In its time, this was heresy. Porsche’s decision to introduce a water-cooled flat-six engine into the tail of the 996-series 911 was, to the old guard of enthusiasts, the automotive equivalent of Bob Dylan ditching his acoustic six-string for an electric Fender Stratocaster at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. However, the 996, the first truly clean-sheet redesign of Porsche’s unstoppable sports car in 34 years, was a hero car for me. It was the 911 that ultimately saved Porsche from the brink of collapse.
Engineered and developed under the leadership of Porsche R&D chief Horst Marchart, the 996 was a cleverly engineered machine. A key part of its brilliance was that it shared 38 percent of its parts with an all-new, less expensive mid-engine roadster that the world would soon know as the Boxster. Iconoclastic Porsche CEO Wendelin Weideking understood that the Boxster was essential to give dealers something else to sell once the aging 928 and 968 models were discontinued. Design boss Lagaay famously quipped after the company unveiled the 996, “We did two cars for the price of one-and-a-half.”
But while the automotive media fixated on its relationship with the Boxster and the water-cooled engine, the 996’s true significance ran much deeper. Back in 1994, it took Porsche 130 hours to build a 993-series 911. The 996, on the other hand, required only 60 hours of labor. The modern 911 had arrived: it was roomier, equipped with the full
