ROBERT COUCHER
The Driver
Turbo. What a great word. It succinctly imparts a sense of speed and power. When twinned with Porsche, the pairing has real resonance with motoring enthusiasts. It certainly did with me. When the Porsche Turbo was launched in 1975, I was a teenager whose only transport was a 50cc Yamaha motorcycle which produced a puny 5bhp. So imagine what 260bhp sounded like!
Growing up in Cape Town, my Porsche 911 Turbo experience was limited to the pages of Motor, Autocar and CAR magazines flown in from the UK. Yes, we knew that Chevrolet fitted a turbocharger to its weird 1965-66 Corvair Corsa Turbo in America, but that was killed PDQ by Ralph Nader. The Porsche 930 Turbo (as it was named in the US), with its flared wheelarches, massive tyres and that outrageous whale tail spoiler mounted on the rear, soon gained the reputation of widow-maker. According to the road tests, you had to be brave and skilled to handle the Turbo’s vicious nature, thus bestowing on it an attractive reputation for being bad and dangerous.
My first live experience with a Turbo happened a few years later when a German fellow appeared in Cape Town – with a bright blue 930 Turbo. He had a mullet haircut and wore natty slip-on driving shoes that only he and Stirling Moss could carry off. In addition, the Porsche was left-hand drive, which in South Africa indicated a special import, adding another layer of exotic sophistication.
Sitting on those fat tyres – I’d never seen low-profile Pirelli P7s before – it looked menacing and fast. I persuaded the German dude to take me for a spin and he didn’t disappoint. The Turbo sounded industrial and felt harsh. Along the mountain roads he found a clear stretch and booted it. Nothing much happened… and then suddenly, to the accompaniment of a loud whooshing roar, I was introduced to my first turbo rush. It was surreal, frightening, intoxicating and out of this world. Speed seemed to gather more speed as the turbo kicked in and it was difficult for my virgin senses to keep up. The 50cc Yamaha seemed less dangerous after my first 930 Turbo encounter.
Porsche went on to race the Turbo, badged as the 934, winning the European GT Championship and adding further kudos to its turbo engineering prowess. In 1978 it revised the road-going 930 Turbo with a larger 3.3-litre engine, now mustering 300bhp and helped by an intercooler. But then Porsche’s marketing strategy for the Turbo changed. Instead of the model being a wham-bang widow-maker, it was repositioned as the top-of-the-line luxury 911 GT with air conditioning, electric windows, sunroof, comfortable seats (sometimes Tartan-covered)… basically all the lux kit available at the time. But the car retained its four-speed gearbox until 1989 and, although its bigger engine produced more useful torque, it remained a handful as the big old single turbo would still kick in just when you didn’t need it.
A friendly car dealer lent me a 3.3-litre Turbo a couple of years ago for a long trip. What struck me was how civilised it was. On the motorway the turbo hushed the engine and the car felt relaxed and elastic. It would react with vigour when you dropped a gear and shoved the accelerator but it wasn’t an animal, it was a really effective grand tourer. You just had to anticipate the power arriving all in one smack at about 3500rpm. The dealer couldn’t get rid of the immaculate metallic silver Turbo for ages and now I wish I’d bought it…
The 930 Turbo soldiered on until 1989, when it was replaced by the 964 Turbo producing 380bhp in its final iteration. My Cape Town-based friend, Charles Arton, has owned many Porsches from a 356 to a GT3 and is a championship-winning Historic racer: what are his thoughts on the 964 Turbo?
‘The huge turbo only kicked in at 3500rpm. Up until then it was a relatively ordinary car, but all of a sudden all hell would break loose. This coupled with casually accelerating out of a corner with no evil intent… Then that turbo unexpectedly kicked in again! The action in the cockpit caused much heat and the pathetic air-con wasn’t much help in Cape Town. It was horrible to drive around town, around corners and in the heat.’ That’s an enthusiastic owner’s honest assessment.
Well, that’s it then. I’ll take a classic 1989 slate grey 930 Turbo with a five-speed gearbox and a modern upgraded air conditioner and drive it as a GT, not as a widow-maker.
‘THE GERMAN WORE NATTY SLIP-ON DRIVING SHOES THAT ONLY HE AND STIRLING MOSS COULD CARRY OFF’