THE PORSCHE U-TURN EDITION
01 Going water-cooled
Porsche purists insist a quintessential 911 needs a flat-six engine, dangling behind the rear wheels, cooled by air. And that’s the way things were until1997, when the new 996 came along with a water-cooled engine.
02 Ditching the 718’s turb o fla t-four
We’re not saying dropping a 4.0-litre, nat-asp flat-six back into the Boxster and Cayman GTS is an admission that the downsized 4cylengine was a load of tosh that offered no real-world fuelsaving, but, well, that is pretty much what we’re saying.
03 PDK-only GT3 going manual
When Porsche decided to put a paddleshifter into the 991 GT3, there was uproar. A couple of years down the line, a limited-edition 911 R came along, with a 6spd manual. “That went down well,” thought Porsche. “We should do a production version and callit the, erm, 911 GT3.”
04 Bye-bye diesel
The biggest-selling Porsche of allin the UK was… the basic Porsche Macan Diesel. And then it allwent away. Despite owners loving their Porsche SUVs with quiet, frugaldiesels, the company decided that, after Dieselgate, it was time to exorcise it from the range.
05 Swapping b uttons for paddles in PDK
Porsche’s PDK gearbox was originally patched with shift buttons, not paddles. Press for upshift, pullfor downshift, hey presto, you can drive one-handed. But it was clumsy and unintuitive, so paddles became an option for PDK cars, and then the norm. Phew.
06 928 tries to kill 911, fa ils
Porsche expected the front-engined V8 928 to be its new flagship. Except the pesky 911 actually kept selling. So, though the 928 sold over 61,000 examples between 1977 and 1995, Porsche’s rear-engined oddballlived on to become the sports car benchmark.
07 Fried egg hea dlight-ga te
On the 996, Porsche elected to ditch round headlights and plop in the infamously blobby ‘fried egg’ lamps. They were tweaked for the facelift, but when the 997 arrived, classic, round 911 headlights came back, and they’ve never been away since...
08 Making a mid-engined 911 to fight the Ford GT
When Porsche needed to get even with the Le Mans-conquering Ford GT, it took the world’s most famous rear-engined car and put the engine in the middle. Result: better aero, better balance, and the 911 RSR was a force to be reckoned with in endurance racing once more.
09 Cupholderga te
The new 992 only has one pop-out cupholder for the passenger. The driver gets a dull removable number. We’reW not angry, just disappointed. Stupidly over-engineered cupholders are as much a part of the 911 experience as their arse-engined handling.