991 GT2 RS FIRST DRIVE

SILVER MEAN It’s the fastest 911 yet and the first 911 that Porsche has seen fit to enter into the ‘supercar’ arena, with a price tag of over £200,000. But is this road racer just too focussed for anything other than track? And then there’s the collectabi

Porsche pitches the 911 firmly into supercar territory with the 200+mph, £200,000+ GT2 RS

Ican think of a few things you might be mindful to utter having stepped out of a new GT3 after a big strop. Something blasphemous is a strong possibility. ‘What is the going rate for kidneys on ebay?’ is another. The one thing you can’t imagine pronouncing is that the GT3 has the potential to be a really great car – if only it had another couple of hundred horsepower.

But that’s what you’re looking at with the new GT2 RS. It’s an outrageous car and one that comes affixed to a set of numbers bigger than the ones on an OAP’S telephone. Seven hundred horsepower. Two hundred and eight thousand pounds. Two hundred and eleven miles per hour.

And another set of numbers that are absurdly tiny. Like two-point eight seconds to 62mph and 6m 47sec to lap the old Nürburgring Nordschleife, the latter a feat which helped snatch the production record from Lamborghini almost before the Italians had managed to hang the certificate on the dunny wall.

At £207,506 before options the GT2 RS doesn’t just go like a supercar, it’s also priced like one. If this was a Ferrari, we wouldn’t bat an eyelid, but Porsches, even 911s, have always been kind of sensibly priced, haven’t they? For context, the current UK 911 range starts at a comparatively modest £77,891 (hey, I said ‘comparatively’), and even the GT3 only costs £111,802.

And if you want a new, road-legal Weissach-developed 911, the GT3 is your only alternative to a GT2 RS. The GT3 RS

is coming, but not until 2018. It’s not like the regular GT3 is anything less than sensational though. Can the GT2 really justify a near-£100k mark-up? Andhas it traded some personality for pace by swapping a screaming naturally aspirated engine for a mega-power turbo one?

We’ve come to Porsche’s Silverstone Experience Centre in search of some answers – andwe’ve been met by ominous grey clouds and the liberal quantities of rain they’ve just deposited on the cold Tarmac. But if the sky looks menacing, it’s got nothing on the GT2.

Talk about intimidating: the exposed carbon bonnet, aggressive front wing vents andtowering rear spoiler make this look more like a Gt-spec racer than roadcar . But it’s those gaping front air intakes, giant square holes feeding air to the radiators barely hidden behind the front bumper that really make your knees tremble.

Andit’ s more than posturing. The GT2 has the goods to back up the swagger. Twenty-inch centre-lock wheels at the front; 21s at the back, wrapped in obscenely wide 325-section rubber. Numerous body parts, including the front wings made from carbon fibre reinforcedplastic. There’s a magnesium roof skin, four-wheel steering, a specially calibratedpsm stability system andporsche’ s PCCB carbon brakes are standard. The exhaust system is made from titanium, worth a 7kg saving alone, andthe rear window from a special thin glass that saves weight like the oldperspex screens andis as badfor visibility, but keeps US legislators happier.

But this particular car goes even further. It’s receivedthe optional Weissach package, which adds £21,042 to the price andremoves a further 30kg from a kerbweight that at 1470kg is only 40kg above a GT3’S. In Weissach spec carbon is usedfor the roof panel andeven the antiroll bars, and the wheels are made from magnesium to reduce overall – and particularly un-sprung – weight by a significant 12kg. Andto make sure no one confuses it with your common or garden GT2 RS, Weissach Pack cars feature a body colour stripe that runs over the bonnet androof.

Andwe haven’t even mentionedthe

Can the GT2 RS really justify a near £100k mark-up?

engine yet. Rated at 690bhp (700ps) and 553lb ft, it makes a massive 118bhp more than the 3.8-litre Turbo S unit it’s based on, and 80bhp more than the previous GT2. There are bigger turbos and an uprated cooling system including a system that sprays the intercooler, while active engine mounts help control the motor’s mass within the chassis under track loads.

Like both of those cars, this new RS comes exclusively with Porsche’s sevenspeed PDK transmission, but unlike the Turbo-badged cars, it sends its power from there to the rear wheels alone.

Which gives you pause for thought when you slot the familiar 911-shaped key into the slot to the left of the steering wheel. And pause for momentary panic when you twist it and the flat six erupts into life. The current Turbo and S are deeply impressive machines, but they’re a bit short on sonic kicks. This one is shockingly LOUD.

So is the interior. A quick look on the configurator reveals you can choose sober all-black trim, but the default seems to be this car’s black and red combo that looks like it was modelled on Hugh Hefner’s bedroom. Still the trimming is as good as in any other 911, which means excellent, and the kit list is strong. You can ditch the climate control and big-screen multimedia system if you really want, but most people will leave them in. You can also opt to remove the rear cage by leaving out the Clubsport Package, or you can go the other way and add a front half. And you can choose three types of seat – a regular adaptive sport seat, or one of two different styles of proper buckets.

Slotted into the most extreme of those available seats it feels very similar to the current GT3, except the rev counter is redlined at 7000rpm, instead of the naturally aspirated car’s nine, and the analogue speedo to the left that nobody looks at is calibrated to 400kmh (249mph).

The moment you pull away, though, you can feel that this is a vastly more serious machine than a GT3. Apart from a touch of Autobahn-friendly slack around the dead-ahead the GT3’S steering is fabulous.

having arrived at Spa for a trackday feeling like you’d just got out of it after your first stint in a 24hr race.

We’re not heading to Spa today, but we do have the full Silverstone circuit at our disposal this afternoon, so after getting the measure of the GT2 on the road we head backacross the M1 and down the A43.

Created from the remnants of an old WWII airfield Silverstone is wide and flat and has a cruel habit of making even seriously quickcars feel slow. But the GT2 is impervious.

I’m not sure what speed we hit along the old pit straight, but it feels like too much when the seriously fast and slightly offcamber Copse corner appears at the end of it. But the GT2 doesn’t flinch. The grip levels are incredible, but crucially, so is the stability.

Straightlining Maggots then wiggling through Becketts, we’re faced with a run of cones hallway through Chapel designed to shepherd yesterday’s motorbike trackday crowd into a shorter trackconfiguration than we’re using, and it spoils our run onto the infamous Hangar Straight. Not that you’d know it by the numbers on the speedo at the end of it. With the little digital readout at the rev counter’s base piling on the digits like a petrol pump’s at full-flow, by the time we climb on the brakes for the right-hander we’ve clocked almost 160mph.

Porsche’s PCCB ceramic brakes are standard, of course, and respond to a firm stab of the middle pedal by slicing that

Griplevels are incredible, but crucially so is stability