PORSCHE 911 GT3 TOURING

THE FAVOURITE? CERTAINLY A FAVOURITE, but when isn’t a Porsche a favourite to win evo Car of the Year? Quite.

With this latest GT3, for the first time in the model’s history Porsche revealed every model that would be available from day one: the standard bewinged version with PDK or a manual gearbox, or the ‘GT3 with Touring Package’ with the same transmission options. According to Porsche, regardless of whether you have wings or not the chassis set-up between the two body styles is identical, their performance impossible to split, and seeing as this is a road-only test we went for the Touring with a manual ’box.

Those of us who have driven the new GT3 prior to our week away know it is a formidable package. It has beaten a previous ecoty winner, Mclaren’s 600LT, and an evo old favourite, the Nissan GT-R Nismo, in a straight fight on the road (issue 289), and many of us when looking down the list of contenders think it may have its way here, too.

There is some hope for the others, however. This is a 992-generation GT3, so is based on a car we have failed to fall for. It’s a big car and as it’s grown some delicacy has been lost, which in the standard Carrera has proven to be the cause of some of its undoing. If the same is true of the GT3 it will need to roll its sleeves up and get stuck in.

It has the credentials to do just that, though. The powertrain is dreamy stuff, the chassis has even more motorsport DNA injected into it, and regardless of the 992’s size and bulk, when you sit in the GT3, clasping that steering wheel, that rev counter staring back at you and your fingers poised to twist the key in the ignition barrel, you can’t not be excited. GT3S ooze desirability like few others.

GT3S have also always been special cars, especially so on ecoty, and we have no reason to expect this year’s GT3 Touring to be any different.

‘I’M MORE GLAD THAN EVER THAT PORSCHE HASN’T GONE CHASING HORSEPOWER’ – HENRY CATCHPOLE, EVO 286