ALL-OUT POWER
If there is one particular Porsche 911 that lends itself to the development of all-out power, it is the water-cooled 911 Turbo. The 996 and 997 Turbos have become the darling of the remapping and tuning industry, with some truly prodigious power outputs.
We’ve driven 997 Turbos on track with over 700bhp, and it’s always a dramatic experience. Heading down into Eau Rouge with that massive mid-range torque sweeping you downwards, turbos whistling like a 962 Group C car, neck craning upwards at the steep climb to come. Lots of kerb on the left, just a nibble on the right, then keep your foot in and whistle over the crest. This is one of the very few cars we’ve driven up the Kemmel straight that simply didn’t acknowledge that long, power-sapping incline and instead just kept on accelerating. However, in driveability it left a little to be desired.
Talking with Tom at specialists Nine Excellence, we can learn a lot more on the quest for a headline power output from a Porsche 911. “Without a doubt, the 996 and 997 Turbos are the strongest to develop a higher output, but be careful what you wish for. It is very easy to map a Turbo and on a third gear dyno run achieve that 650 to 700bhp vanity figure. Beyond third gear in a real-world scenario a whole range of issues come into play, including back pressure, engine management issues and other elements. We run all of our tunes at 180mph, which is the same method used by the factory on standard cars. By doing this we have real-world figures to work with.” So what about the 1,300bhp monsters? “We have over 40 996 and
997 Turbos happily running about out there with 650bhp, but beyond 800bhp there is no such thing as reliability. On those we insist on building a fresh engine and recommend upgrades to the rest of the drivetrain,” Tom says.
So it seems in the rarefied atmosphere of four-figure bhp figures reliability is a relative term, and just like a Formula One engine, it only takes the failure of a single component to start a calamity. Be a little more conservative though and there are some staggeringly quick 911 engines out there – but this sort of thrill seeking needs a hefty budget.
“No other car enjoys such a diverse range of sub genres and, sometimes, they don’t all see eye to eye”