Car of the Week - Week 117: Porsche Taycan Turbo S '19

"I apologise for the long, philosophical, and borderline political rant. This is just too near and dear to me. I promise this is the last time I'm going to ramble so much about philosophy and politics (until I review an electric car...)."

Oh no. Oh dear. Oh no oh dear oh no.

So, in case it isn't obvious enough already, this is going to be a very long, philosophical rant. I don't like writing these, and as such I can't imagine anyone enjoying reading these, either. I just want to get a few things off my chest, barely disguised as a review of the Taycan.

The whole point of Electric Vehicles (EVs) is to make cars cleaner and more sustainable. No one driving a petrol car in a spirited manner thinks to themselves, "man, I sure do wish this drivetrain is electric! That'd solve so many faults I'm finding with this car!" Sure, the instant, "flat" torque curve, lack of gears, and low centre of gravity are all nice bonuses, but when the price to pay for those small perks is to have a car that weighs over a ton more than FD RX-7, I think I'd be much happier wringing out my engine and rowing it through gears on my own, thank you very much.

I personally think that, because EVs are more of an environmental necessity that is hopeless for spirited driving, it always comes across as incredibly pandering and insulting whenever an automaker tries to push "sporty" EVs as viable alternatives to Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) cars for fun driving. And maybe they wouldn't be nearly so offensive, and maybe I could be more level headed about them if EVs and ICE cars can coexist together as alternatives to each other, but clearly, they cannot. No one rides horses on an expressway, nor does anyone use typewriters anymore, and those aren't even powered by non-renewable resources. With the UK threatening to ban all sale of IC vehicles by 2030, the writing is on the wall: this is a war against something I care very, too deeply about, and manufacturers need to scramble to future proof their lineups to stay relevant, either by offering all electric variants of their existing models, or introduce new, pure EV models to compete.

Six paragraphs in and I haven't even begun to introduce the Car of the Week, let alone speak about how it drives. EVs are an environmental and even political thing; their place and purpose on the public roads always, always takes precedence over how fun they are to drive. I don't like politics. I don't want to get into an argument about how green EVs actually are in their production cycle and how long they'd have to be driven on the road to break even with the environmental impact of an IC car, how the batteries will degrade and hold less and less charge like your laptop and phone batteries, how the charging infrastructure can and should improve, how we as a species can't just decide on one plug design and get on with it like we could a fuel inlet, the cost of energy per kilowatt for gasoline and electricity, how much sheer energy you need simply to maneuver a 2.5 ton tank of an EV, and so on. There are way smarter and qualified people out there arguing till their faces turn a melting glacier blue about those very important subjects. I'm just a man child looking to unwind from life and play with cars, because they're my escape. I do enough politicking and arguing as it is in my own adult life in society.

Environmental and social issues aside, there are a multitude of things that grind my gears about EVs. The first of which is always how disgustingly pretentious they are. IC cars have intakes and grilles on the front bumper because their engines need to "breathe" in oxygen to burn fuel, and hence when you see intakes and grilles on an IC car, you can almost anthropomorphise them: the headlights are the eyes, the badges are the nose, the intakes are the mouths, etc.. That's why you often hear motoring journalists describe a car's styling as having an "angry face", a "predator maw", or the like. And it's always such a weird experience to see a pure EV try to replicate these facial features and expressions on a bumper that needn't these openings and intakes, because the end result looks like something that's psychologically engineered to be unsettling. If I didn't know better, I'd say that the "facial features" on EVs are precisely engineered to psychologically unsettle onlookers like a horror film character. You look at a face, you subconsciously look for facial features to get a read, but instead of finding a mouth, you not only do not find what you're preconditioned to, but in its place you instead find creases and lines that suggest they're what you're looking for by being where you expect to find them, but look nothing like what you had expected to find. My brain freaks the hell out at this contradiction every time I see an EV's front end, and as I've said, this almost feels deliberate.

2019 Tesla Model 3, from Wikipedia Commons.

Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger), from Wikipedia Commons.

Granted, the Taycan manages its facial features a lot more naturally, and dare I say, even pleasingly, than its competitors. It is largely congruent to the Porsche Mission E Concept car, and I admire the fact that the production car looks so close to its concept car variant, though losing the suicide doors is a bit of a shame. I really admire the squarish headlights on the Taycan, as not only does it bear more than a passing resemblance to the almighty 919 racecar, it's just refreshing to see something else other than round bug eyes from a manufacturer often criticised for making the same car over and over again. In fact, I'd even go as far as to say I like the looks of a Taycan. It has a smooth, unmistakable presence about it, without being too obnoxious or in-your-face. One look at it, and you know instantly it has to be a Porsche.

Because EVs are a new technology, R&D costs are sky high, which makes the products prohibitively expensive and therefore out of reach of your average Joe. This has resulted in EVs being luxurious, flamboyant items, which in my eyes really goes against the notion that these are supposed to be efficient, save the world, frugal, for the masses, or what have you. EVs being luxurious, flamboyant items also means that they all need to have some pretentious levels of flair. In the case of the Taycan, the "fuel" door is... I don't even know, touch sensitive? Capacitive? You swipe your hand under the stripe thing of the charging plug dock thing door and it recedes and slides open... Will it work if my hands are wet? What if I'm wearing gloves? What's wrong with a manual, mechanical latch in the driver footwell, or a push-to-pop-open fuel door? Why does it have to be so fancy, so complicated for seemingly no reason? The interior is a mess of piano black gloss materials that just harvests fingerprints, and everything, everything, is controlled via touch screens: the radio, the air con vents... I'm surprised you don't drive this thing by drawing a line through a laser scanned representation of the road on the screen, with how needlessly complicated the car is trying so hard to be. And I HATE that.

To put this in a way that I believe most reading this at GTPlanet will understand, you don't look at your DualShock 4 when playing on your PlayStation 4, do you? When a game prompts you to press the X Button, you don't have to take your eyes off the screen to look at your controller to find the X Button, do you? You don't, because you know where it is, and you can feel for it. You press it, and you get instant, tactile feedback from the button itself that you've pressed it. It's not rocket science, but it works so much better than touch screens. Could you type without looking at your phone? Me personally, I couldn't type well on my phone even when I'm looking at it, yet I'm typing this on a mechanical keyboard that's completely out of my line of sight. It's the same principle. You know roughly where each key is in the keyboard, and you can feel for them, you get instant feedback after you push each key, each button, and it doesn't require you to take your eyes off what you're currently doing. And so I ask, why the hell do carmakers all feel the need for touchscreens? Why do I have to take my eyes off the road to do something as simple as adjusting radio volume, or adjusting my air con? Why do I have to look at the screen further to confirm my input has registered? Do you have any idea how much quicker it is to, say, reduce the volume of a radio by ten notches with a physical dial, versus tapping a screen ten times slowly enough for it to register? Yes, I get it, you're an electric car. Not everything has to be done with electricity, you know? You don't see the 911's check engine light being lit by igniting its engine oil, do you?

Capacitive touch switches aren't only worse ergonomically, but from my personal experience, they are horrifically unreliable, as well. To draw again from the PS4 analogy, my PS4 is unfortunately the first generation unit that has the capacitive touch switches to turn it off and on, and to eject the discs. And because these things are just for show, they're naturally unlabeled. I've ran into severe problems with them, such as the game disc randomly ejecting itself in the middle of gameplay, apparently because the capacitive touch thing thought I pulled a Monkey D. Luffy or Nero and stretched my hand over to eject a game disc that I'm currently playing from the sofa. These problems were so widespread that Sony immediately backpedaled and gave us sensible buttons on the "facelift" to the console. I've had to rip apart my PS4, twist around some screws, and now neither the power switch or the disc eject switch work, meaning that to turn on my console or to eject the disc within, I have to use PHYSICAL BUTTONS on my DualShock 4. I just want to give some additional context here by saying that the PHYSICAL BUTTONS on my 10-year old PS3 that turns it on and ejects discs still work perfectly, which is how I've managed to boot up Gran Turismo 6 for old specs and photos sometimes.

Needlessly long story short, buttons just work, capacitive touch things don't because they're just for show. I'm not saying the Taycan's UI is unreliable; I can't possibly know that. I'm just saying I don't trust these stupid capacitive touch things to last, or even work correctly, and I wish cars, among other things, would stop trying to be like iPhones. And I'm speaking from my experience with my PlayStation 4, which sits sheltered in my living room. How can I trust the fuel door of the Taycan, exposed to the elements, to not fail sooner than later? I know I'm a dinosaur when it comes to technology, but why must something so simple and proven be thrown out the window for unnecessary complications that don't work? Half of these stupid things need a mechanical override anyway in terms of emergencies, so... why?

*sigh* I'm sorry. I've been harbouring these frustrations for years now with no release, so I'm sorry this had to be where it came spilling out.

The Taycan, with its fingerprint harvesting stupid touchscreens and capacitive thingamajigs, feels like it's just meant to be a shock and awe thing in the showroom, and less for actually living with, because I think this thing will drive me up the wall if I'm forced to live with it, and that's assuming I live in a country that actually has established charging infrastructures. The supposedly thriving first world country that I live in that has about 80% of its population living in apartment buildings, and have to share a huge carpark, some of which are still open air, as exposed to the elements as they are to (urgh) other people. That is probably why our housing carparks currently have zero private-use charging points. EVs simply don't make sense to your average citizen here, and I struggle to imagine it's much different anywhere else currently, seeing as you need to have your own private, enclosed, lockable garage to charge it safely in, all on top of the exuberant 185,000 to 235,000 USD MSRP of the damn thing, depending on options. In Gran Turismo Sport, it's listed at 230,000 Cr, and it doesn't even come optioned with the beautiful panoramic fixed glass roof that I feel is a must-have, though I suppose that just means your head doesn't land on a million glass shards in the event of a rollover, and you get more surface area to play with in the Livery Editor if you're the artistic sort (which I'm not. Have you seen the plain body cars I roll up to meets with?).

The Artistic Sort

The pretentious faces and noises reminiscent of ICE cars, along with the "oh-sho-fanshay" toys and gadgets all just highlight to me that today's EVs are all just transitional things, meant to bridge the gap between a past of purely IC cars and an envisioned future of pure EVs. And as you can expect from something that's meant to transition, I find that they're all so confused, contradictory, things. For its size and mass, why isn't the Taycan an SUV? The view out the back is horrendous with this coupé body style, and I can't imagine it being easy to navigate through tight urban cities. Is the Taycan so hopeless on range it can't afford the aerodynamic penalty of being an SUV? I know car names aren't meant to be literal, but god damn does it really have to be called a "Turbo"? Even calling it the "Taycan Supercharger S" would sound a lot more natural. Or better yet, the "Super Range Edition" or "Better Battery" or something, god. Isn't this car supposed to embody the future? Why is it stuck with misfitting definitions from the past, then? If an EVs are supposed to wholly replace IC cars, why can't it make do without IC monikers and noises? Will people even know what a turbo is 50 years from now? Or is this an elaborate ploy by Porsche so that they can brag about how they've been making cars for so long, they even have a car called a "Turbo"? An EV is supposed to offer a very low centre of gravity and cabin floor because the batteries are all set very low and flat beneath the cabin, and are supposed to be mechanically simpler, so why the heck is the view out the back of a Taycan comparable to a roll cage equipped, rear engined 911 GT3 with a wing tacked on top of it? How awfully big is the 2 speed gearbox of the Taycan to squeeze the rear glass this badly?

Taycan Turbo S:

991 911 GT3 RS:

Lastly, why do most EVs offer the option of piping in bogus, ICE noises into the cabin, including the Taycan? Yes, it's an option I can turn off, but it just grinds my gears regardless simply by it existing. I find it incredibly insulting to play ICE noises in an EV, because who would use that feature, other than someone who wants an IC car, but can't have one? It just reeks of helplessness and illegitimacy. IC cars are already getting a ton of hate for piping in bogus IC noises, so pray tell, what makes manufacturers think EVs can get away with them? Why are EVs pretending to be the very thing they're meant to replace? It's utterly stupid. It's as enraging — and insulting — as a smoker being forced on nicotine packs, or a gambler forced to play a free-to-play mobile game; even though they're fundamentally the same thing, you know it's not the same thing. It's not giving you the same high, and you just wish everyone would leave you the frick alone because you're already being pooped on so hard for having to make a huge life changing choice, fighting your brain at every point, and the best thing anyone can do for you at this point is to just leave you alone and not be a condescending, insulting, holier-than-thou presence. And really, what kind of message is bogus IC noises supposed to send? If manufacturers feel there's enough people that will use this feature to justify the R&D of putting it into their EVs, is it not an open admission that EVs are just not as involving or inspiring to drive as the traditional IC car? Is that meant to say then, that the future generations of young kids won't, or shouldn't, find the same romance, the same inspiration, from authentic EV noises as we do an ICE? Should we not derive the same spark, the same excitement, from driving in general, if EVs are to wholly replace the IC vehicles?

Stupid. Utterly, inconceivably stupid. I hate it. I hate all of it. I am of the firm belief that EVs are for people who hate driving, who see cars merely as tools. And so I hope you can imagine my confusion when Porsche, a company that cut its teeth on motorsports and prides itself with making the most deliciously handling of high end sports cars, and the maker of the only car currently in production that I legitimately lust after (the 6 cylinder 718), is making a pure EV and touting it as a sporting proposition.

*sigh* So how does it drive?

To keep on complaining about stupid features that can be turned off, and therefore really shouldn't be big issues, the regen braking in the Taycan is god awful, though I suppose it's the whole concept of EVs trying to mimic an ICE's engine braking that's awful, rather than Porsche's system for doing so. In the Taycan, you get three regen braking modes: On, Off, and Adaptive. Adaptive, from what I understand reading other articles, works sort of like a cruise control thing, and I've no experience with it, because in the game, regen braking mode is stuck to "On", despite battery life being unlimited, because Kaz just needs to show off his partners' new toys, I guess.

The regen braking in the Taycan is stupidly strong. It'd bring you to a dead halt from parking lot speeds of 10km/h in just over a second if you don't touch either pedal (36 frames in a 29.97fps video, I counted), and it lacks any sort of grace in doing so. Unlike engine braking in an ICE car, which weakens with lowering engine speed, the passive regen braking is a constant anchor the moment you take your feet off both pedals, making smooth stopping in start stop city driving a needlessly difficult task. Not impossible, just difficult. What you're supposed to do I think is to apply juuuust a little bit of either the accelerator or brake pedal, such that the car is losing speed at the rate you want, so that you never relinquish control of the car. Even then, it's super awkward and potentially unsafe, because the moment you take your foot off either pedal, regen braking kicks in full force. Can you imagine the horror of lifting your foot off the brake and the car stops even harder? I don't even think I'd be prepared for it, let alone anyone driving behind me. Oh, and the regen braking doesn't activate your brake lights, either. Let's just hope that's Polyphony Digital misrepresenting the car instead of the real car actually being this dangerously brain dead.

https://youtu.be/aOjAkhsflwU

Yes, I get it, the concept of engine braking, wherein the engine works against itself is a stupid notion as well. But engine braking doesn't just suddenly decide to bite harder the moment you signal to the car, "I want less deceleration now please", and in city driving, it's unlikely your revs will be that high to produce such strong deceleration in the first place. You have agency over it because the engine is always communicating with you, you hear the engine speed drop, and with a manual gearbox, you can choose how much engine braking you want, either by holding a gear, downshifting, or even half clutching. It doesn't become jerky or uncomfortable when coming to a stop because you have to disconnect the drivetrain nearing a stop, causing the car to coast slowly to a smooth stop, or just simply to give stopping control fully to the friction brakes. Yes, both systems are convoluted, and both will require learning and getting used to. It's just that one system allows you to choose what you want with three pedals and a stick, and the other, with a button on the steering wheel. You can turn both off if you want. My problem with the regen braking in the Taycan is that I wish it was just better programmed. I wish it weakens the regen braking the lower your vehicle speed, turning completely off at 15 or thereabouts km/h. I don't really know if passive braking is a thing EVs can, or even should do, because they don't ever passively "talk" to you the way an ICE does with its noises proportional to its braking, and so I think it's something that will always feel a little unnatural and unintuitive to replicate in an EV. I just think that regen is better off taking up the first few centimetres of brake pedal travel, with the friction brakes coming into play past that, instead of being a passive thing.

Anyway, tangential rant aside, the Taycan is freaking weird to drive, even under hard driving on a track.

To just get this out of the way first, because this is an electric performance car and every car reviewer is therefore obligated to say something along the effect of the following, here I go: "OH MY GOD THAT ACCELERATION IS UNREAL I CAN'T BELIEVE IT WHOOO HA HA HA HA THAT IS INSAAANE!"

Yes, we get it. EVs are fast. I don't think that was ever in question. Next.

Anyone remembers how some motoring journalists used to mock American cars when they started trying to make their cars corner? "lol there's no sophistication in the suspension system it's all just blind, dumb grip", or something to that effect? The Taycan is only just barely better than that description, because in Sport Plus mode, the most aggressive mode, the air suspension of the Taycan feel like solid bricks. There is near-zero perceptible pitch under the hard braking afforded by humoungous, larger-than-some-wheels 16.5 Inch brakes, which are ceramic composites standard on the Turbo S, and the car stays shockingly flat through corners as well, thanks to its electronically controlled dampers. Beyond that however, I really haven't anything nice to say about how the Taycan feels to drive.

In other words, aside from blind grip and a stiff suspension setup, the Taycan is an absolutely abhorrent drive. There is zero steering feel in the Taycan. Zero. From the company that is selling us the delectable Cayman GT4 comes an all-new, futuristic car that can easily cost more than twice that while offering a driving experience as informative and involving as a 1990s arcade racing game. You just point it in the direction and it goes. What are the tyres doing? Which have grip and which don't? When might it bite into the apex? When does the rear wheel steering system decide to give you stability, and when does it decide to give you cornering ability? Can you goad it into giving you what you want, when you want? Why do the front tyres bite into apexes sometimes and not other times? What's the road surface like? Who knows? Where is the mass concentrated in the car? You'll only find out when you push wide with understeer on a downhill braking zone, or swing the rear end out when you're too rough with the steering at a high speed chicane. How much torque is going to the front and rear, or even left and right? You might need to take a Masters program to understand the basics of how it works, because I sure as hell can't tell you how, why, where, or when the Taycan distributes torque "just" from my experience behind the wheel. All that is expected of you as a driver is to just point it in a direction, give it some gas- I mean... electricity, and hope it goes as you had hoped. You can't really push it, you can't really play with it. It will never talk to you. You won't ever get to know it. Does that sound fun to anyone? Is this what first comes to mind when people mention the name, "Porsche"? Because as someone absolutely smitten by the 981 GT4, this sure as hell isn't what first comes to my mind at the mention of the brand.

In fact, I find this performance car an even more boring drive than an entry level hatch. Even in the most utilitarian and uninspired of FF economy cars, you're always aware of the mass over the front tyres. The tyres give consistent feedback under even semi-hard driving, and you can easily feel for the car's limits. It behaves consistently and you can therefore set your car up for a corner accordingly, fun factor notwithstanding. In the Taycan, you don't ever get to know the car, and therefore, driving it at its limits is just a crapshoot. The rear wheel steer system, wizardry torque vectoring, stiff suspension, and gigantic brakes and tyres hide the car's real tendencies so well that you don't even get an inkling of the car's limits until after you push it too hard, when the car can mask its problems no more and every bad habit comes spilling out like repressed feelings, meaning you don't get any warning or even reason to believe it'd understeer before it happens, and it's always as sudden, shocking and rude as bottled up feelings erupting. Because the car never "talks" to you before then, you don't get to pre-emptively know the car to prevent yourself from upsetting it, or even to mentally prepare for it when poop goes sideways. Out of an apex of a corner, you give it some gas. It turns. The car isn't washing wide. You give it some more gas. It goes faster. Still no drama. The front tyres are still silent. You steal a peek at your big, clear, easy to read digital speedometer and you're doing insane cornering speeds! How is this car doing this? Then you give it some more gas and WOAH, the car suddenly understeers! But the front tyres sound fine! There aren't screaming! Instead, it's... the rear inside tyre that's screaming and smoking? In an understeer situation? What?

https://youtu.be/nDwUNeniGz8

No, this isn't an isolated incident with my driving habits: even COTW's resident Stig, Vic, prominently had the same issue coming out of the U-turn at Toukyo South. It's just a thing this car does. The rear wheel steering system tries very effectively to mask understeer, but this means that the limiting factor to how fast you can turn and exit out of a corner suddenly switches from the front outside tyre to the rear inside tyre, where you have zero feel over. Usually, if the rear tyres are the limiting factor in how fast you can turn, like, say, in a 911, the rear tyres letting go results in gradual over-rotation of the car, and you can back off well before poop goes sideways. You can hear the tyres letting go, you hear the engine revs rise a little more quickly than it should, you get the steering wheel lightening up a little as signs that you're overdoing it. In comparison, the rear tyres letting go in the Taycan gives you understeer, no feeling, no sound, nothing at all. There is no involvement, there is no engagement; you just back off the accelerator, thinking "what the actual f-" Yes, it's a problem at any tyre grade, from the Comfort Soft I ran in my own Time Attack to the Sport Soft we ran in our weekly meetup. The only way to minimise this issue is to leave traction control on, which I'm sure sounds fun in an AWD performance car.

If you'll pardon the expression, the driving experience of a Taycan is exactly like watching porn. You don't really get to decide how things go; the car just does its own impressive thing and you just go along with it with very minimalistic involvement, hopefully with an amazed smile on your face. But the moment you try to reach in deeper, the moment you try to get to know it more, you get this very distinct feeling that it's all just an act. The seams start to show and you become aware of a logistical, orchestrated process behind it. You start to feel the car almost recoil away from you, and in that involuntary moment that you don't follow the script, the "show" breaks for that moment you go in too hot expecting the car will turn and it doesn't, the tyres suddenly scream, and that's when the illusion breaks for a bit, and you're suddenly aware of what you're asking of this 2,295kg (5,060lbs) car.

Yes, the 0-100 times are astounding, as are the gs it can pull in corners. But what's criminally and frustratingly underreported I find is the cost of all this performance in these obscenely heavy, tech reliant cars: tyre life. It almost feels like a deliberate compromise because there's no metric for it, and therefore no one has to print tyre life on a spec sheet. I kid you not when I say that even on "upgraded" Comfort Soft tyres, I prominently felt the tyres wearing out after just three laps of Bathurst, thereby forcing me to alter my braking points and lines and losing mountains of time in the process. As a result of all this ambiguity in the tyres, along with the drivetrain, and steering, I've never once felt comfortable driving this thing at its limits. It doesn't give you that sense of cohesion, trust, communication and engagement as you would get dancing on the knife edge of adhesion like you would get in a Cayman. If you ever feel the Taycan "talk" to you, then it's the surest sign that something has gone terribly wrong somewhere. And driving a car as numb and vague as this is just boring in isolation and infuriating in a high pressure situation.

Porsche is a brand which has such a rich history in motorsports, and deal exclusively in performance models and brilliant sports cars. They're renowned for taking stupid ideas that shouldn't work in theory and making them outperform conventional engineering. They also happen to have extensive background knowledge in rear wheel steer systems, and even they can't make an EV sports car work. I therefore very highly doubt anyone else can within the near and foreseeable future. Honestly, the Taycan probably isn't even a bad car. It's insanely capable, and handles better than it has any right to even fantasise about, let alone actually do. It just doesn't offer what I'm looking for in a sports car, in a Porsche. It just feels... fake. I don't feel that connection I'm looking for when I drive a sports car. I don't understand one bit of how it works, and in turn, where its limits are, how to work with the car, and drive around its weaknesses. Just like porn, this experience works better in tandem with the "real thing" to give some exaggerated flavour and contrast, but is in no way a substitution for, or worse still, a replacement of that "real thing". And yes, I understand that it's stupidly unfair to compare a 4 door sedan with established 2 door sports cars like the 911 and Cayman. But here's the thing: it costs around the same as a 991 GT3 RS, and will soundly blow the doors off it around most tracks.

991 GT3 RS:

21.106 / 0:21​.106

50.478 / 1:11​.584

35.908 / 1:47​.492

32.514 / 2:20​.006

Fuel Consumed for 5 Flat Out Laps: 26ℓ

Top Speed: 287km/h (178mph)

Taycan Turbo S:

S1: 20.383 / 0:20​.383

S2: 51.283 / 1:11​.666

S3: 35.938 / 1:47​.604

S4: 33.103 / 2:20​.707

Fuel Consumed: -

Top Speed: 266km/h (165mph)

2:20.006 - Porsche 911 GT3 RS (991) '16

2:20.707 - Porsche Taycan Turbo S '19

2:22.739 - Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren '09

2:26.928 - BMW M4 Coupé (F82) '14

2:27.999 - Lexus RC F '14

2:32.381 - Mazda RX-7 Spirit R Type A (FD) '02

2:32.479 - Nissan Skyline GT-R V・spec II Nür (R34) '02

2:32.512 - Toyota GR Yaris 1st Edition RZ "High performance" '20

2:34.127 - BMW M3 Coupé (E46) '03

911:
https://youtu.be/zyXiyczxg1c
Taycan:
https://youtu.be/IWyJZSNMDMU

Yes, I know I still set a faster time in the 911. But here's where I have to come clean and admit that there was probably a lot more time in the Taycan that I daren't extract because the car is so numb and unpredictable. And consider this: the Taycan spent about seven seconds stuck at its "rev limit" on Conrod Straight, whereas the 911 was constantly pulling throughout Conrod Straight, resulting in the 911 pulling just a 0.7 second advantage over the Taycan. In other words, even though the 911 corners way faster, it will need a track that has stupidly long straights, or just a tight and technical track devoid of long straights to outrun the Taycan, which is a very exacting scenario. I believe that on most tracks, the Taycan Turbo S would whoop a 911 GT3 RS, and who knows if they'll eventually come out with a Taycan GT3 RS, or if they'll "protect" the 911 from the Taycan *COUGH like they protected it from the Cayman COUGH*.

Still think it's unfair to compare the 911 and Cayman to the Taycan? For new technology to successfully replace the old, it not only has to be on-par with the old, but it has to be better. On paper, the Taycan is among the fastest, and therefore quantifiably, the one of the best sports car Porsche has ever mass produced.

...but it just hasn't a speck of soul in it. It's a car for people who love numbers more than cars and driving. It's a car for people who have to have the newest and shiniest. And if you think a sports car is only about numbers and model years, then I'm sorry, but I don't believe we can be friends. I'd much rather drive a diesel Demio over a Taycan. You could connect the ends of its 560kW (751HP, 761PS) batteries to my nipples and it wouldn't stimulate me one bit. Watching manufacturer after manufacturer pump out all these stupidly heavy, awkward looking, pretentious EVs makes me wish it was Hydrogen instead that became the alternate energy source for the future instead of electricity. It just seems like a much less painful transition.