The 991.2 911 GT3 RS is exactly what it says on the tin, and has also been well documented by others here on the thread already: a weaponised, track focused, wailing missile of a racecar with turn signals and a plate slapped onto it to let it pretend that it might actually get you home from the track without killing you, with or without the help of trees and Armco. With Gran Turismo Sport's utter joke of a classification system for road cars, nothing else can hope to be a match for it in any of the classes it can be tuned or detuned to reside in; trust me, I tried—The Corvette ZR1 and Viper ACR don't exist in this game, the R35 Nismo was a sloppy disaster, the CTR3's cornering speeds were so tragic that I once got taken round the outside of Spa's No Name by Rick's 911 in the wet, the Cayman seemingly lacks the gearing and downforce as a full–fledged racecar to compete with the 911 even when brought up to the same power and mass, and the Taycan is rubbish at anything other than short, straight line acceleration bursts. Short of bringing a LaMerda that has overstated power and understated mass to race the 911, it's quite simply untouchable around a racetrack as things stand.
And really, that could've just been the end of the review. But that would be no fun, wouldn't it? So instead of the usual review style of me blabbering on about how it drives and such, I thought I could offer a read that's a little different, and hopefully more fun: by sharing a personal story of how my perception of Porsche over the years formed and changed, and how 911 GT3s and video games factor into that.
As is well known by now, Porsche had an exclusivity deal with Electronic Arts (EA) for seventeen long years, starting at the turn of the millennium, and it's a move that I to this day still struggle to see the benefit of for anyone. It's not like any hardcore Porsche fanatic will go, "Gee, I have a real hankering for some NA flat six spinny goodness right about now, but aww the only place I can experience that is in a NFS game? Oh well, fair play and good business move by EA. I'll close iRacing and download Origin then," right? Or better yet, it's not like any toxic 10–year old playing a subpar, predatory NFS game wallriding and buying his way to victory will talk their parents into buying a Porsche for real because its "sick Cosmic NOS will pwn every1!!!", are they? Regardless, I've always disliked Porsches mainly because of this. It almost didn't matter that I never got to drive one in real life or in a semi–realistic scenario in any simulator, because you can't be in bed with a company that stinks as much as EA without some of its odour rubbing off on you. They exude that sort of elitism and haughtiness that I really dislike in a company, and yes—that's even taking into account that they're a high end car manufacturer. Why anyone would willingly and exclusively associate with EA is completely beyond me, because it's a surefire way to become hated as well.
That all being said, the widespread praise of Porsche cars in general didn't escape me even back when I was younger, more ignorant, and much more close minded. But, because I'm poor and the only way I can experience exotic cars is via video games or simulators, I could never verify for myself how true the praise was, and knowing a certain other brand who also has a prancing horse on their logo and their practices when it comes to press cars and how they try to control media, I could never bring myself to believe all that praise and hype about Porsches. After all, how can a RR car, so flawed in theory, be as good as everyone says it is?
My first time physically coming into contact with a 911 was during my short stint as a mechanic, when a 997 GT3 drove into our humble workshop for alignment issues. While I wasn't nearly experienced enough to handle anything major on such an expensive piece of machinery, however little I did interact with it left an impression as deep in my mind as the bucket seats in the car; so aggressively raked and sunken in that I didn't as much sit on the seat as much as I fell into it, complete with the ritualistic pain and misery that legitimises a pure sportscar experience. Even before starting the engine, the 997 had "spoken" to me so loudly and clearly without words, instilling in me the utmost curiosity about the machine and confidence in taking it up to speed; the door handles tilt upward and a little forward to make it easier to open as it's such a low slung car. It's such a simple feature, yet it immediately commanded my attention because of the message it sends me, the potential driver. It knows what it is. It knows the compromises you have to make to own and drive it, and it extends a gesture of courtesy in whatever ways its spartan sports car nature will allow. The sky–high redline of 9,000rpm is dead centre on the dash and high up on the 2 o'clock, right where it'd be the most prominent when you're driving it on the limit on the racetrack, letting me know it's a car that wants to have its nuts revved off.
When washing the car by hand a little later on, it's... kinda hard to describe. As my hands flowed over its curvaceous body, I could almost feel the car directing airflow over its body. You could tell that every surface, every crease, let alone every vent, is there to do a job: to make the car go faster. There aren't any nonsensical, try hard creases and cuts into its body in the name of styling, as is seemingly a federally mandated requirement for cars these past ten or so years. There aren't any vanity, fake vents and intakes to make the car look like something it's not, to fool a casual buyer into fitting an image in their head.
Maybe all that I've physically experienced with a 911 is pretty ordinary stuff. I wouldn't know, because I live in a country where cars are prohibitively expensive, the laws governing them asphyxiatingly strict, and what little car culture that exists here as a result are almost all ricers. Being hit with the blistering legitimacy of the 997 GT3 was a breath of fresh air that reignited my passion and motivated me when I was going through a very bad time in my life. If it could make me so interested in it without even starting its engine, I yearned badly to drive it for myself to get to know it more. And it's precisely that, I feel, that a lot of car manufacturers can learn from Porsche—how to "speak" to a driver without words. How it invites you in and piques your interest. The confidence in the product that you're selling. The love for the solid identity that is the product. And most importantly, how to instill trust in someone. It almost feels like a lost art to me.
When the exclusivity deal ended in 2017, racing games of all genres and platforms flocked to the Stuttgart–based brand, and Gran Turismo was no exception, with Sport marking the first time a Porsche was *officially* in the series, which means I finally get to try it out. I really wasn't sure what to expect when I first got into a virtual one. Was all that I had inferred from the 997 GT3 simply my inexperience pouring smoke up my butt? Are Porsches just as unconditionally spiteful and blood lustful as RUFs? Or are Porsches really as damn good as everyone says they are?
Whatever I may or may not have been expecting at the time, I remember being completely taken by surprise when driving the 991 GT3 RS for the first time. There wasn't unavoidable death awaiting me round every corner; in fact, the car almost felt understeery at speed, owing to that big wing at the back and having little weight up front. The car as a whole was freakishly stable at any speed, and its laser focus on track sensations coupled with the blistering immediacy and proportionate reaction of every input at my disposal immediately made me understand why the brand and this namesake is held in this high a regard in real world, because no other manufacturer I daresay will sell you a car that is this raw, this pure, this immediate, this tactile, this extreme, and this focused today.
In fact, driving the GT3 RS in this game made me think that this is perhaps the sort of experience I might have had, and defended as though my family's honour, if the Japanese cars of the 90s that I idolised had the market success to survive to the modern day, past the shackles of the gentlemen's agreement. That is to say, the GT3 RS at some points, made me feel things that I felt in those cars at twice their speeds, and it's that context that made me respect and appreciate the modern day 911; it's a stupid idea that passionate engineers ardently stuck with through thick and thin to make into what is genuinely a world–beater today. It's an ideological victory, one that's meant to be celebrated as a niche. And I'm glad that, if not my beloved JDM darlings, someone else at least has managed to keep a niche engineering and a shared passion alive, much less find enough financial success to continue refining and evolving it. I think the GT3 RS is the car that really "globalised" my mind; I was always a JDM fanboy before having sampled it, but after having driven it, I felt a very strange sense of... cohesion? Like the world has become smaller in my mind, as I realised that despite our cultural differences and how we tend to associate certain types of cars with each country, we as a species sometimes all just want the same thing. It gives me some faith in knowing that there's demand for a pure, thoroughbred sports car like the GT3 RS, and that it'll sell even if, or even because it was offered with a stick shift. And it really made me more eager to try cars of all origins and time periods, to see if I can't find more of the same in other brands and countries. Heck, whatever impartiality and open–mindedness I might exhibit in my writing nowadays, you can probably thank the 911 GT3s for cultivating; they helped me "grow up", in a sense.
But while the 991 GT3 RS opened my mind and earned my respect, I never really... loved it. I never really did lust after it. I never did yearn to drive it again after the initial session. I think, on a subconscious level, I just... really feared it. I've had the misfortune of driving the Yellowbird in prior GT games, and I know what these cars do. I don't care what my therapist says; the Yellowbird is real and it can hurt you. I have self–diagnosed PTSD from driving that damn thing, and I keep expecting, I keep waiting for the GT3 RS to do the same to me. Driving the GT3 RS kinda feels like being stuck in a spiteful marriage after your spouse has hurt you immensely, and they promised to be better and never repeat the same mistake again, but despite their genuine efforts and marked improvements, you've never really forgiven them in your heart, you know? You keep withholding your full trust, your true feelings, just waiting for the day they slip up however slightly just so you can use the incident to justify and vent all your pent up rage, pointing with an accusatory finger and shouting, "AH HA! THERE IT IS! I KNEW IT ALL ALONG! A LEOPARD CAN NEVER CHANGE ITS SPOTS!" And yes, I'm very much aware that this scenario speaks more of me than my partner. In the context of the GT3 RS, I keep waiting for it to snap and spin uncontrollably without warning for no reason. I keep withholding that last 2 or 3% from the car as a buffer because I'm afraid of it. I keep driving within its known limits of grip, never daring to push it to explore its limits. I'm always cognizant of the fact that it's a RR car with way too much power for anyone's good, even its own, and I always feel like the car is hiding its true tendencies from me, what with its big rear wing, rear steer systems, and gigantic tyres. I know there'll be little to no warning when it lets go, and that if it goes, it'd happen at reckless speeds with no chance of getting it back. It scares me even in the context of a simulator, and I never did manage to find that trusting relationship I want with a car with the 991. Oddly enough, that trust and playfulness I'm looking for in a playmate would have to be served up by its older sister and cousin, the 993 Carrera RS Club Sport and 981 Cayman GT4 Clubsport respectively. That is to say, while the 991 GT3 RS has earned my respect for Porsche, it's the 993 and 981 that let me see another side of Porsche that earned my affection for the brand. Those two cars never gave me that feeling that they were hiding anything from me. They felt more at ease with being themselves, not having to chase numbers like the GT3 RS. I'm the sort of person that feels more at ease with a 993 sliding all over the place than being in a rock solid 991, because I feel like I can at least see and feel the spin coming in the 993 and can therefore work with it to mitigate or manage it at moderate speeds, you know? Maybe it's not a logical thing to say, I don't know. I don't particularly care if it doesn't make sense: I've always been the weird kid in school and at work. I painted my 991 turquoise, the wheels of my Cayman metallic blue, I barely do anything more than put fake number plates and carbon parts with this game's revolutionary livery editor, I spend weeks writing long, geeky, personal reviews, and I love driving in the rain. Does that tell you anything about the sort of weird person I am and my equally weird tastes?
Maybe it's because a virtual car can't physically "talk" to me like the 997 GT3 in my workshop did, and so I thought I'd try something else a little more... talkative.
Driving the very same 991 GT3 RS in the PS4 port of Assetto Corsa however, it felt much more like what I might've expected a balls to the wall, track focused 911 to feel like. Its stiff springs, telepathically immediate throttle, and unruly steering wheel that constantly tries to wrestle itself away from your grip makes the 991 GT3 RS feel so on edge all the time, like it was just a slight crosswind, a small pebble, or simply just a slight slip of any of your limbs away from all hell breaking loose. I have simply never felt so alive and so vulnerable in a car before. So... mortal, if you will. It almost felt as intentionally unstable as a fighter jet to improve maneuverability, yet its instability never felt imprecise or random; it's there fully waiting to be harnessed to a surgical precision by a demon of a driver. It feels like a roller coaster or mechanical bull ride: it's inherently controlled, but the adrenaline and drama it shoves through your entire nervous system gives it a contrasting feel of everything going to hell, giving drivers an unparalleled sense of speed and involvement you'll be hard pressed to find in any other closed cockpit, road legal car. Hell, there's so little sound deadening in the cockpit of the car that you can clearly hear the ABS bite and release on the brakes several times a second via the tyre skidding noise jittering off and on under hard braking!
Despite how planted and predictable it is, the overly stable understeer that I had noted in Gran Turismo Sport is nowhere to be found in AC's rendition of the 991 GT3 RS; if you're boorish with your trail braking, the rear end of the GT3 RS will happily swing out, demanding smooth, precise inputs and knowing exactly where each tyre's grip limit is at all times, which unfortunately does mean that certain turns that require quick, sharp dabs of the brakes and hard turning in, such as Turns 4 and 10 of Laguna Seca, are nigh impossible to trace with any semblance of dignity. Or at least, I haven't found out how to "correctly" tackle corners like that just yet.
In fact, the whole experience was sensory overload for me, someone who has only driven family cars in real life, in Gran Turismo games, and had only just begun driving casually on AC. And yes, I'm aware that AC as a full fledged simulator will give anyone who's only played Gran Turismo games sensory overload when they first make the transition, even in a much slower, softer car. But I think that it's especially worth noting when it comes to the 991 GT3 RS, because even in the context of AC, it's one hell of a chatterbox. It's a car characterised by its rawness, its talkativeness, that adrenaline rush of feeling like everything could be lost in just a thousandth of a second if your concentration lapses. It's a car that sells itself on theatre and drama, the likes of which the simplistic sim of Gran Turismo Sport cannot even hope to mildly imitate, let alone replicate. The 991 in AC felt more like a true 911 even to me, someone with very limited experience with the brand. It gave me that communication—and the threats—that I lamented was absent in GTS, and while I'm still deathly afraid of it, and therefore can't drive anywhere near its limits, I at least felt like I "got" its appeal and character more. Just like how you probably won't understand the appeal of a Honda Fit in an e–sports focused title, I feel that, in equal measure, you can't really understand what a 911 GT3 RS is about in Gran Turismo.
It's weird how, despite me having never liked Porsches that much growing up, their cars seem to help me grow and realise things at multiple stages of my life, first with my time as a mechanic, then with Gran Turismo Sport, and now making me drive in AC more often to "graduate" from Gran Turismo. But perhaps that's to speak of how amazing their cars really are; how they're the yardsticks not only in sheer performance, but in the sensations they deliver to their drivers. That, and simply because they're around in modern day showrooms, and are now widely available in digital recreations across several platforms. It might be a bit of a stretch to say, but I think that can be metaphorical for something poetic and hopeful, like teaching me the value of being around other people, being available, being seen, to keep on keeping on doing what I do and honing my craft, be it driving or writing. That's why I spend weeks on end to write long, drawn out, geeky reviews only a handful of people read. Perhaps one day, the car that helps me "graduate" from simulations will be a Porsche as well, and if that day ever comes, you can be sure that I'll spend another few weeks writing about it.
It takes nothing short of a phenomenal car to have this sort of profound effect on me, which is to say that the 991 GT3 RS is so bloody good, it doesn't need exclusivity deals, unrealistic favourtism from arcade devs, nitrous, or silly jumps to stand out; leave that showy, flashy, kiddy stuff to Lamborghini and Ferrari, because Porsches are so much more than that. Just let it do its own thing in the real world, and you'd swear on Black Box's grave it has nitrous anyway.
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