911

CARRERA 4

orne new cars ignite controversy. Others send road testers hunting for new superlatives. It’s a rare car that does both at the same time. But Porsche has come up with one, by fixing everything that was ever wrong with one of the most popular sports cars of all time.

We have just driven the Carrera 4, the thoroughly reworked and modernized four-wheel-drive 911. On little D-num

bered roads in France’s south-coastal mountains above Nice and Cannes, the Carrera 4 safely maintained astounding speeds, slithering and pattenng over pavement ranging from glassy to ghast

ly. It made clear one important fact, which we report with pleasure: Yes, the rear-engine 911 layout, a wildly tail- heavy design reviled and worshipped in equal measure for more than a quarter of a century, still has a future. With all- wheel drive as the Carrera 4 applies it, this most traditional Porsche configuration suddenly looks ripe again, ready to last essentially forever.

But understand, Porsche “improved” the concept by engineering out the characteristics that made the 911 twitchy, touchy, and prone to spin in the hands of the unwary. And those traits, especially the overweighted rear end’s readiness to swing on around when

the car is asked to slow and turn in simultaneously, have always heightened the thrill and delight that skillfully piloting a 911 delivers.

The question is, then, how tame is too tame’? Can a sports car become too good to be fun? Some of our motor-writer colleagues feel the Carrera 4 has gone too far, since it denies hero drivers the opportunity to flirt with incipient spins.

We have some history with this issue. The first time we drove Porsche’s remarkable 959 [August 1986], we wondered if maybe the car wasn’t taking on too much responsibility for control. Its computer-directed four-wheel drive made critical driver errors almost impossible, and even hurtling over the road at triple-digit speeds, we felt strangely left out of the fun. In the end, though, as we gained more experience with the 450- bhp wondercar on a variety of roads, in traffic, in weather, we came to appreciate its magic: By keeping the rear of the car in line no matter what the driver does, and by putting all the engine’s prodigious output to the road safely, the 959’s self-managed four-wheel drive makes incredible performance accessi

Reprinted from Automobile Magazine

Copyriqht © 1989 by Murdock Magazines, a division of News Group Publications, Inc., all riahts reserved.

FEBRUARY 1989