First Drive Review
I had this $108,520 Porsche in full second-gear shriek, sending shock waffles down the barrier wall lining the entrance to an interstate, the wail scaring pigeons off overhead wires and waking up dogs, when it came to me: "Wow, you know what? Chinese don't eat cheese!"
That happens any time I get into an eye-crossingly expensive and powerful sports car. Crazy revelations that have nothing to do with driving begin popping into my cerebrum, like playing head Pong. My head is warming up to the hunt for pithy witticisms to describe this stupendous sports car, but the wires are crossed, and what's coming up is word salad.
Okay, calm down. Start at the beginning. The full name of this car is the Porsche 911 Targa 4S. Each morsel of word, each number in that grandiloquent name, adds significant numbers to the sticker price.
The journey to a Targa 4S begins with a rear-drive, 325-hp flat-six Porsche 911 Carrera ($73,260). Tack on a "4," for four-wheel drive ($79,060), and then you'll want the more powerful 355-hp engine that puts the S in 4S ($89,260), and now you've just overshot the sanity turnoff, so why not go all the way and get the two-sectioned, sliding-glass Targa roof ($96,760) that turns it into a hatchback? Or forget the whole thing and just buy that recently foreclosed house on the corner, outright.
Meanwhile, back on the interstate, somehow I'm almost at 90— how did that happen?—and begin nose giggling because there's still a ton of juice under my right foot; even in the manual's sixth gear, it will surge forward with the slightest pressure on the pedal, at which point it occurs to me that it was the intention of Alfred Hitchcock, the director of North by Northwest, to call that movie The Man in Lincoln's Nose.
As usual, Porsche sent over this Targa 4S equipped with everything but the kitchen sink, pushing the price heavenward. The full-leather option means the layer of beef critter is extended over not just the seats but also the door panels and the dashboard and the armrests, and you go down for another $3365. The regular nine-speaker Bose music box has four more and costs $1390, the navigation system is $2070, the power-seat deal is $1550. And so it goes, right up to $108,520. No wonder I can't think straight.
But what a car it is. The horizontally opposed 3.8-liter 355-horse "boxer" nosebleeder with double overhead cams and four valves per cylinder and variable valve timing is an engine that fully confirms the notion that German engineering is next to cleanliness and will get the car to 100 mph from a standstill in the time it took to count out Mike Tyson the last time he demonstrated why he most likely will no longer be able to afford one. Both events took 10 seconds (well, 10.2 in a Targa 4S that we tested in the May 2006 issue). Did you know that in his heyday Tyson spent something like $250,000 a year on pet food?
