First Drive Review
Nothing focuses the mind like a glimpse of your own demise. Porsche is running full speed these days, away from its own near death of the early '90s when its U.S. sales plunged 88 percent, from a prosperity peak of 30,475 cars in 1986 to just 3728 in calendar 1993.
The company's inspired sprint back from the brink now brings the fattest profits in the automaking world when expressed as a percent of its sales--13.3 percent, according to spokesman Anton Hunger, more than four times GM's rate. It also brings this new Carrera 4S.
The old Carrera 4 coupe, new in 1999, would have been plenty good enough for a few more years. But that kind of thinking is what landed Porsche on the critical list. So now it energetically prepares new models before buyers ask.
Known internally as the C4S, this new take on the all-wheel-drive 911 is a flat-out gorgeous car. The big news is the Turbo-style flared rear quarters, adding visual heft and 2.4 inches of width to what was the weak, receding end of the tapering body and simultaneously creating room for 295/30ZR-18s on 11-inch-wide rims. Leaving the Turbo's air-gulping scoops off the flanks (no intercooler to feed) lets us see the sculptural continuity of the shape. Wow!
In the rear view, a band of red connects the taillights across the car's full width. Perfect!
In front, you see Turbo-size air inlets. And look carefully at the spoiler's lower lip. It's trimmed higher across the center. This adjustment, along with a rear spoiler that deploys to a slightly different position than before, tailors the front-to-rear balance of aerodynamic lift and trims the coefficient of drag to 0.30, compared with 0.31 for the Turbo.
The 911 now comes in eight variants, according to Porsche. Whereas the old Carrera 4 could be characterized as a 911 upgraded with all-wheel drive, the Carrera 4S amounts to a depressurized Turbo. It has Turbo wheels and tires, the large Turbo brakes, the Turbo's suspension, and the Turbo's all-wheel-drive machinery that delivers from 5 to 40 percent of driving torque to the front wheels, depending on conditions. The big mechanical difference between the two is a 100-hp deficit. The C4S is propelled by the 315-hp, 3.6-liter six from the normal 911.
The one big visual difference: There's no wing on the C4S, just a self-rising spoiler similar, but not identical, to those on other 911s.
Like the Turbo, the C4S rides 0.4 inch lower on its suspension. A new fiberglass engine cover offsets some of the poundage gained in new muscle, but weight still goes up 143 pounds versus that of the base Carrera 4 six-speed.
Porsche unveiled the C4S in northern Italy under sunny skies and over blanket-smooth roads that made the extremely low-profile tires--almost no profile--seem a perfectly sensible idea. The Tiptronic continues its rocker-action shifter switches on the wheel spokes, and we found no surprises on this version. In the six-speed, clutch action is highly damped, rather dead-feeling, with abrupt takeup. That, in turn, causes the occasional clank from surprised components behind. The engine feels fluffy off idle, clears its throat at about 2000 rpm, perks up toward 3000, and turns seriously pushy in the mid-threes. Torque is up six percent, now peaking at 4250 rpm, 350 rpm lower than before. Porsche says the 0-to-62-mph time has dropped 0.1 second to 5.1 seconds. If you're worried that the 2002 upsizing from 3.4 to 3.6 liters has somehow pushed this engine off in a tractorish direction, forget it. The redline is still 7300, and the machinery goes there happily.
Engine noise is mild and sweet, and mostly overwhelmed by the song of tires and gears when the going gets relaxed. At all times, the seatbacks give the most agreeable hugs.
Porsche offers lots of opportunity to have these cars your way, as we were reminded by one interior decked out with bright yellow seatbelts to match the exterior ($530 extra) and more than a dozen pieces of carbon-fiber trim (three packages available in the U.S., priced at $865, $2080, and $6100).
The U.S. share of the Carrera 4S first-year, 5000-car crop will be 1300 to 1400 cars, Porsche says, with a base price of $82,254 for the six-speed.
