2014 Porsche 911 Turbo First Drive

Your browser, , is out of date and not supported by www.motortrend.com. It may not display all features of our site properly and could have potential security flaws. Please update your browser to the most upated version. Update Now It's the midrange. That eye-opening, grip-tightening, "My God"-inducing midrange. Pick an rpm level and open the throttle. Doesn't matter where, the expletives will come — quickly. The last 911 Turbo S we tested barely eked its way into the 10-second quarter-mile club. This one, with its 560 horsepower? Comfortably there, we estimate. "Comfortably" is the operative word. The Turbo is Porsche's all-season, all-road, all-anything sports car, one that unflinchingly putts to work, drifts on the track, eats up bracket races, and dashes through the snow. You could do all of it in a weekend. This bizarre mix of sheer capability and performance takes a while to wrap your head around, and I spent a day doing said wrapping in a Turbo S at a new racetrack in northern Germany called Bilster Berg. The track is notable for its constant elevation changes, blind crests, and a barrage of dips that make it seem determined to upset your car -- there's even a big dip just before the braking point on the back straight, the fastest part of the track. The Turbo S feels unflappable here, the direct result of numerous and clever hardware solutions. The water-cooled, elecro-hydraulic Haldex all-wheel drive system can supply more torque to the front axle. A rear steering system turns the back wheels opposite the fronts below 31 mph and with the fronts above 50 mph, and this virtual shortening and lengthening of the wheelbase helps reduce the turning circle to 34.8 feet (1.6 feet shorter than Carrera 4) while improving high-speed stability. It's also good for 2 seconds at the Nürburgring, according to Porsche. The rear wing deploys at speed and is matched with a rubber air dam that folds out via an air-filled bladder behind it (another 2 seconds at the Nürburgring). Fully extended, the clever air dam sits lower than the GT3's nose, but, at low speeds, it's flush against the bottom of the bumper, so drivers don't have to worry about scraping against driveways. The resulting downforce is 291 pounds at 186 mph, and the 197.6 mph top speed (achieved in sixth gear) is electronically limited because of the tires. In the Turbo S, this comes on top of a suite of standard Porsche goodies: active anti-roll bars, ceramic brakes (16.1 in front and 15.4 in rear), an electric locking rear-differential, and a seemingly telepathic, seven-speed, twin-clutch transmission. View the original article here