Porsche rolls out the seventh generation of its iconic 911 Carrera sports car.
As the styling chief for Porsche, Michael Mauer knew he had one of the biggest assignments of his career when he was told to redesign the maker’s flagship 911 sports car. Few vehicles are more iconic, so, few projects would be more challenging.
The first thing Mauer recognized were the limits confronting him. While he was asked to come up with something distinctive for the seventh-generation he knew that a radical redesign simply “wouldn’t be a 911.” That meant maintaining the car’s distinctive shape, starting with the long hood, bulging headlamps, “flyline” roof, and, of course, its rear-engine layout.
What Mauer and his design team have come up with is somehow very different and yet surprising familiar – a Porsche 911 that is at once familiar and yet radically different. There’s not a single panel or part carried over but for the powertrain – which nonetheless undergoes some significant enhancements. The 2012 Porsche 911 is longer, lower and wider. It delivers an array of new technologies intended to make it more powerful and more dynamic – while also improving its fuel economy by an estimated 16%.
The 2012 Porsche Carrera S is longer, lower, wider -- and 100 pounds lighter.
We got our first chance to drive the new sports car during its global media preview in Central California, a lavish event that will stretch on for most of November and which underscores the importance of the new model to Porsche’s ambitious future. The maker is so confident of the success of the new 911 it anticipates sales to jump sharply next year, reaching nearly a third of its overall volume in the U.S., Porsche’s largest market.
(Porsche plans to double global sales, be world’s most profitable carmaker, adding a string of new models. Click Here for the full story.)
So, as one can imagine, we were looking forward to seeing if the 2012 Porsche 911 would live up to its billing – something we quickly discovered it did during a long drive through the Santa Maria mountains followed by a galloping run through a challenging test track Porsche built specifically for the car’s introduction.
Front to back, the 2012 Porsche 911 Carrera has undergone some dramatic changes yet the iconic shape is retained.
As we’ve already revealed, the basic silhouette is instantly identifiable, but a closer look – and a handy tape measure – will reveal that the 2012 reincarnation’s wheelbase is stretched about four inches, the overall length by two. The new Porsche 911 also has a slightly lower roof and a wider track. It also has bigger wheels, something Mauer notes “designers are always looking for.”
The distinctive headlamps are carried over, of course, but have a bit more of a 3-dimensional look, in keeping with a body that is more sculpted than before. The body has a more precise and taught feel, with a cabin that has moved ever so slightly forward. The overall appearance is one that is more dynamic, refined yet aggressive. With one annoying exception other motorists would quickly move aside spotting our 911 roar up in their rearview mirrors.
The new 911's interior is more lavishly executed and also much more functional, with its new Panamera-derived center console.
The interior also boasts a more refined and luxurious feel, with new sport seats, a more lavish finish and, most importantly, improved ergonomics, with well-placed controls and easy-to-read gauges, a large navi screen and a Panamera-derived center console that places key vehicle functions within easy reach.
There’s a much better layout to the five-circle gauge cluster visible through the steering wheel. One of those is a multi-function LCD screen that can offer up a range of programmable information – including the most immediate navigation instruction or an active G-meter that instantly shows how hard you’re accelerating, braking or turning. At one point, during a run down the test track it nudged an astounding 1.3 Gs.
The 2012 Porsche 911 Carrera is offered with either a 7-speed PDK or 7-speed manual transmission.
Listing all the technical changes integrated into the Carrera S models we drove would quickly exhaust the patience of even the most dedicated Porsche aficionado, but here are some of the most important.
Start with a new, lightweight body. That’s no mean feat considering all the other new technologies stuffed inside the 2012 Porsche 911 but the new model weighs in at around 3,113 pounds with the PDK gearbox, about 100 pounds less than the old model, internally known as the 997.
Even the base model Carrera S now gets an active, pop-up rear wing. We also found our car equipped with the Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control (PDCC) active roll stabilization system – which is designed to reduce body roll when cornering. Porsche claims that enhances cornering performance by keeping the tires in their optimal position at all times.
The flat-six engines in the new 911 Carrera and Carrera S deliver more power yet better mileage.
There’s also a new electro-hydraulic power steering system. The system is a hybrid, using an electric motor to drive otherwise traditional hydraulic power steering. The idea is that unlike a belt-driven system, this approach leeches far less power from the engine.
Among other things, that also means means improved fuel economy. So does the addition of a new Start/Stop system. Come to a stoplight, step on the brake and the engine suddenly shuts off. Lift off the brake and it instantly fires back up.
Along with lower rolling resistance tires, improved aerodynamics and other improvements, Porsche says it is getting about 16% better fuel economy in the European test cycle and expects something similar here once the EPA completes testing. Currently, the base Carrera gets 18 City, 25 Highway.
The Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control minimizes body roll even in hard corners.
That’s all the more amazing when you consider the base car now has 350 horsepower, an increase of five, even though the flat-six engine’s displacement has been dropped from 3.6-liters to 3.4. And its 0 to 60 times have dropped by an estimated 0.2 seconds, to 4.4 seconds. The Carrera S, meanwhile, now makes 400 horsepower and 325 pound-feet of torque from its 3.8-liter engine, with 0 to 60 times down a tenth to 4.1 seconds – matching the old GT3. The S boasts a top speed of 189 mph.
We spent most of the day driving in a Carrera S equipped with Porsche’s double-clutch gearbox, the PDK, though we spent an hour behind the wheel in a car featuring the maker’s new 7-speed manual – the first ever offered in a passenger car. The stick is quick, impressive and fun, but with the latest updates to the PDK we found ourselves thinking truly heretical thoughts – like who needs a manual gearbox anymore, especially when you can deliver precise, seemingly instantaneous shifts with the paddle shifters?
Re-designing the 2012 Porsche 911 Carrera was likely the toughest challenge styling chief Michael Mauer has ever faced.
Straight line performance is one thing but we wondered how the Carrera S handles in more demanding circumstances. It certainly impresses to know that it managed a 7:40 lap time on the grueling Nurburgring Nordscliefe, a full 16 seconds faster than the outgoing, 6th-generation Porsche 911.
We got a sense of that during a half-dozen runs down the test track Porsche set up alongside the Santa Maria Airport.
The layout gave us a chance to start off in Launch Control mode, the engine bouncing off the rev limiter until we released the brake, immediately sinking us deep into the new 14-way power sport seats. We hit 112 mph before slamming on the oversized brakes, quickly bringing us to a halt well before the looming barrier. Goosing the throttle again, we zigged and zagged through a serpentine course that included decreasing radius corners and a tight slalom stretch. Impressively, we shed seconds off our lap time on each run as confidently quickly built.
Cutaway shows the powertrain and chassis control system at work.
Having the track available for the media was a smart move considering that even the tightest on-road driving we experienced offered little challenge to the 2012 Porsche 911 Carrera S. The biggest trial was keeping the car even somewhat close to the speed limit – as one of our normally more demure colleagues discovered as the officer noted her 94 mph speed in a 65 zone.
Most drivers will likely also be impressed with how much quieter and smoother the new 911 is on regular roads. But not all. We did hear complaints from a few of the collected media hordes that the new model was somehow too easy to drive. That was similar to what many said, a decade-some back, when an earlier 911 redesign switched to a water-cooled engine and re-engineered the suspension to reduce the chances of having the front and rear ends trade places when the car was overcooked in a corner.
A close-up of the new 911's rear, including the new LED lamps, at the car's Frankfurt Motor Show preview.
If any current concern holds water it’s that Porsche has almost numbed out the steering. To our mind – and hands – that’s overstating the case. Yes, it’s smoother and less likely to pass on the raw sensation of hitting every twig and pebble on the road. But unlike all too many of the new electric power steering systems that makers are fast migrating to, the electro-hydraulic system on the 2012 Porsche 911 continues to keep you in touch more than enough to let you know precisely what the car is doing.
One does have to get used to what the car is telling you, however, especially due to the much more limited amount of body roll allowed by the Dynamic Chassis Control system. But, again, there’s still enough that it only took a few minutes — and a couple hard turns – to feel confident, comfortable and in touch with what the new 911 is doing.
The launch of the 2012 Porsche 911 Carrera was one of the hits of this year's Frankfurt Motor Show.
For us, the 2012 Porsche 911 Carrera S is almost more fun than we can bear to drive. The new model is a delight to look at and offers the sort of driving pleasure that could quickly get us in trouble with the law. If you’re willing to take the risk of a few speeding tickets you’ll likely agree it’s the best sports car Porsche has ever come up with.
If past is prologue, expect Porsche to ultimately roll out more than 20 variants of the seventh-generation 911, starting with the new 2012 Carrera and Carrera S models, which go on sale in the U.S. on February 4, 2012 at $82,100 and $96,400 respectively – plus $950 destination. Accounting for newly standard features, such as onboard navigation, that’s a roughly 1% increase over the price of the outgoing models.