When you hear “911 Turbo” and “Drag Race” in the same sentence, it’s usually the title of a video with a tuned, 1000HP Porsche 991.2 Turbo racing against a 1000HP Nissan GT-R. Now, not to say that a race between those two types of vehicles wouldn’t be entertaining (it certainly would), but drag race videos everywhere have gotten stale and repetitive. We get the same blown big-block Chevy-powered Novas racing the same twin-turbo Lamborghini Huracans every time in a cheesy “old school vs. new school battle.” But just yesterday, Porsche released a video of all 7 generations of the 911 doing air-strip drags against each other. Now there is something fresh!
Porsche 911 Turbo: How Did They Get All These Cars Together?
If you follow Porsche’s media portal or look at related stories on the vast abyss that is the internet, you may have seen a story about Walter Röhrl and his take on the 7 generations of the 911 Turbo. Porsche got Röhrl and all the cars out to its Experience Centre at the Hockenheimring to do a little show and tell, giving each colorful generation its own blurb of input from the famed rally driver.
But the vehicles themselves had to come from somewhere, right? Porsche, like a lot of European brands, is very proud of its history both in the written form and the vehicular form. This fascination has led Porsche to develop a network of warehouses dedicated to survivor cars and extreme low-mile examples that can be used in museums and videos like the one you see before you today.
The Individuals In Question
Each Porsche 911 Turbo generation takes the same classic Stuttgart approach to success - little by little. You may notice that currently, the base model Porsche 911 Carrera makes 379 horsepower from its 3.0 Liter flat-six. Well, 25 years ago, the 993 Turbo (not the base) was making 402 BHP or 407 HP, that’s 23 more horsepower than the 992. We tell you this to demonstrate what Porsche spends its time on - it surely isn’t just power, it is the incremental tweaks and constant upward trend in performance that drives its engineers.
The oldest car in the video is that gorgeous forest green 930 Turbo. Believe it or not, the 930 Turbo is something of a sketchy ride. You hear about turbo lag in new cars and you see the videos of Supras that take 10 seconds to load the boost, but what you may not know is that mid-’70s turbocharging is diabolical even from the factory. The 930 Turbo is asleep below 3500 rpm and then kicks you in the back with the steel-toed boot of flat-six power all at once, prompting you to hold on and check your pants afterward.
But the 930 isn’t the only offender here of turbo lag. Basically every generation up until the 996 or 997 is wildly out of its mind with a delay in power down low and then a double shot up in the high revs. However, aside from the engine response of old Turbos, these 7 cars are all critical pieces of not only Porsche history, but automotive history entirely. Cars like the 930 and 959 Turbo that were inspired by racecars filled the hearts of young car lovers back in the day and gave kids a non-Italian hero to have on their wall growing up.
Max Larsen is the Porsche reporter at Torque News. Since he was 15 years old Max was building old cars and selling them for profit, spawning his love for cars. He has been around Porsches his entire life. His grandfather had several 911s and he’s owned 2 Porsche 944s, which made the auto-shop class cars a lot simpler. Reading old car magazines and seeing press cars at shows gave him the passion to write and pursue the industry. He is currently studying Journalism at Western Washington University and writing for the racing team there locally. Follow Max on Torque News Porsche and on Twitter at @maxlarsencars. Search Torque News Porsche for daily Porsche news coverage by our expert automotive reporters.
