Toronto — The cop, a full-metal-jacketed member of the Ontario Provincial Police, walked up to the car, pushed his cap back and said, "New toy?"
Well, yes and no, Officer Neckfat. The Carrera GT, Porsche's half-million-dollar sports car, a 605-horsepower linear-mass accelerator capable of more than 200 mph, is certainly new. The car is just now going into full production in Leipzig, Germany -- hand assembled at a rate of two per day -- and so far only about 50 have been delivered to North American customers, mostly juice-intensive celebs like Jerry Seinfeld and Tim Allen.
Toy? Oh, yeah. The car is the quintessence of uselessness. The car is perfect agony to drive in close-quarter traffic thanks to its stall-happy ceramic clutch. My wallet has more trunk space than the nose cone of this mid-engine monster. In terms of appropriateness, driving the newest, greatest Porsche hyper-car on the street is like deer hunting with ICBMs.
On the track, however, the Carrera GT sheds its sense of overgrown absurdity and becomes what it is: a sumptuously upholstered race car, a carbon-fiber lightning bolt hurled from Zuffenhausen at History itself.
There is nothing false, shallow or toy-like in the way the Carrera GT drives. This car is no gimmick, no vainglorious attempt to keep up with the Enzos. It is serious. Adult-strength. For mature audiences only. Double-black-diamond with an avalanche advisory. If you are not entirely respectful of the car's power, it will hurt you.
This is a good thing.
At a time when, as sports car purists see it, the company's cars grow less and less pure, with their multiple layers of traction, stability and brake controls, adaptive suspensions, speed-sensitive steering and cozening comforts like navigation systems and automatic transmissions; at a time when Porsche's bestselling vehicle is, in fact, a truck (the Cayenne SUV); at a time when there is talk of Porsche building a four-door saloon like the Maserati Quattroporte, the final apostasy to the Porsche faithful, the Carrera GT redeems the company's reputation as the maker of great sports cars for accomplished drivers.
The Carrera GT is uncompromised and uncompromising. The first impression one gets behind the wheel is one of off-the-scale, black-hole density, a gravitas that feels rooted in the Earth's iron core. This is the sort of vibration-free platform they build giant telescopes on.
