So it was a bright, shiny thing that arrived in my driveway in the middle of a bitter Ottawa winter, and what a shame, you might think, that I couldn’t get to drive it properly (and by that I mean “on a dry surface, with the roof open to the sun, and the Bose and Sport Exhaust cranked up to 11”).
I hear you. And furthermore, the day the P-car arrived, it was accompanied by 30 centimetres of the heaviest, densest snow you ever encountered.
Which got me to thinking…. Would I or wouldn’t I drive this car year-round if it was actually mine? Because the practice in my town is to store your Porsche over winter, and nobody (okay, maybe there’s someone, somewhere) drives their 911 through the snow, slush, mud, ice and salt common to an Ottawa winter. That means pretty much from October to April.
Certainly, I didn’t see another one on the road during my week behind the wheel.
As I say, the snow came down thick and heavy. The roads wore a layer of ice-like packed snow that had cars sliding into ditches and buses jack-knifing. Plows had trouble getting through this goop, and snowblowers just gave up.
But the lone Porsche seemed to be okay.
After digging out the car, a push of the fancy Porsche key fob unlocked the bright yellow doors to an exquisite black interior accented with polished aluminum. Using those core muscles you’ve been working on to delicately lower yourself into the sport seat, you can then savour this latest iteration of the 911 instrument panel and centre stack/console. It appears every bit as finely crafted and intelligently designed as the car’s price tag and reputation promises. It’s really the best modern 911 cockpit ever – no clutter here; just serious driving equipment, intelligently organized.
   2013 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S. Click image to enlarge |
The form-fitting memory power seats are aligned with the steering wheel, so when you insert the key (it’s not really a key in the conventional sense; it’s the fob itself) into its receptacle to the left of the steering column, the seat moves forward, and the steering column positions itself to your pre-set location. The large and optimistically named sunroof at least highlights the finely crafted interior features, and adds a feeling of spaciousness.
Depress the clutch, turn the key and the car comes to life, the wipers removing the remaining snow (there’s no rear wiper; it’s an option and probably not too popular). The lights work automatically, as does the climate control; the Bose comes to life and you’re ready to go.
Ours was a seven-speed manual transmission model (7MT), its clutch possessing a substantial heft, but its shifter turning out to be butter-smooth. The new all-wheel drive system fitted to this latest 991 series Carrera keeps all its power and torque in the rear, unless conditions require help at the front. Consequently, most of the time the “4S” should drive very much like an “S.”
But there’s a graphic in one of the 911’s classic five gauges that dynamically displays where the power’s going when you’re underway, and in my case it was clearly hunkering down at all four wheels much of the time.
And so it was that this jewel of a car found its footing on the simultaneously slippery but sticky surface, both powering and finessing its way confidently through. I didn’t detect any wheel slip (I doubt you could induce it in this car if you tried), the 20-inch Pirelli Sottozero winter tires surely contributing, but the entire package working together to insist that this car, within reason, continues to go where you point it.
