Porsche 911 GT3 RS costs from £131,296493bhp GT3 RS represents a new level for the Porsche 911 - faint hearts need not apply The new 911 GT3 RS is the purest realisation of what Porsche estimates a sports car to be.It's not a car made faster by the addition of turbos or hybrid drives, but through the deletion of weight and provision of more power via the delightfully back-to-basics formula of shoveling a bigger engine in the boot.So today’s GT3 RS displaces precisely the same 3996cc and produces an identical 493bhp at an indistinguishable 8250rpm as the last 997-based GT3 RS 4.0, despite their engines being entirely unrelated.The difference is that while the 4.0-litre 997 GT3 RS was a limited-edition special, this 991-derived machine is part of the standard model line-up. No 911 has ever been fitted with a bigger engine.The extra capacity has been achieved by fitting a longer-throw crankshaft to increase the stroke, so while there is no change to the speed at which peak power is delivered, peak revs have been pegged back a couple of hundred rpm, meaning its poor owners will have to content themselves with a sluggish 8800rpm limit. The flipside is a small increase in torque and a flatter curve, albeit still peaking at the same 6250rpm.The transmission is the same two-pedal PDK dual-clutch automatic unit used in the GT3 but with its final drive shortened slightly to counteract the effect of taller rear tyres. The paddles themselves have a shorter, sharper action.Porsche’s plan for this RS was to create more fresh air between it and the GT3 upon which it is based than has been the case with any other in the dozen years and five generations since Porsche exhumed its most revered acronym and once more applied it to a 911.So alongside all the usual RS modifications, such as a wider front track, Perspex rear screen and rear quarter lights, this RS has been enhanced in many other ways, of which the larger engine is just one.Most telling is the decision to base the RS on the ultra-wide body of the 911 Turbo, making it 28mm wider at the back than the current GT3. But there is also a magnesium roof and carbonfibre front wings to go with its carbonfibre bonnet and bootlid.The result is a car 10kg lighter than the GT3 - a fairly astonishing achievement when you consider the extra weight of the Turbo body and its larger 20in front and 21in rear wheels.As you might imagine, extensive attention has also been foisted on the chassis, where you’ll find different anti-roll bars front and rear, a completely new damper iteration and stiffer rear springs to cope with the vast increase in rear downforce. Interestingly, the front springs are carried over from the GT3, the slight increase in ride height due to the larger wheels which meant a stiffer spring was not required.The Michelin Cup tyres (and optional Dunlops) are a bespoke development for the car, too, but required far less work than expected, largely because they started life on the 918 Spyder.The traction requirements of a rear-drive, rear-engined car relative to a four-wheel-drive, mid-engined car brought changes in compound and construction but nothing dramatic. By contrast, Porsche needed to start again with the electric power steering in order to adapt it to the rigours of the additional downforce and an increase in front-end grip so great it is estimated to increase turn-in speed by up to 20%.But talk to those who did the development work and they will tell you that the seven-league difference between this RS and the standard GT3, not to mention any other road-legal 911 in history, is the aero.For years all 911s emanating from the Motorsports department have offered not merely reduced lift, but genuine downforce. The GT3 RS, however, is a world apart, its new front spoiler generating 110kg of downforce all by itself, while the massive rear wing creates a further 220kg.In total it has triple the downforce of the GT3 or, put another way, more downforce at 124mph than the last GT3 RS could muster at 186mph. Put a third and final way, here is a standard production road car offering 80% of the downforce of the Porsche’s GT3 Cup car.It adds up to a car capable of reaching 62mph in 3.3sec (clipping 0.2sec off the GT3’s time) but topping out at 193mph - 2mph short of the less-powerful GT3 thanks entirely to the additional drag of its aero package.And yes, there is a Nürburgring lap time: 7min 20sec, just two seconds shy of the time managed by the 611bhp GT2 RS, the most powerful street 911 ever built. But in fact the GT3 RS's lap was set on a cold, damp track. Porsche’s own simulations show the car to be capable of a 7min 17sec lap in ideal conditions, which would make it the fastest road-going 911 ever to take to the track.On first acquaintance, not that different to the GT3 and certainly insufficiently distinct to make you ponder the additional £30,000 (that’s a Volkswagen Golf R, lest we forget) Porsche is asking for it over the GT3.Admittedly on smooth German roads it rides uncommonly, even implausibly well, despite the fact there is just one joint left in the suspension that is rubber-bushed – the rest are solid. There seems also to be little if any compromise to refinement, despite its plastic windows.Porsche contends that it is the GT3 that is the everyday car, but if you can live with the looks and reduced ground clearance (for which a front axle lifter can be fitted), there really seems to be no penalty in terms of usability. In this regard the GT3 RS is a very different proposition to the Ferrari 458 Speciale that seems its closest rival in all-bar price. But where’s the gain?If you have any sense of civic responsibility and more than a loosely assembled gathering of brain cells between your ears, opportunities to get past the place the GT3 stops performing and to where the GT3 RS takes over rarely come in public.You notice the torque, but only when you realise this is the first normally aspirated GT Porsche of recent time not to feel dramatically over-geared. I’d still prefer a shorter stack, but it’s no longer an impedance.Less positively, you are also and always aware of the additional width on what might otherwise be regarded as challenging driving roads. That wide body provides not just more grip but also more power though the ram-air induction provided by those side inlets, boosting power at high speeds up to at least 503bhp, but if you want to thread it into a gap between a hedge and a lorry using more than its fair share of road, you might not breathe until you're sure you are past.The steering feels sharper, but so too did that of the Cayman GT4 - so that may just be that Porsche is still finding ways of improving all its EPAS systems. Grip in the dry is in effect limitless.So you need a track, and then the gap between GT3 and GT3 RS is as great as their dramatically different specifications suggest. Perhaps greater. More significantly, the entire focus of the car has changed.In the GT3 the powertrain is the superstar, the engine snarling up to 9000rpm supported by the world’s best two pedal transmission. In the RS they are relegated to supporting roles, the media through which to gain access to what it really does well.Drive it fast around a really challenging track and it behaves precisely as you hoped it might. Grip levels are withering, the steering as good as you could hope anything with electric power steering to be.There’s just a touch of stabilising understeer when you turn into slow corners but it can be cancelled with an imperceptible lift of your right foot. Traction from those sticky Michelins is simply superb, so you can drive it like an old 911: slow in, then load up the outer tyre from the apex and hammer up the straight ahead. Or you can do something else entirely.This is a car with another level, a level beyond that of any 911 I’ve driven - and I don’t just mean grip. It’s a level that lets you drive it another way and, if you’re a bit brave and possess at least passable track skills, access an intensity of driving experience no GT3 has ever imagined, let alone approached.You need to break the rules, which was difficult when all journalists at the launch were banned from turning off the stability systems, but still possible. Instead of being deliberately conservative with your entry speeds and guiding it into the corner, you fling it in on a trailing throttle deliberately too fast, trusting in the tyre, the car’s inherent balance and the agility of its four-wheel steering system to cope.Even with full stability control engaged, the car pivots about its mid-point and flows into oversteer with the throttle still shut. Then you hit the accelerator and use all that torque to keep the car from understeering.You see your hands doing strange things with the wheel because when this car moves, it moves fast. But in that instant when you realise you are driving the GT3 RS not by some long-since-prescribed 911 orthodox but by instinct alone, you are aware too of driving elevated onto a plane few cars wearing number plates have ever reached.This is not an easy car to drive extremely fast and if you’re not going to drive it extremely fast there would seem to be little point in having one. It is a car that will challenge you as a driver and, I have no doubt at all, be not in the least shy about punishing mistakes. A standard GT3 is a far more forgiving car and for many who want that every day ability but don’t need the on-limit nuttiness, it is by far the better choice.But while there remains a small constituency of drivers ready, willing and able to make the effort and happy to get out only what they put in, so they will revel and delight in the experience offered by the GT3 RS on the track. That it will also prove so superbly civilised all the way home is perhaps its most remarkable facet of all.In short, and for anything approaching the money, nothing else even gets close.Porsche 911 GT3 RSPrice £131,296; Engine 6 cyls horizontally opposed, 3996cc, petrol; Power 493bhp at 8250rpm; Torque 339lb ft at 6250rpm; Gearbox 7-spd dual-clutch automatic; Kerb weight 1420kg; Top speed 193mph; 0-62mph 3.3sec; Economy 22.2mpg (combined); CO2/tax band 296g/km, 37%
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