Article #1 Porsche 911 Handling

When my wife and I first drove our new 911 Carrera T last December that ride reminded us of the VW Beetle we were so familiar with way back in the early 70s. I wasn’t expecting that at all and was surprised at how a sophisticated, high performance sports car with sixty years of development still possesses traces of the Beetle, the car the very first Porsche was based on. 

Drivers have been graced with eight generations of 911s, the 356 before it and the oldest grand dad of them all, the VW Beetle. That makes for ten generations of cars. You would think that by now no traces of the original would still be lingering in a 2024 911. 

I have to believe that there is a Beetle hidden away somewhere in there due to the rear engine layout which Porsche introduced with the initial VW. While every other manufacturer abandoned the very idea of aft engine placement in their sports cars a long time ago, Porsche has stuck with it while perfecting the concept as it has increased the model’s power and capabilities with every design iteration. During the six decades of 911 development, Porsche has on the one hand capitalized on the advantages of this unusual layout while progressively taming its disadvantages. 

Since the dawn of time, 911 enthusiasts have raved about the 911 driving experience, which is supposed to be unique. I think they are right, it really is unique and seems to relate in large part to the placement of the engine at the rear of the vehicle. It seems to effect everything else, from the suspension, to the steering, even the layout of the whole car. I was immediately able to detect something special through the first drive of my new 911. The two primary strengths of this layout that jumped out are power delivery and braking – and they are remarkable. 

 

Power Delivery: With the engine, or a significant part of it, hanging behind the rear axle and the weight of the transmission attached directly to that rear biased power plant, when the car accelerates the center of gravity 

naturally moves back. Along with all that weight back there the rear engine creates significantly more traction than vehicles with front-engine and rear-wheel drive configurations. 

While this characteristic is also present in mid-engine configurations, the advantage is diminished. While these cars tend to deliver excellent balance and stability while in motion, they don’t push down on the rear tires as much as the rear engine setup which gives the impression that the rear wheels are glued to the road. 

 

Braking: Porsche 911s have always been known for their exceptional breaking abilities. While 911 brakes are like every other component you find in this car, they are of high quality and well finished, you can’t say they are big. I owned a F87 BMW M2 with 15.7 inch rotors in the front peering out of 19 inch wheels. My Porsche 911 Carrera T has 13 inch brakes both front and back. They are attached to 20 and 21 inch wheels. They don’t look small but they don’t look like they are terribly effective on a car that can achieve such high speeds. 

It turns out the T has stopping abilities that are very close to those of the Lamborghini Huracan, a vehicle that associates with sports cars in a whole other price and performance category. The 911 is light in today’s world of cars packing heavy items such as electrically controlled everything, multiple airbags, information technology and all its accompanying hardware, wiring and sensors. That lower than average weight must contribute to the 911 T’s stopping power but I suspect there has to be more to it than that. 

A telltale sign is the fitment by the factory of brakes with identical diameters on all four wheels. Even mid-engine vehicles are typically fitted with larger forward brakes. As with acceleration where the 911’s rear weight bias assists with traction, the reciprocal effect appears to assist in braking. As the car decelerates its rear weight moves forward towards the center of the car allowing all four wheels to share the braking forces in a reasonably equal manner. The center of gravity of a front-engine car shifts so far forward that the rear of the vehicle tends to lift, reducing traction and rendering the rear brakes useless in hard braking situations. Hence, those sizable front brakes in on the M2. I remember owning front wheel drive hatchbacks in the 1980s that managed with disk brakes in the front and tiny drums in the back. The VW Rabbit GTI (Mark 1) and the Mitsubishi Colt Turbo are two that I owned that come to mind. The front rotors did all the work on those cars. 

It’s fascinating how there are significant advantages to the rear engine layout despite its epic flaw, a tendency to produce tail happy handling, a characteristic deeply embedded within automotive lore. I suspect unpredictable understeer was not much of an issue when Ferdinand Porsche and his associates were developing the modestly powered VW in pre World War II Germany. During the late 1940s and early 1950s when he and his son Ferry where refining the more powerful 356, they did not abandon the rear engine concept. I would like to think they recognized its particular attributes in a world dominated by front-engine sports cars.

 

Although grip is a major advantage, the rear engine configuration results in others. Here are a few that I observed immediately when driving the 911:

 

Power Response: In the esoteric world of the Porsche Faithful there is a saying that there is Horsepower and then there is Porsche Power. In other words, Porsches (911s in particular) feel more powerful than their published figures. Debate continues as to whether Porsche downplays it’s horsepower figures but there is no debate as to whether they feel more powerful than most cars claiming similar power output. Certainly engine wizardry is involved; after all, Zuffenhausen has been using race engine features in its production powerplants for more than half a century so we can expect something special with these units. I believe that in addition to these race inspired engines, the placement of the transmission, aligned directly with the rear wheel axle, allows for a much more direct power transfer to the wheels than cars requiring long shafts leading to a standalone differential. Even if minimal power loss is incurred through propeller shafts, torsional losses along the way create less immediate power delivery than the 911’s rear engine layout where power transfer is uninterrupted. 

It should be noted that mid-engine cars also enjoy this advantage. While the 911 transmission placement relative the engine is ahead, the transmission in a mid-engine arrangement is behind the powerplant. They both deliver the power directly to the drive shafts. Again I think both layouts are not completely equal. The power delivery effect is likely to be more pronounced with the rear engine pushing down on the rear wheels. 

 

Steering Response: With all that rear weight bias it is likely that the 911’s front axle traction would be quite light. My first impression of the new 911 is that the steering feel is precise but quite unlike anything else I have driven. I suspect its weight distribution sends out entirely different messages than a car with the weight of an engine and all its attending paraphernalia right above the steerable wheels. 

I need more time with the car in various situations to articulate this much more effectively. I am quite certain though that engine placement is a significant contributor to the 911’s particular steering feel. 

 

After just a few hours of driving my Carrera T before storing it for the winter months I already realized how unique the 911 is. It truly is a wonder of automotive engineering that after seventy-five years of development Porsche has created an incredibly sophisticated and refined sports car that leaves you awestruck, yet underneath all that power and competence it still manages to evoke the spirit of the VW Beetle.