On suburban roads, the ride is firm but there is enough suspension travel to keep things relatively comfortable. We did manage to find one road surface that made the Carrera GT unhappy, but even here, the tremendous structural rigidity, said to be in the order of 26,000Nm/degree of twist, showed up as a rock solid structure with no steering tremble. You just have to be aware that any car with big wide tyres and low ground clearance has its limitations. Steep driveway ramps are a definite no-no as the ride height is fixed.
Tooling along in the warm sunshine down the long tree-lined country roads, the Carrera GT is happy cruising at legal speeds. When you want it to wake up and blast past slower traffic though, it really comes alive. Mostly you don’t even need to downshift since there is so much torque on tap, and you can choose the rate at which you pick up the pace.
One of the getting-to-know-you exercises Porsche laid on for us before we took to the road was a slalom course to show off the handling of the car. One thing that was immediately apparent was just how flat and stable the car is when cranked into a turn at speed. The steering is power assisted, but you wouldn’t believe it from the level of feedback and linearity it exhibits. It may not be quite as good as the best unassisted systems like an Elise, but as powered racks go, it is unequalled. Quite heavy at parking speeds, it lightens up considerably once the huge 265/35ZR19 Michelins on 9.5J x 19-inch magnesium alloy front wheels get beyond a fast walking speed.
Jinked around the cones on the slalom, the GT is very neutral with very little understeer, and when you push harder you can feel the rear helping you turn in without threatening to overtake the front. Stability is certainly a strong suit. So long as you don’t deliver a big prod of throttle, the huge 335/30ZR20 Michelins on 12.5J x 20-inch alloys have amazing purchase on the ground in the dry.
We also noticed that the PSM traction control and stability management system allowed a fair amount of slip before reining things in. Walter Rohrl told us that he drives with it on all the time in testing and that he does the same with his road going Turbo. “It is such a good system, you can have a lot of stress-free fun with it on,” he said.
He also gave us each a couple of laps of the handling circuit with the PSM system on and off. The car’s ability to deploy its power with PSM on was staggering. When he turned into second gear corners and nailed the throttle, we could feel the electronics snatching the car back from the edge and balance the car with little loss of momentum.
Then Walter switched the PSM system off and we could see just how much work the electronic brain had been doing. In maximum attack mode, the 612bhp easily overtook mechanical grip coming out of the slower bends and Walter’s World Championship winning skills were called on to keep us pointing forwards. More spectacular, but also much slower. Incidentally, the Carrera GT can pull 1.2g lateral acceleration in a turn.