2023 Porsche 911 Sport Classic (992) | UK Review
The hugely costly Sport Classic has taken its sweet time to arrive. Is it quite as tasty as we remember?
Pity the sports car manufacturer that doesn’t have a storied history to reference or a lineup extensive enough (or indeed a customer base keen enough) to provide it with margin-inflating opportunities like the Sport Classic. The 997 version (remember the double bubble and the ducktail and the C4S body on what was effectively a lighter, Powerkit’d Carrera 2S?) taught Porsche that its buyers were prepared to pay through the nose for cleverly packaged nostalgia. And that was back in 2009, when people didn’t really have much to be nostalgic about. These days, people reminisce about 2015 like it was the summer of love. No wonder the second Heritage Design 911 sold out before anyone could say ‘houndstooth’.
The 992 Sport Classic has taken quite a while to appear in the UK. John attended the international launch in Germany all the way back in July last year. You can blame assorted (familiar, global) delays and shortages for that, alongside whatever specific palaver Brexit requires on top. But it’s here now, in all its exclusive glory. How excited should you be? Well, without driving the thing, possibly not very. The Sport Grey Metallic (other colours are available) is a weirdly incognito choice for a model that also features gold lettering, and I can't be the only one who thinks the 992 doesn’t wear its Fuchs-style wheels as well as previous generations did. Even the ducktail seems a tiny bit perfunctory.
For an Exclusive Manufaktur product, then - not a division typically preoccupied with subtlety - it doesn’t loudly proclaim its status. Certainly not for a 911 that comes with the option of roundels and stick-on numbers, and necessitates a watch purchase at the point of sale. Even its genuinely natty features, like the double-bubble roof and the bonnet that mimics it (both in carbon fibre) are so understated they will need to be pointed out to anyone not already registered as a Porsche aficionado. Obviously the same cannot be said for the interior, which, in contrast, practically runs amok with wood and cloth and leather and phosphorous green (for the rev counter) and yet more gold (for the obligatory plaque).
All of this is of unimpeachable quality, of course - though you may still feel like you can take it or leave it. John evidently settled into it like Philip Green on the back of a superyacht. Being more of a Robson-Green-in-a-dinghy sort, I thought it a bit much. Happily, that has no bearing whatsoever on the real star of the show - the manual gearbox - and its unlikely pairing with a 550hp variant of the 3.8-litre twin-turbocharged flat-six normally found doing stimulating things to your internal organs in the 992 Turbo.
There has been much discussion about the ‘detuned’ status of the engine - it has also shed 110lb ft of torque - although it would be much fairer to call it ‘retuned’ for its new setting. And not just because the Sport Classic dispenses with the Turbo's front driveshafts, but because Porsche has opted for a conspicuously different sort of power delivery. The wham-bam abruptness of the Turbo has given way to something more drawn-out and considered; it does mean that not much happens in high gear under 3,000rpm - yet beyond that, especially in the shorter cogs, it is as escalatory as a fight in a kebab shop.
Sure, it doesn’t have the rawness or the come-hither crescendo of the GT3’s 4.0-litre NA motor, but the afterburner-like arrival of so much mid-range shove gives the Sport Classic an identity all of its own - and because you’re now plumbed into proceedings like a seated furnace stoker, you tend to work the gearbox through second and third like you would a Toyota GR Yaris. Which is to say compulsively and with a silly look on your face.
As you can imagine, this makes it, mainly by default, the most engaging 911 Turbo of recent memory. But there’s more, besides. Likely conscious that most buyers will already own a 992 GT3 (among numerous other flavours of 911, no doubt) Porsche has endeavoured to find a third way with the new car’s chassis settings. Comparatively speaking, the Sport Classic is pliant to the point of marshmallowy. So much so, and unusually for a 992, there are often moments when it needs an additional half second to settle if you put it through the wringer of a particularly uneven B road.
The pay-off, though, is that rare thing: a four-seat (sort of) super-GT that doesn’t encourage nonchalance or risk detachment. Because while it sacrifices the clarity of feedback that even a GTS would generate as a matter of course, the Sport Classic replaces it with something softer-edged and easier to work with - yet welded to the whoosh-frenzy of a sleeping giant. One heavy prod is all you need to turn a frown upside down.
At 1,570kg in its stocking feet, and with those 992 Turbo dimensions (un)comfortably filling a lane, it isn’t necessarily the most wieldy 911 - and the seven-speed transmission isn’t a rival for the wonderful mechanical precision of the six-speed manual which remains the preserve of Porsche’s GT cars - but, as John highlighted in Germany, there’s undeniably something of the Black Forest gateau about the Sport Classic. For every moment where it seems less thrilling than a GT3 or much more 911 than you really need, there are another two where it is delivering three tiers of indulgence.
Being rear-wheel drive feeds into that sensation, although it must be said that on a very warm day (surely the only backdrop a pampered 911 will ever encounter) the 315-section rear tyres find so much traction that it’s less of a factor than you might think. Granted, 550hp is sufficient to overcome all that P-Zero tenacity if you insist, but you tend to find yourself appreciating the newfound daintiness of the front end rather than revelling in a suddenly emancipated back axle. And on the basis of how Porsche has chosen to plot the engine map, you’d imagine this is very much by design.
Pretty much everything about the Sport Classic feels by design, and the car is nothing if not a testament to its maker’s knack for engineering into the margins. If there is anything particularly frustrating about the special edition model - beyond, perhaps, the modesty of its weight-saving - it is that it is sufficiently likeable for you to question Porsche’s insistence that it be made available to just 1,250 buyers globally. The manufacturer is famously reluctant to tamper with the 911 Turbo’s status as its foremost (non-Motorsport) sports car, but had it simply chosen to launch a rear-drive, manual derivative, it might have found itself with a 992 cult classic for the ages. As it is, the Sport Classic is likely to find itself eventually relegated to the status of a £214k footnote in the firm’s chronicles. Fine if you’ve secured one, then; maddeningly superfluous if you haven’t.
Specification | Porsche 911 Sport Classic (992)
Engine: 3,745cc, flat-six, twin-turbo
Transmission: Seven-speed manual, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 550 @ 6,750rpm
Torque (lb ft): 443 @ 2,000-6,000rpm
0-62mph: 4.1 seconds
Top speed: 196mph
Weight: 1,570kg (DIN)
MPG: 22.4 (WLTP)
CO2: 285g/km (WLTP)
Price: £214,200
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