As we left our offices in Newport Beach, California, for a road trip with our three high-performance 911s, Managing Editor Andrew Bornhop said to me: “Well, this is kind of cool. I just got a press release from Porsche that says Butzi Porsche, who designed the original 911, is celebrating his 75th birthday this Saturday.”
Nice coincidence, and a reminder that, while time marches on for us humans, the 911 seems to stay eternally youthful. It was unveiled nearly half a century ago, yet remains—for all its six generations of development—an instantly recognizable and timeless shape that still looks terrific.
There have been so many variants of the 911 built over the years you’d have to be a dedicated Porschephile indeed to keep track of them all, and these latest three in the 997 series have their own unique DNA to unravel and define. But it had to be done, so we spent two days driving over Southern California’s Coastal Range and the Anza Borrego desert, with a nice twisty climb to the famed Mt. Palomar Observatory. Then it was off to the drag strip and skidpad to see how Butzi’s evergreen concept is holding up. Here’s what we found.
