Track-day special enters its third decade in wickedly purposeful Mk7 form

PHOTOGRAPHY LUC LACEY

MODEL TESTED GT3 PDK Price £127,820 Power 503bhp Torque 347lb ft 0-60mph 3.4sec 30-70mph in fourth 7.2sec Fuel economy 20.2mpg CO2emissions 294g/km 70-0mph 40.8 m

T he Porsche 911 GT3 still feels like a recent development in the nearsix-decade history of the sports car on which it’s based. But what a reputation it has carved out for itself since Weissach’s very first, 996-generation GT3 homologation special emerged in 1999.

There might not be a more sought-after performance derivative anywhere else in motordom than this. The GT3 has become the kind of car that dealers get allocated in mere handfuls; that are offered to only the most favoured customers; that are collectable like little else at the price; and to which the normal rules of depreciation, which usually make cars like the GT3 more accessible to the rest of us, hardly seem to apply.

And here comes another one. The new 992-generation GT3 represents a major technical departure for the track-ready 911. Porsche’s GT division describes it as having been “developed closer to motorsport than any other GT3 before it”, and the evidence of exactly what is meant by that, which we’re about to describe in the usual detail, is written all over its bodywork as well as underneath it.

This car has a level of trackdevoted purpose unknown to its predecessors. It’s absolutely no half-measure. Truly specialised and uncompromising, it’s the sort of car that a firm like Porsche might make if it knew that the clock was ticking on hardcore, truly driver- and trackfocused, piston-engined cars of its ilk, and that the good old days had been suddenly numbered.

No statement of such has been made by Porsche, of course. As far as we know, its plans for the GT3 continue indefinitely – and let’s hope they do. But this car has an emphatic, hierarchy-upsetting presence about it. Read on to find out why.

DESIGN AND ENGINEERING

There’s quite a lot more menace to the appearance of the 992-generation 911 GT3 than any of its predecessors had. There’s a certain beauty about the car’s new ‘swan neck’ rear wing but even more visual savagery. For some tastes, there will simply be too much aggressive aerodynamic attitude here than ought to have been wrought on the typically pure surfaces of a fast 911.

Downforce is the reason the car looks the way it does. The rear wing is adjustable through several pitch settings, and even in its mildest factory-default position, it helps this car to develop 50% more downforce than any regular GT3 has had before. Turn it to its steepest setting and put the front splitter at its most aggressive and the car can develop 150% more downforce than its predecessor had when moving at 124mph – nearly 400kg of the stuff.