Fast and furious the Porsche way
911 turbo
KATUKURUNDA: My teammates are all talking about how great it feels to go from 0 to 100 kilometres in three seconds. I have no option but to grit my teeth and floor the accelerator when it comes to my turn. The 911 Turbo is a beast. I can feel all the 540-horsepower on tap surging through as the sleek machine responds. So this is how it feels to be Fast and Furious. The thought flits through my mind as the Porsche all-wheel drive supercar hurtles down the track at the Air Force base which is a well-known spot for racing. There is around 600 metres of track and I brake hard as the end rushes up faster than a wife figuring how to spend it.
Forget the rush about going from 0-100 in less than three seconds. The best thing about this German marque is that it can also stop in a heartbeat. Yet, I brake well before the spot the experts and the instructor at my side would have done. I would have failed a Fast and Furious screen test for I lost my nerve The 911 Turbo’s 3.8-litre petrol engine comes with 523 pound-feet of torque and has a top speed of 320 kilometres per hour. I would have touched around 140K in that brief moment. That surge of adrenaline is enough to sustain me throughout the rest of the Porsche Driving Experience last Saturday.
“The 911 Turbo has an amazing take-off. It just felt like a plane,” gushes Shehara Jayawardena, one of my teammates. She should know for Shehara is a racing car driver who has taken part in countless races in this country as well as in India and Malaysia. There are four of us in Team Red – the other two are Adrian Jayesingha, managing director of a company that manufactures fire alarms and firefighting equipment, and Asela Wasala, director of a real estate conglomerate. My teammates all have a common denominator – they all own Porsches (I’m the odd one out) and have come to experience the sheer thrill of driving one of these machines on a race track.
Adrian Jayesingha
Unique driving experience
Porsche and its local agents Eurocars (Pvt) Ltd have put on this driving experience for its clientele as well as any other interested parties. The cost of driving the nine cars – the 911 Turbo being seen for the first time in Sri Lanka – is Rs. 50,000 (30K for Porsche owners). The four days (September 17-18 and October 8-9 too) are sold out. There are three other teams apart from Red last Saturday. “This is out of the ordinary,” says Adrian, the firefighting man, who owns two Porsches, a Cayenne SUV and a Boxster. “The 911s acceleration is faster than a jet aircraft taking off. Maybe I might buy a 911 sometime in the future.”
“It has to be a Porsche, nothing else. The reason is they are very reliable. You can drive very safely at a very high speed but at the same time it is a family vehicle. The 911 could be driven on the track and at the same time it could be driven to the supermarket,” adds life-long fan Adrian. The 911 Turbo road rocket comes with a price tag of Rs. 80 million. Six of the nine cars on show have been flown down from Germany. Apart from the 911 Turbo, there is a 911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet, a Cayman GTS, a Macan GTS, a Cayenne GTS and a Panamera GTS. The total cost of all these cars is more than Rs.330 million.
“These cars have been going on an Asian tour.
Their last stop before coming here was Mongolia,” reveals Ravi Opatha, Porsche general manager. “We are trying to give car lovers the experience. This is the first time the 911 Turbo has been in Sri Lanka. It is a special car and in its category, it has no competition in this country.” Undoubtedly the star of the show is the Turbo. Everything is custom-made, down to its Pirelli tyres, each of them costing more than Rs.500,000 making ownership a preserve of the rich and famous only. We move on to the next part of the driving experience, cornering. We are driving the Panamera GTS. I am thankful for the superior grip of the tyres, as we take the corners with my Malaysian instructor Faidzil Alang reminding me to get as close to the apex (the corner) when taking the bend. With the six German cars all being left-hand drives, it takes a little bit of getting used to.
Then we move on to the slalom course using two cars, the Cayman GTS and a Boxster, one of the three local cars on show which thankfully is a right-hand drive. I cruise through the slalom course with words of praise ringing from the instructor at my smooth cornering. But my ego is soon deflated for Shehara has finished five seconds faster than me. Fast? Forget it. Furious? A tad. Asela the realtor comes top of the class from Team Red. I console myself that as he is an owner of two Porsches that it is almost second nature to him. “It is a rare opportunity to drive a high-performance car. As a car enthusiast, it was one I couldn’t miss,” adds Shehara.