Porsche driver Patrick Long (right) waits as the Taycan has its tires swapped
and is festooned with cameras and antennas for our impromptu lapping.At speed on Auto Club (California)
Speedway’s infield road course.torque hit nearly put the fledgling auto-
maker out of business.
I’ll save the details of our dragstrip test
for Chris Walton (see page 62). My impres-
sions from the sideline: The Taycan sits
eerily silent, like the first atom bomb at
T-minus one before detonating at Trinity.
Walton abruptly releases the brake. The
tires are clearly spasming with incip-
ient wheelspin as the car disappears—
shrinking, shrinking, puff ... gone.
On to the figure eight. The Porsche
engineer said I might be better off with
stability and traction control left on, but
I thumbed the button on the instrument
display’s right side anyway to defeat it.
The Model S’ system can’t be deactivated;
the Model 3’s Track mode behaves exactly
the opposite—it’s almost monkey-dance
exuberant. I was curious to feel the
Porsche’s naked, unembellished handling.
At 81 mph, I spot my secret crack in the
asphalt (shh) and stab the brake pedal. Itfeels a little soft (it’s a by-wire system), but
this is a 5,109-pound car—that’s seven baby
grand pianos—that Walton already proved
can be halted in 103 feet from 60 mph. Its
16.5-inch front and 16.1-inch rear carbon-
ceramic discs are automobiledom’s version
of an aircraft carrier’s arrester wires.
As I enter the turn, despite the Taycan’s
nicely balanced weight distribution, a
quick steering twist warps the tires’ side-
walls into 1.02 g ’s of seven-piano under-
steer. Exiting, it walks the tail around at a
very sassy angle.
Before we delve into the Taycan’s inner
self, here’s a potpourri of overall obser-
vations. Numerology: It’s 98 percent of
a Panamera GTS’ length but 109 percent
of its weight, yet it already hits 60 mph in
the time it takes the Panamera to reach- I think the Taycan’s design tilts too
understated for a 2.4-second car with the
legendary “Turbo S” on its rump. And
the battery pack is impressively large (93
kW-hr), giving what it sacrifices to provide
holes for the rear passengers’ feet.
Then there’s the synthesized drivetrain
sound, a techno mix of the motor’s actual
soundprint. In Sport mode it’s the whoosh
of a high-speed elevator headed for the
77th floor; switch to Sport+, and you’ll
check the mirror for Lord Voldemort.
Let’s check the surprising list of
ergonomic quirks: The shifter toggle is
perfectly hidden by the steering wheel rim.
The side mirror controls are more easily
reached by a rear passenger; the critical
rear glass is an oblong porthole, and the
panoramic roof provides a vista of clouds
and birds and whatever else is up there you
shouldn’t be looking at.
As our exclusive day of Taycan testing
wound down, the Porsche PR rep asked,
“Oh, I forgot to mention that we have the
infield road course rented. Patrick Long is
available for rides. Interested?”
He might as well have asked if we wanted
to reverse global warming.
In a few short minutes, I twisted toward
Long from the passenger seat as he accel-
erated flat-out—I barely had time to shout
greetings to the incongruently free-spirited58 MOTORTREND.COM MAY 2020
FIRST TEST/TRACK TEST