Thanks to its impressively controlled ride and near-silent powertrain, the Taycan makes for an immensely effective GT car
TESTER’S NOTE
Turbos come with
2 0 i n o r 2 1 i n r i m s , th e
former fitted with a
low-rolling-resistance
tyre worth an extra
nine miles of range. If
you want low-rollers
on your Turbo S,
tough: you can’t. AF
24 AUTOCAR.CO.UK 28 AUGUST 2019
F
or reasons I think I understand,
this story feels different. Every
week, we go some place to drive
some thing, and lucky we are
to do so. But to drive the first all-
electric Porsche – well that, surely,
is different. Different because
Porsche and electricity seem as
natural a fit as fire and ice. Different
because if Porsche really can pull
it off and produce the world’s first
e le c t r ic pr o duc t ion d r i v e r ’s c a r, t he
ramifications could be enormous.
But, for Porsche, perhaps not quite so
e nor mou s i f it c a n not.
Because of the way the media
is micro-managed these days,
e s p e c i a l l y w it h c a r s a s i mp or t a nt
as this, there is still much about thePorsche Taycan I am not allowed
to say, because the car has yet even
to be unveiled. So far as official
information is concerned, all that
exists is what Porsche published
when it revealed the Mission E
concept in 2015, most of which is now
obsolete. So if what follows seems
more speculative than factual, you
could nevertheless conclude that I
know rather more than I’m saying,
because not being specific was a
condition of getting in the car. I shall
therefore leave it to you to decide
how w e l l i n for me d s uc h s p e c u l at ion
might be. In the words of Francis
Urquhart: ‘You might think that.
I couldn’t possibly comment...’
There are, in fact, two Taycans,
at le a s t t h at Por s c he i s ow n i n g up t o.
Actually, there’s certainly a third and
very probably a fourth, but in these
days of top-down launches, theseare less powerful versions that have
yet to be seen or driven, officially or
otherwise. Which leaves us with the
two top cars, widely rumoured to
b e c a l l e d Tu r b o a n d Tu r b o S , i n l i n e
with Porsche’s naming convention.
(I know it seems strange given
neither even has an engine let alone
a turbocharger, but we’ll get used
t o it .) B ot h h av e bat t e r ie s r at e d
above 90kWh and standard power
outputs substantially in excess of
600bhp. The difference (besides the
S having ceramic brakes, a stiffer
set-up, standard four-wheel steering
and 21in wheels clothed in high-
performance tyres) is that while both
will ‘overboost’ for 2.5sec at the time,
the S will do so rather more, raising
its total output to well over 700bhp,
w it h i n e xc e s s of 75 0lb f t.
So while the car is predictably
heavy – think something around
the 2.25-tonne mark – so too is it
blindingly quick. The 0-62mph time
of the Mission E was quoted at 3.2sec,
and I’d expect a Taycan Turbo S to be
as far below the three-second mark as
the E was above it.
When I drove both cars in
prototype form, their interiors were
completely camouf laged but have
since been revealed to feature next-
generation high-definition imaging
that, if you choose the optional
passenger information display,
provides TFT screens almost from
w a l l t o w a l l a c r o s s t he e nt i r e w idt h
of the car. It looks quite intimidating
but, in terms of the admittedly
limited operations I was able to use,
it all works fairly intuitively.