I can remember when I first drove the 911S/T. My diary tells me it was July 21st last year. In the story I subsequently penned I wrote: ‘As the recreation it so clearly is and for those who really understand driving, the S/T is untouchable. Inviolate. Extraordinary. In the fantasy automotive aircraft hangar in my garden, the S/T would have pride of place, first in the queue by the door, just waiting for the right time and weather to get out there and let rip.’
And when I say such things, I do so with infinite care because I know from experience how quickly ill-judged hyperbole can about face and bite you on the behind when least expected. Yet as I sought to reassure people in the weeks and months to come that it was indeed as good as I’d said it was, it did give me cause to reflect a little. And wonder. Untouchable? Really? By any comparable street car made today for sure. But of them all?
Indeed it was during a discussion with Dan on this very point that we realised that not only was there a way of finding out, not only would the result be the modern 911 test to end them all, but also and so far as we were and remain aware, no one else had done it. In that moment, we knew we simply had to. Because the S/T was not the only limited edition, water-cooled 911 to have been proclaimed to be the greatest, for two had come before: the 997-era GT3 RS 4.0 and 991-series 911 R. We knew Porsche had the S/T and by immense good fortune, we knew someone who had unimprovable, right-hand drive examples of the other two. And yes, he’d be more than happy to bring them along.
