Test Report on the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT 2024

If the default Porsche Taycan If the area isn’t hardcore enough for you, the Germans now have a new solution on offer 2024 Porsche Taycan Turbo GT.

This is probably a car that no one asked for, but most will want it after a short drive. This happens when the order given to the engineers is: “It should happen as quickly as possible.”

It will lap the world-famous Laguna Seca race track faster than a brand new 992 generation 911 GT3 RS. It can lap the 20.8km Nürburgring Nordschleife in just 7 minutes and 55 seconds, making it 26 seconds faster than the previous Taycan Turbo S, 2.5 seconds faster than the Tesla Model S Plaid and, most impressively, only about 3.0 seconds slower than the all-electric car record held by the $3.5 million Rimac Nevara hypercar.

That’s a very complicated way to tell you Fuck quick – if you want to know what this really feels like, check out the video below.

We hear car companies talk endlessly about cost efficiency, economies of scale and all those buzzwords that excite accountants, but the Turbo GT is the opposite of all that.

It’s a car that actually wanted to be a two-door long coupe, but the accountants said no. So the engineers said, “That’s fine, let’s just remove the back seats!” And although everyone thought it was a joke, they actually did it.

That’s right, the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT can be equipped with this (for free!) Weissach package that adds a fixed wing and more carbon and loses the two rear seats.

This would have to be the world’s first electric four-door two-seater and – frankly – that makes absolutely no sense. That’s why we love it.

In an ideal world, Porsche would have redesigned the chassis into a two-door and that would have been instantly iconic, but the cost of retooling and retesting the vehicle for such a small, niche customer base made that impossible.

If you’re thinking about this car from the perspective of it becoming a practical everyday driver or whatever you want to tell yourself to justify the $416,600 price tag (think more like $500,000 with a few options and road costs), then you are looking at it wrong.

This is a car that fits in with a collection of other cars. It’s the kind of car people buy so they can walk into their garage and tell a friend, “Go ahead, open the back doors.”

It’s also the kind of car that can teach you a lot about physics. While it still weighs 2234 kg (with With the Weissach package it is so incredibly fast that it can reach 100 km/h just as quickly as a modern Formula 1 car.

To achieve the extra milliseconds of speed, Porsche had the option of making the battery a little smaller… or removing a whole bunch of things to reduce the weight by around 70kg.

Given that developing a dedicated battery just for the Turbo GT would have caused the accountants to kill the project and was therefore out of the question, opting for the Weissach package not only takes into account the aforementioned rear seats, but also the analog clock and the floor mats left out (available as a free option), Bose sound system and electrically opening charging port.

Basically, Porsche does a whole bunch of things for you and – mercifully – doesn’t charge you for it. The power and torque figures remain unchanged between the standard and Weissach versions of the Taycan.

The range of the lighter model is slightly better at 538-555 km, compared to 528-554 km for the more practical four-seater version. In our standard Taycan test report you can find out what measures Porsche has taken to improve battery cooling and charging capacity.

That being said, the Turbo GT is best experienced from the driver’s seat on a long stretch of road or track. Porsche took us to a race track on the outskirts of Seville, Spain, where we made the car sick with endless laps and acceleration runs.

It’s one thing to tell you it can do 0-100km/h in 2.2 seconds, but it’s another thing feel It. Then it’s completely absurd to accelerate to 200 km/h in 6.4 seconds (you have to watch the video above).

When we timed our run on video, it was actually faster than advertised, reaching 200 km/h (which is pretty typical for Porsche). This makes it faster from 0-100km/h and from 0-200km/h than the Ferrari SF90, which is probably the fastest modern supercar in the world – to achieve these acceleration figures you have to venture into hypercar territory.

Compared to a Bugatti Chiron, the Taycan Turbo GT with Weissach package is 0.1 seconds quicker to 100 km/h, but about a second slower to 200 km/h. While we doubt both Bugatti and Porsche’s official numbers in this case (in the opposite sense), let’s just say: watch this space, because we might just have to put this case to the test.

The problem with the Taycan is no longer the performance, but the traction. That’s why Pirelli has developed the Trofeo RS, a tire specifically for the Taycan Turbo GT. This is similar to a qualifying tire, but the Italian tire manufacturer claims it will last much longer than tires of similar specification – think Michelin Cup 2R. Given the abuse we’ve put it through and how well it’s held up, it’s hard to disagree.

It cannot be emphasized enough that this is not a vehicle that will be driven daily. It needs to be treated with the same attitude as a GT3 RS, both in terms of its performance and its impracticality. If you want to get these insane performance numbers, you need to be prepared.

On the track we were anxiously surprised at how much speed the car was able to achieve in the middle of the corner. It doesn’t inspire anywhere near the confidence you get from the brand’s other track GT cars, but somehow it still lasts a lifetime. This explains why it can be faster than a GT3 RS on some tracks.

We pushed, and we pushed some more, and the tires kept screeching, but they held. When the steering wheel begins to relax, the way it increases speed is actually unnatural. It starts to feel unbelievable and you can get unstuck pretty quickly if you don’t keep an eye on the speedometer.

That being said, this Taycan needs some additional sensory input to make the experience feel right. Like the standard Taycan, the Turbo GT – more than the lower variants – needs a performance sound to understand how quickly things are happening.

There is literally no audible representation of speed, and one second you’re coming out of a corner at 80km/h and the next you’re braking at 200km/h to enter the next one. We really believe that additional layers of sensory input indicating its incredible performance would really enhance the driving experience.

Nonetheless, you’ll eventually get used to your new reality of insane speed, uncanny cornering ability and unrelenting reliability – which we can certainly attest to by completing dozens of laps after laps without recharging or cooling down.

There’s definitely a world out there where track warriors will start to outshine these internal combustion engines; And even if they are initially driven away with pitchforks, the faster they move, the more they will win over the die-hards.

In some ways, it’s easier for the average person to drive the Taycan Turbo GT quickly than an equivalent performance car with a real internal combustion engine.

The loss of momentum is so small (given the speed of the electric motors) that you can change your lines more safely by taking less corner speed and then placing much more emphasis on exit speed.

There’s so much to explore with the Turbo GT that we’re looking forward to driving it on Australian roads when it launches later this year.

However, if you’ve been waiting to buy a powerful electric vehicle to join your stable of fossil fuel-burning (lovable) dinosaurs, there’s no other option in this price range – this is it… and it’s actually excellent.

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