Mystery Porsche 911 Turbo spied testing – a ‘Touring’ or a new Sport Classic?
Porsche isn’t afraid to test different variants of the 911, with some never seeing the light of day. What could this be?
Looking at these images the cynic might be forgiven for thinking ‘that’s just a mule for the new 911 Turbo S missing a few bits’. But look closer and imagine with us for a moment, what this disguised Porsche 911 prototype could be.
First of all, we must reaffirm that this could be a car we never see. Michael Rösler, Porsche 911 model line director, told evo at the reveal event of the new 911 Turbo S that not all prototypes and 911 permutations seen testing will make production reality and that some are simply experimentation. So whatever this is, it may never appear.
For now though, let’s assess what we can actually see. It’s got the width, face and bottom of the new 992.2 911 Turbo S but it’s lacking two other major modern 911 Turbo identifiers: the Turbo wing (we can see a Carrera’s active item here, albeit fixed at full height) and air intakes on the rear haunches. Some are as a result of the missing wing calling this a 911 Turbo ‘Touring’.
In the pantheon of past models, this most closely correlates with the 992 Sport Classic, which combined a base 911 Turbo engine and body-in-white with a manual transmission and rear-wheel drive. If this prototype is using the T-hybrid powertrain, a manual is off the cards – the two simply do not mesh in terms of packaging.
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If it retains a version of the old 3.7-litre twin-turbo flat-six, sans-hybridity, it could well be a ‘new’ Sport Classic. Either way, PDK or manual, there could be room in the current lineup for a more driver-focused rear-driven variant of the 911 Turbo.
Especially if the 992.2 isn’t to get a base 911 Turbo below the already revealed Turbo S, as some have speculated. The split between 911 Turbo and Turbo S sales was so weighted towards the latter over the 991 and 992 generations that changing things up a bit for the ‘lesser’ Turbo could be warranted.
There’s precedent for mixing powertrains too. In the Carrera lineup, only the flagship GTS gets the 3.6-litre hybrid motor, with the Carrera and Carrera S getting versions of the old twin-turbo 3-litre engine with beefed up 992.1 GTS hardware.
So this lesser 992.2 Turbo variant could, for instance, pack a version of the old 3.7-litre engine. The mill from the last Turbo S produced 641bhp, a number that would slot nicely between the 701bhp of the new T-hybrid Turbo S and the 534bhp of the current 911 GTS T-hybrid.
Whatever it is, if it is to make production, we’ll see it some time between now and 2029, when the 992.2 911 is set to make way for the all-new, next generation of 911. Hotly anticipated that model is too, as if we base our assumptions on past precedent, it’ll be the biggest change to the 911 since 2011’s introduction of the 991.
