SPEC CHECK
Porsche 2010 911 Turbo Coupe
Price: $132,800
Engine: 3.8-liter flat six
Torque: 516 lb.-ft. at 5,000 rpm
Horsepower: 500
0–60: 3.2 seconds
When I e-mail my gearhead pal Jason to tell him I’m test-driving a 2010 911 Turbo Coupe, this is the terse reply I receive: “New ones are sick but way too automated. I want a real sports car.” Dude is still surly because he recently wrapped his notoriously tough-to-pilot ’86 911 Turbo around a tree. But I catch his drift: If you get your kicks reining in wild road beasts, the new Porsche flagship isn’t for you. It’s just too damn easy. Now 36 years in production, the rear-engine design’s kinks and quirks have been ironed out with digital smarts. On my two-day joyride over rain-soaked Portuguese roads, the seven-speed floppy-paddle auto gearbox made calling up the revs instant and effortless; an idiotproof launch-control program produced simple three-second jaunts to 60 mph, and tech tweaks like torque vectoring allowed me to careen inches away from rocky coastal walls with zero drama. So all that digital stuff my buddy hates? It made this driver feel like Jimmie Johnson out there. And it might have helped Jason keep his 911 on the road, too—if only they had this stuff in 1986.