Road Test: Porsche 911 2dr

The Porsche 911 has now been with us for some 30 years, and as the fifth series continues its predictable evolution, there are few surprises. The standard coupe was followed by the cabriolet; now there is the four-wheel-drive Carrera 4, and in the future there will doubtless be a Targa, then a Turbo, before the sixth series will start the whole process all over again.

Of course I'm not complaining because, having been a critic of the wayward beasts of the '70s, I'm an ardent fan of the modern, solid-handling versions which have superb performance, great driver involvement and perhaps the best brakes in the business. For long distance grand touring, the Porsche is a pearl.

But as the range widens, how do you decide whether to pay £64,650 for the basic Coupe, or splash out an extra £13,300 for the Carrera 4 Cabriolet Tiptronic S? For me, the first two decisions are easy: I'll leave the open top and nancy automatic 'box for the inner city poseurs and save myself a full ten thousand. But do I splash out the extra three grand for four-wheel drive?

Maybe now that the rear-wheel-drive version handles so well it's hardly worth it. Or is it? There's more to this new model than meets the eye...In fact very few differences meet the eye, apart from Carrera 4 badges on the boot and door sills, plus titanium coloured brake calipers and special wheels (not fitted to our test car).

The four-wheel-drive system is more or less the same as the previous series'. It's been redesigned and repackaged, but Porsche still uses a viscous coupling to transfer between five and 40 per cent of the torque to the front wheels.The main difference is that the coupling is now at the front of the car, which has allowed the Tiptronic option to be added to the four-wheel-drive system for the first time, and the whole package only adds 55 kilos to the car's weight - which in manual form still claims the same 0-62mph time of 5.2 seconds, and top speed of 175mph, as the standard Carrera.

The big news, though, comes courtesy of a little button just to the right of the steering wheel. Instead of being labelled with the letters TC - for those that have paid the extra grand to have the Traction Control option - it says PSM. This stands for Porsche Stability Management and moves driver aids into a whole new area. For the first time on a road car, we have the sort of system that was most recently banned from the Grand Prix designer's list of options - individual wheel braking to automatically correct a sliding car.

Of course you've still got ABS anti-lock brakes, ASR anti-spin electronic differential and ABD automatic brake differential, which varies the balance front to rear, but now, with theintroduction of the 'E-gas' fly-by-wire throttle pedal, Porsche has been able to marry up all these individual systems with sensors for yaw, wheel speed,lateral acceleration and steering input to produce this advanced driver aid.On dry tarmac traction is so good, even with the rear-wheel-drive 911, that this new aid is rarely needed, and even on a wet road the ASR and ABD will sort out most of your problems. But now, if it all goes a bit too far and you go way too hard into a corner, creating understeer that starts to push the front wide, the PSM will apply braking to the inside rear wheel only and pull the car into a tighter line.

If you attack like an aggressive lunatic and get the rear end to break away, then the PSM will use the outside front wheel to help rescue the situation. Nothing is guaranteed, of course - there is still a finite limit to the amount of grip your four tyres can supply - but the front brake will pull the car straighter and hopefully salvage your situation. Of course Porsche still

provides the little button to switch it all off if you want to push the car right to the limit, for instance on a race track, or if you want to leave it to your own natural reactions to sort out any unexpected emergency on the roads.

On a tight mountain hairpin still damp from early morning rain, with the PSR having a lie-in, I was able to kick the back end out with brutal application of the throttle in first gear, a solid dose of opposite lock holding it there in a pukka powerslide. With PSR engaged, identical treatment caused shudders of activity beneath me, but the car held a perfectly neutral line.

Of course it still interrupts the smoothness of your driving, but no more so than standard traction control. It's perhaps most impressive during the sort of sudden change of direction you might encounter in an emergency, which so often starts the tail sliding wide, but here the PSR grabs hold of your outside front wheel and tries to help steer you to safety.

PSR isn't designed to enable you to drive faster, but more to help get you out of a situation you never intended to be in. Even when you've switched it off for some high-speed circuit driving, if you get in a mess and hit the brakes while the car is sliding, it will reactivate to see if it can help you out of thesituation, then switch itself off again once you've got in back in shape.

My purist breeding - and basic meanness - would probably see me ending up with a standard Coupe, but if you're the type who would hedge their bets and add traction control for an extra £1,000, you might as well go the whole way for another £2,000. Then you'll be able to spend hours boring your mates with all yourhigh-tech kit - which, more importantly, might well mean the difference between having a 'moment' and having an accident sometime in the future

Tiff Needell