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Funny thing about the Porsche 911—whether on the street or on the track, it always seems like the “good guy.” Yes, its mechanical configuration is unorthodox, and its owners snooty from time to time, but competing against a reckless Ferrari or headstrong BMW, the 911 is always (if you’ll pardon the non-Teutonic analogy) the Captain America of the bunch—the forthright, unflappable do-gooder in a crowd of capable misfits.

Until this 911.

Car and Driver‘s July 2012 feature story on the 2012 Champion Motorsport 911 Turbo RSR, internally known as the CMSP-38, bills the car as “the coolest 911 ever.” I’d choose a different adjective: Evil.

The price certainly is. Prepare to shell out near-as-makes-no-difference $400K for the privilege of parking one in your garage, on top of which get ready to fork over additional suitcases of Benjamins as track days—the CMSP-38’s natural habitat—consume tires and pricey specialty Porsche bits.

Which isn’t to say the car can’t be driven on the street—it can, and quite pleasantly, but as the C&D article makes clear, the objective performance numbers—640 hp, 0-60 in 2.7—while properly stratospheric, aren’t distinct enough from the plebeian 911 Turbo S’s to warrant the additional cash for bragging rights alone. No, the intent behind Champion Motorsport’s wide body, aero and track-centric modifications is to make those kinds of numbers much more usable. It’s one thing if you’ve got Roger Federer’s “liquid whip” forehand; it’s phenomenal if you can hit that forehand from anywhere on the court. Giving the performance numbers that kind of mobility is what Champion has achieved with the CMSP-38.

And then they decided to offer all that unheard-of performance bandwidth in a wrapper that looks like it would just as soon rip your face off as shake your hand. Behold the duality of the Champion 911 RSR: The German equivalent of the Batmobile; the heart of gold ensconced in a menacing shape; lethal force harnessed in the service of what’s right, in this case going very, very fast around a race track. Evil—controlled.

I’ve already written a bit about the 993 Turbo, but I think it’s time to shine a spotlight on the whole generation.

The last hurrah before the completely redesigned 996 took over in 1999, the ’93-’98 iteration of the classic Porsche 911, better known by its internal model code 993, was the final evolution of a basic platform that had served the Stuttgart automaker since the mid-’60s.

Equipped with a 3.6l version of Porsche’s legendary flat six M46 engine delivering 285 hp, the 993’s relatively low weight of around 3,100 lbs allowed it to scoot to 60 mph in the low 5 second range. The rear suspension was completely redesigned, incorporating a multilink system to give the car much more predictable handling behavior (especially when it came to lift-off oversteer) compared to its 911 predecessors. And the styling was smoothed and rounded, while still retaining the traditional 911 proportions and styling details.

Design-wise, it’s the little things about the 993 that captivate me. The classic 911 profile is present, that shape that shouldn’t look right, yet you can’t turn away from. The visual peak of the car is the top of the windshield, as opposed to the top of the roof in the 996 on, an element that defines the vintage 911. The front windows incorporate an extra pane, an anachronistic detail shared by no other car in the mid-’90s. And there’s something about the way the windshield wiper pivots are located in such proximity that just gets me. I can’t explain it. It’s perfect.

Of course Porsche can slap the “911” nameplate on whatever they want, but as far as I’m concerned, the 993’s successor, the 996, really deserved a separate model number—it was that different from its predecessor. Gone were the classic sewing machine thrum of the air-cooled engine, the distinctive profile and even the jewel-like styling details. In their place, the 996 substituted a more conventional water-cooled mill, a bloated jellybean shape that vaguely resembled the traditional 911 look but was completely devoid of sex appeal, and acres of corporate plastic from the instrument cluster to the engine bay. Slightly faster the 996 may have been, but in the minds of most enthusiasts, including this one, the loss of character over the 993 was a heavy price to pay for the extra capability. No, given the choice, I’ll gladly “put up with” the 993’s vintage quirkiness, even if that means, in the end, I’m driving the slower car.

If the 911 is the quintessential Porsche, and the Singer 911 is the purest expression of that legendary sports car, is this the Mount Everest of Porsches? According to Top Gear‘s recent experience with it, quite possibly.

Tom Ford writes, in the midst of his test drive:

A slight lift, and we’re into pure old Porsche territory, all those familiar dynamic shortcomings bright and clear. Rather than pivot around a metaphysical point near the centre of the car, imagine a solid piton driven just behind the rear seats about which the 911 tries to swivel. If you’re used to relentlessly modern equipment, with refined and restructured dynamics, all the hairy aspects neatly shaved smooth by design and electronics, this will feel odd and old, verging on the cheerfully lethal. But here, right now, it feels like an ice-cold breath of fresh air after time spent in an overheated old people’s home. It feels like life.

It sounds like heaven. In an automotive world of speed appliances, where cars are simultaneously becoming massively powerful and utterly disconnected and foolproof, it’s refreshing to come across an automaker who reworks a classic, bringing it into the modern era in terms of speed, and preserving not only its benign character traits, but also its vices, knowing that those are nearly as critical to the car’s essence as its finer points.

As for the car itself, if you’ve been abreast of the recent trend of taking hallowed silhouettes and re-engineering them with a kind of OCD-fueled, no-holds-barred fanaticism (two examples being Mark Stielow’s ’69 Camaro and the Eagle Speedster), the Singer 911 will be familiar territory. It may carry all the 911’s well-known styling cues, but every body panel save the doors has been replaced with a carbon-fiber equivalent. The engine is a perfectly-crafted 3.8l, naturally-aspirated version of Porsche’s classic flat-6, delivering 425 hp. The suspension, driveline, wheels and interior have similarly familiar overtones, but conceal state-of-the-art engineering underneath. The whole car is an absolute jewel, and from Top Gear‘s description, an exhilarating drive. I’d love to have a few minutes behind the wheel.

The variable-geometry turbocharger (VGT) has many names: Variable-area nozzle turbo (VATN), variable-nozzle turbine (VNT) or variable turbine geometry (VTG), to name a few. The name it’s given depends primarily on the company offering the technology—Holset, Aerodyne, Garrett or Porsche, respectively—but its principle of operation is the same.

Rather than employ a wastegate to vent excess exhaust pressure in order to regulate turbo output, and thus boost level, the VGT uses a ring of movable vanes which encircle the exhaust turbine. A computer- or analog-controlled servo alters the angle of the vanes in response to engine, turbo and driver demands, regulating boost level and turbo response far more quickly and seamlessly than an ordinary wastegate. Boost threshold, turbo lag and many other standard turbo disadvantages are greatly reduced or eliminated altogether, and the device enables the turbo to fulfill the promise of making a smaller, more efficient engine truly feel and act like a larger, more powerful one when called upon, without the low-end lethargy or surges that accompany conventionally-regulated turbo engines.

The VGT’s downsides include, as you might imagine, added complexity, and until recently a lack of durability from the delicate vanes at higher boost levels, when the temperature and pressure of the exhaust gas pouring into the turbine is quite intense indeed. Still, in spite of its complexity over a standard trap door wastegate, there’s still no more straightforward and adoptable alternative method of controlling boost; the VGT doesn’t require engine developers to redesign the entire powerplant to accommodate it—just a few piping changes, sensors and lines of code in the computer.

Among the first production cars to use a VGT was the limited-edition ’89 Shelby CSX-VNT, a breathed-upon Dodge Shadow whose standard 2.2l turbocharged Chrysler K-engine was mildly reworked and fitted with a Garrett VGT. 0-60 time was average for the day, in the mid 6-second range, but the engine’s full 205 ft-lbs of torque were on tap from an impossibly low 2100 rpm all the way through redline, thanks to the turbo’s unique method of regulating boost. Concerns over reliability meant only 500 CSX-VNTs rolled off the production line, and enthusiasts would have to wait another 18 years before another VGT-equipped, gasoline-engine car would appear in the States: The ’07 Porsche 997 Turbo, whose 3.6l, 473-hp flat-six was fitted with a pair of Borg-Warner VGTs. The advantages of the VGT—lack of a wastegate simplifying plumbing in the rear-engined car, and the chassis-settling boon of ultra-linear engine response—made the design a natural and long overdue fit for the 911. Of course, while we wait for more automakers to adopt the technology, aftermarket companies such as Aerocharger and Holset have been faithful to offer kits and turbo upgrades to tuner shops and ambitious DIYers.

Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series spotlighting obscure automotive engineering solutions. Read the other installments here:

• Opel’s Cam-In-Head Engine
• Nivomat Dampers
• The Desmodromic Valve
• Front-Engined AWD Systems
• Mercedes’ Monoblade Wiper
• Twincharging
• The Turbine Car
• The Sleeve Valve
• The Hydraulic Cooling Fan
• The Laycock de Normanville Overdrive
• Audi’s UFO Brakes

Porsche recently released an upgraded “S” variant of their Panamera Turbo 4-door super sedan, and I don’t even care.

I have yet to find an angle, in pictures or in person, where the car looks even remotely acceptable. I find it hard to believe it was signed off on by all the responsible parties, since if you know Porsche’s car development philosophy, you know they rarely introduce new models, and those they do the company is completely committed to. So they knew the shape would be with them for a while; it wasn’t a case of “Oh, let’s try this; if people don’t dig it we’ll reel it back in a few years later.” And they can’t defend it, as BMW did with their Chris Bangle creations of the past 10 years, on the grounds that it’s an avant garde, envelope-pushing design; no, the details of the styling are resolutely conventional. It’s not a coherent yet unique vision of a 4-door Porsche like a Bangle take on the concept might be; the Panamera is really nothing more than a 911 stretched in odd places to accommodate two extra doors on its haunches. End of story.

That said, the car’s dynamic prowess and performance chops were a foregone conclusion—its manufacturer knows how to build an Autobahn dominator like no one else. With the Panamera Turbo S, the 0-60 drops to a truly epic 3.4 seconds, and the braking and roadholding are standard Porsche issue. But again, none of this really matters to me or, I’d wager, many of the car’s would-be buyers. If I’m going to fork over almost $200 grand for a car, I don’t want to have to apologize for my purchase by changing the subject to its performance every time its looks are brought up in conversation. I’m not saying the car has to be a complete stunner (though some are), but it should exceed a certain “threshold of appeal.” Sadly, the Panamera misses the mark.

I absolutely guarantee you that if I had known about any of these cars in the ’80s, a poster of one would have been immediately fixed to my bedroom wall. Forget that white Lamborghini Countach garbage; the customized German and Italian beauties featured on this site are where it’s at.

Or was at. The site is fascinating as a time capsule of ’80s car fashion as much as it is a showcase of the customizers’ talents. Tire and wheel technology being far less advanced than it is today, relatively small-diameter but massively wide tires steamroll underneath grotesquely swollen wide-body conversions. Most colors have a pastel or day-glo quality, and any additional electronics look like they were lifted from a Radio Shack catalog circa 1985.

That said, the highlights of the site’s “collection” are too numerous to list in a concise manner, so I’ll just call out a few. The AMG 300E “Hammer” shown above is noteworthy for the “period” model selected to pose with the car. The Koenig and Gemballa Testarossas arguably improve on the stock car’s lines by getting rid of the side vents’ strakes. The Porsche 930-based Gemballa Avalanche (shown at top) and Mirage are awesome to behold, and the rainbow-pattern on the Buchmann 928 Targa’s seats is a nice touch, as are the location of the stereo controls (!).

As a former BMW E24 6-series owner, I was particularly drawn to the ABC Exclusive E24 convertible. It’s so well done and the car looks so sleek it makes me wonder why BMW didn’t contemplate a factory version.

The Porsche 914 was a 20-minute fling for me. It intrigued me, but ultimately, it remained more interesting in concept than in reality, brought down by a combination of attributes.

Unlike many Porsche-philes, I never really got hung up on the whole “Porsche-ness” of the car. A joint venture between Porsche and VW, the car was offered with a variety of VW- and Porsche-built flat fours and sixes, but the vast majority of the cars imported to the US were fitted with the VW-sourced boxer fours. As a result, in the eyes of Porsche purists, the car was something of a mongrel, and has always been looked down upon by owners and enthusiasts of “whole Porsches” like the 356, 911, 944 and 928. That never bothered me, though; I was more concerned with the engine’s numbers than its pedigree, and on those grounds the sub-100 hp, entry-level yet common VW powerplant was adequate at best.

The car’s dynamics, on the other hand, were far more than adequate; they were excellent. Chalk up its handling prowess to an ankle-level center of gravity, mid-engine weight distribution and characteristic Porsche chassis-tuning excellence. The car’s natural habitat always seemed to tend toward the slower, tighter stuff rather than mixing it up with high-caliber exotics on long stretches of the Autobahn. And I was fine with that.

So a debit for engine output, and a credit for agility and responsiveness. We were at parity—until we got to the styling. My initial reaction to it could have been summed up in two words: “That’s it?” Considering the industry-wide styling excesses of the car’s model run, ’69-’76, the shape was admirably simple and unadorned, but the designers committed the fatal error of under-styling the car, depriving it of necessary surface tension and details that would accentuate the shape. Two problem areas in particular stand out: The featureless fascia, relieved only by the two turn signal “fins,” and the vinyl-covered B-pillars and roof which look completely tacked onto the slab sides. Who knows; perhaps the designers were banking on a longer model run and deliberately created a “base shape,” as they had with the 911, upon which later details and elements would be added. The difference between the two cars, of course, is that the 911 shape is intrinsically shapely and attractive; the same can’t be said about the 914. It was, to say the least, an unfortunate miscalculation by the designers, if indeed that was their thought process.

Overall, many of the decisions that went into the 914 project could be summed up using that same descriptor: Unfortunate miscalculations. A mid-engined Porsche should have been an unqualified success, a no-brainer, but it turned into a missed opportunity, and I can’t really say I’m a fan.

This one was on a bedroom poster. Right next to the Countach poster, that is. But if push came to shove, I’d have taken the Porsche 959 in a heartbeat.

The supercar world was subdivided in the ’80s in a very different way than at present. For one thing, there were simply fewer supercars. Lamborghini, Ferrari and Porsche were the established marques; the rest were poseurs (Lotus Esprit), liars (Vector W8) or simply in the process of laying groundwork for themselves vis-a-vis the “giants.” No McLaren, Mercedes wasn’t yet making performance cars, and the idea of a Japanese supercar was still a bit of a joke. Nowadays, with a more global perspective, as well as launch control and de rigeur power levels, there are at least a dozen cars (super or otherwise) capable of a sub-4-second 0-60 sprint; in the ’80s anything less than 5 seconds was seriously quick.

The upshot of the differences between the eras is that ’80s, supercars had a distinctiveness relative to one another unheard of in the much more homogeneous modern scene, where mid-engined cruise missiles are not to say common, but less, shall we say…exclusive. Not only were there fewer examples to choose from, the supercars that did exist then had very different methods of achieving the requisite performance numbers. Put all that together, and whichever you chose as your favorite said quite a bit about you and your predilections when it came to cars.

The 959 had one natural rival: The Ferrari F40. Released a year later as a response to the 959, the F40, for all its prowess, always seemed to me to be a hastily cobbled-together shell of a car, lacking the Porsche’s spit and polish. F40 fans will argue that that was exactly the point, that Ferrari delivered the more unstudied, visceral approach to performance in contrast to the 959’s almost surreal lack of drama as it rewrote the production car record book.

However, that argument always struck me as facile, if not outright disrespectful of the attention to detail Porsche sunk into the 959. Perhaps if their places had been reversed, if the F40 had come first and the 959 second, enthusiasts would rightly appreciate the fact that the 959 could match the 95% of the F40’s performance figures and offer an ease of drive as well as amenities like electric windows, A/C and, um, carpets. As it is, though, car buffs seem to rather look at the F40 and admire Ferrari for slapping together a 959-beater in as short of a timeframe as they did… It’s backward.

As someone as much jazzed by the technical wizardry (to a point) of a supercar as the anticipated thrill generated by a drive, the 959 sits atop my list of favorite automotive siege weapons. The alternately docile and ferocious 450 hp 2.8l twin-turbo flat-6, the amazingly ahead of its time torque-splitting AWD system, the functional and alluring contours of the bodywork–the car took the 911 concept and went an order of magnitude beyond anything in production at the time, with a 3.7 second 0-60 time and near as makes no difference 200 mph performance. And those were honest-to-goodness numbers, too, repeatable by mere mortals and if Porsche’s history is any indication, probably underrated.

The 959 was an amazing piece of work. If my fandom pegs me as a “passionless,” dyed-in-the-wool car nerd in contrast to the more swashbuckling F40, so be it.

And…here we go again.

Porsche released photos today of the latest reworking of their evergreen and iconic 911 sports car, the 991, in anticipation of the upcoming Frankfurt Motor Show.

If the profile photos do illustrate the car’s proportions accurately and aren’t squashed through some Photoshop trickery, the newfound long-and-low-ness looks properly fantastic, although some of the classic 911 silhouette has been lost with the added windshield rake. The generously-sized, engine-housing rump and upright, round headlights are still alive and well, however, so there’s still no mistaking it for anything else.

The base 3.4l flat six has been bumped to 345 hp, channeling power through a new 7-speed manual transmission, a gearbox whose shift gate pattern enthusiasts the world over can’t wait to scope out.

As nice as the new 991 sounds, my pick of 911s would still be the conveyance for the last of the air-cooled flat sixes: the ’93-’98 993 (Turbo shown above). Those hips, those bumps and curves… Who cares if it didn’t look quite as sleek as its rivals; something about the gestalt of the car, the convergence of shapes is seductive like nothing else. Especially in contrast to the later, bathtub-ish, plasticky 996, the 993 represents the last stand of the unaltered 911 greenhouse, with its upright windshield and closely-spaced wipers, and it retains the classic mechanical thrum of the air-cooled mill. Out of the continuous 48 years of production of the 911, the 6 years of the 993 stand out.