What a time to be alive. Well, certainly if you had the not-inconsiderable means to buy a 911 Turbo, it was. As I walk towards ‘911 MOB’, I try to place myself in the shoes of just such a person in 1975 – someone like current custodian Chris Sherwood’s dad, in fact. Just what sort of car had he bought back in the mid-1970s? What sort of monster was this new 911 flagship, with its huge wing jutting out the back and the word ‘Turbo’ subtly written on the engine deck lid?
It was cutting-edge technology, that’s for sure. It was something that was altogether new – a technology that would go on to define, in many ways, the following decades – and not just in supercars, but across the automotive spectrum. In fact, ‘turbo’ would go on to market everything from men’s razors to lawnmowers. In the ’80s, everything needed a ‘turbo’.
Now, as we celebrate 50 years of this incredible car and all the wonderful machines that have followed it, that marketing power has come full circle, with Porsche deploying it no longer as a descriptor, but as a marketing term to describe any vehicle that sits as the flagship at the top of the range. For Porsche, ‘Turbo’ means power, prestige, technology, luxury – even if it’s an electric powertrain. Those same attributes, and more, are encapsulated by the compact but angry-looking silver car that awaits me today.
It’s been more than a decade since I last sat in this particular car’s wonderfully evocative bright blue leather interior. As I clamber in and shut the door behind me with that characteristic ‘click’ of an air-cooled 911, familiar sensations immediately come to the fore and it’s a feast for the senses. Smell: the scent of aged leather, hot engine and a hint of oil. Sound: when I twist the ignition key, an impossibly fat, breathy and bassy throb that cuts right through you, even from the driver’s seat. A turbocharger may naturally rob an engine of its induction voice but, in the early 911 Turbo, it by no means spoils the soundtrack. I am almost deliriously excited.
The 911 Turbo was a product of its time and the surroundings into which it was born. Porsche had experimented with a turbocharged flat six as early as the late 1960s, but it was the Can Am racing programme of 1972-73 that really brought Porsche’s turbocharging expertise to the fore. Faced with taking its hugely successful and inordinately expensive 917s, now outlawed from the world championship, to America for the virtually unlimited type of racing in the CanAm, even the mighty flat 12 wasn’t powerful enough. So Porsche turbocharged it, creating 1,000bhp monsters in the process, and duly cleaned up in 1972 and ’73, so much so that it effectively killed the series.
There was a new boss too in the form of Dr Ernst Fuhrmann, who became the first ‘outsider’ to lead the company after the Porsche/Piëch family stood back following internal divisions that threatened to tear the firm apart. Fuhrmann wanted Porsche’s newfound know-how on forced induction to be put to sound business use, and he also fancied a fast car for himself. Conscious of rivals beginning to bring turbocharged cars to market, such as BMW down the road in Munich, he tasked his engineers to pursue turbocharging the 911 on a two-pronged basis. On the one hand, they would build an experimental racing car, campaigned for just one season, to further their knowledge and accelerate the development of the technology. It would be up against outright prototypes and therefore have little chance of overall success but, then again, it would be the underdog and any good results would surely make headlines. This was the Turbo Carrera RSR, with its 2.1-litre 500bhp engine; the car that came second at Le Mans in 1974.
Then there was the road car, developed under the watch of legendary engineer Herbert Ampferer. Fuhrmann dictated that this had to use the new Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection set-up for reasons of cost and that eliminating turbo lag was the engineering goal for the project. It was a tall order, one that would cost the equivalent of $2 million at the time to bring to fruition, and it wasn’t the best time to be spending big. In fact, it wasn’t a good time to be introducing such a supercar at all, what with the financial recession and the fuel crisis, the latter seeing the introduction of speed limits and even bans on driving.
There was also the question of exactly what sort of car it should be, and here Fuhrmann’s views came to define not just the original car, but the very essence of this sub-brand. Whereas some on the board felt it should be a road racer, stripped out and priced accordingly (and it was indeed a ‘homologation special’; Porsche needed to build 400 of them for the new Group 4 and 5 racing rules that came into being for 1976), Fuhrmann saw a refined, fast, luxury GT, priced at the top of the market – and his view prevailed.
The first prototype hit the Weissach track in April and, by September, Porsche had a ‘Turbo’ on its stand at the Frankfurt Show. Based on a 3.0 RS IROC chassis, the blurb simply said 2.7 litres, 280hp, 160mph+. The eventual road car was unveiled at the Paris Show the year after and, by then, it had morphed into the car we now know and love. The engine’s displacement had risen to try and bolster its off-boost delivery but Porsche had played it conservatively, dropping the compression ratio down to 6.5:1 and not fitting an intercooler unlike the ’74 racer. The new type 930/50 engine featured a single KKK-type 3LDZ turbocharger running at 0.8 bar of boost, producing 260hp at 5,500rpm and 254lbft of torque from 4,000rpm, and was connected to a four-speed 930/30 gearbox amid concerns that the regular five-speed 915 ’box couldn’t withstand the new engine’s torque. That last point wouldn’t change until the final year of production in 1989.
This is one of just 22 Turbos that came to the UK in the first year, costing £14,752.36. As a 1975-model-year 911, it belongs to the H series; the first year of development after the impact bumper 911 generation (the G Model era) had begun the year before. That’s important in our story because, in true Porsche fashion, the development was ongoing, particularly with such new and relatively untested technology.
The number that defines the car in many ways is that a 75MY Turbo weighs just 1,140kg – considerably lighter than anything the firm makes today, and only about the weight of an average adult more than a ’73 2.7 Carrera RS in Touring guise. By ’76, the weight had risen to just under 1,200kg, because these I-series cars had more soundproofing, an electric door mirror and air conditioning as standard. They also gained a bypass valve to smooth out the onset of boost, but ironically an actual boost gauge was only incorporated in the final year of 3-litre Turbo production (1977 Model Year).
As for the subsequent 3.3-litre Turbo, a car that stayed in production for more than a decade after the failure of the 969 project, it tipped the scales at 1,300kg at its launch in 1978. Yes, it had 300bhp to offer, courtesy of an intercooler among other things, but that meant more weight over the tail and, crucially, that weight was also moved a further 30mm rearwards due to a beefier clutch and flywheel arrangement. Hardly surprising, then, that the 3.3 is quite a different car to drive than an early 3-litre version.
Chris’ car doesn’t have air conditioning, and that makes me thankful I went with the shorts option on what feels like the hottest day of the year so far. The June sunshine beats down through the glass and I can feel the beads of sweat forming because, like all photographers, Gus Gregory will insist the windows are up when he starts shooting.
Never mind. I smile to myself about the kerb weight the moment I start driving, because the car feels light in the hands – almost delicate, and not at all like my memories of driving the atypical ’80s Turbo. The soundtrack is beautifully sinister, but the car is surprisingly easy to drive and completely docile at low speeds. This is an inherent part of the Turbo’s character, exaggerated by the lag of the original 930 models, but still to be found to some extent in the modern classic era of Turbos too. When you’re off boost in the 3-litre, it might growl at you menacingly, but it’s also smooth, undemanding and well-mannered. With only four gears to choose from, the use of the third pedal is infrequent and it’s possible to drive around all day like this and never access the Turbo’s darker side at all. Compared to comparable Italian supercars of the era, this made the Turbo disarmingly easy to live with, even on a day-to-day basis. Just like almost every G Model, it’s comfortable, practical and inherently usable.
However, although that’s an important part of the Turbo recipe, that wasn’t what got people talking in excitable tones of disbelief in 1975. When the road ahead is suitable, I simply leave my foot in on the throttle and glance at the large, central rev counter out the corner of my eye. As the needle leisurely strolls past 3,000rpm, there is still no lifting of the engine’s torpor. Neither is there at 3,500rpm. But, as 4,000rpm approaches, there’s a swell in volume from the engine bay, overlaid with the sound of rushing air. Suddenly, the car pitches up and the rate of acceleration goes from steady to whoa…
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The thing that amazes me is that it still feels genuinely quick in 2024. These days, 260hp doesn’t sound like a lot – not by Porsche standards – but factor in the car’s weight, the torque and the nature of the delivery, and it feels appreciably quicker than the numbers suggest to me. In which case, just how outrageous must it all have seemed in 1975, when the average car struggled to muster 50hp? It must have felt like an alien craft.
As for the rest of the dynamic package, it’s a puzzle that I’m not going to attempt to unravel today. This is a car that takes learning and miles to build confidence with gradually. It’s light on its feet and you tend to drive it from your fingers, not your shoulders, but it’s also relatively softly sprung, on fairly meagre and mild tyres, and it comes with a towering reputation attached. As such, I am rather timid today, and settle into a slow-in-fast-out driving style. It’s not hard to imagine that, if pushed harder, there is some understeer initially and that power oversteer or unintentional momentum-based oversteer could make matters very exciting rather quickly, especially on a slick surface. Part of this car’s huge appeal is that mastering it is A-grade driving. As for the brakes, the much-maligned S-type front callipers (replaced by the system from the 917 on the 3.3-litre model) need a hearty shove, but owner Chris maintains that, if they’re in good condition, they do the job.
For years, the 3-litre car lived in the shadow of later 930s in a market that was as obsessed as ever with power and speed. Eventually, the Turbo itself came under attack from a new series of ‘GT department’ Porsches that have stolen some of the limelight from their Turbo brethren. The switch to turbocharging in recent years for the rest of the road car range has also eroded the Turbo’s positioning from the ground up. Yet Porsche continues to see the value in the Turbo recipe, so much so that it has embraced the term as an aforementioned marketing strategy across all of its flagship models. What that means for the actual ‘911 Turbo’ remains to be seen, but it seems certain that it’ll continue to offer the same blend of pace, performance, comfort and versatility that it did all the way back in 1975.