Yesterday I went to my friend E’s for her graduation from her first round of many years of schooling as she’s working towards being a doctor. One of her friends who owns an AMG Benz was there (I wish for the life of me I knew what the model was), and we got to talking shop about cars as usual.

Turns out he’s modified it since I’ve rode in it last, and he said it was making 360 at the wheels (it’s 360 stock at the crank according to him). He said he took it to Bandimere and ran 13.5’s in it with 2.2 60 feet times, but I forgot to ask about the trap. He’s a really cool guy– knows his stuff pretty well, very level headed, and was running all kinds of things by me to see what I thought about them.

However, since I’d seen him last, he had bought a new toy (still has the AMG too)– A 2003 Porsche 911 Turbo! And turns out, he drove it to the party! Finally towards the end of the evening I had to take advantage of the opportunity, and asked him to take me for a spin, and he obliged.

We walked out front, and there it was– a Yellow Turbo 996. I’ve only see maybe 3-4 since they have came-out in person, and I was getting to ride in one! Perhaps because they are slightly rare and the 125K price tag deters most from buying one (including myself). He had recently bought it (slightly used with 11K on it), so it still had the temp tags on it.

So to spare you the drama, the car was absolutely amazing. In the short time he’d owned the car, there were a few mods done to it (coil overs, chipped, and a short shifter), but it’s sort of hard to imagine needing to mod a car like that. He was actually telling me about a few mods he was considering and was asking my opinion about them. For the most part I told him he should get a decent exhaust, and leave it alone. It’s such a great car as is.. no sense in messing-up what Porsche has designed, make it less reliable and more expensive to maintain, etc.

The acceleration was both smooth and violent– it was nearly impossible to tell when the turbos kicked in as the power curve was very smooth, but it would be impossible to do anything but sit back in the seat and grin in amazement. For a 400HP+ car, it was also very quiet, and didn’t feel like it was squatting from the acceleration at all. I wasn’t ready for the curves at all either– I totally got slammed around in the seat as it went through them effortlessly.

He was running a mixture of 93 and 100 octane, and with it chipped, it was letting him run 1.2 bar of boost (17.4 lb). The chip was pretty amazing for a street car, but not something I would want on a race car. It monitored how you were driving, and would decide how much boost to run and at what RPM it should peak, etc. Also, since the car was starting to run low on fuel, it trimmed back the boost a bit just in case of fuel starvation. Pretty cool stuff.

Of course something you can’t help but notice is how much attention that car gets. Pretty much anyone in another car or on the street turns their head to check it out. That was kind of fun.

He said he’ll probably take it to Bandimere sometime just to see what it will do– should be interesting!

Anyhow, I’m still pretty amazed I got to ride in one… I honestly think this was more impressive than riding in a Shelby Cobra race car at Second Creek… ( I had the chance to do that a few summers back .)

Here are a few more specs about the car:

http://porsche.jbcarpages.com/911/2003/index4.php
http://www.seriouswheels.com/top-2003-Porsche-911-Turbo.htm