One Of Every Porsche Road Car In One Place! | Secret Stash

Porsche makes some pretty epic cars, and while it's been massively successful in motorsport, the vehicles that really matter to the brand are probably its road cars. Thing is, with 75-odd years of making stuff, you could lose track, but luckily, Porsche has kept a reference library. This is Porsche's ever-changing secret stash of pretty much everything it's ever made. It's essentially the Porsche nerd's dream garage, and I have to say, it's pretty mega. Of which, these are a few, but these things didn't just appear fully formed. They got good over time, and it started here with this, the Porsche 356, which is basically made out of purloined VW Beetle bits, engine in the back, rear-wheel drive, but just look at it. It is absolutely beautiful. I mean, it's such a slick shape, and then when you go inside it, I mean, look at this. Oh my goodness, you forget how simple these old 356s are. Now, obviously this is a coupe, but it's actually got pretty good headroom, and if I actually sit in these seats, I've actually got plenty of space. It's got springy, restored seats. Obviously, it's got floor-mounted pedals, but they're still in the right places to drive this car. It feels really compact, very, very simple. Little manual gearbox down here, which feels so delicate compared to modern stuff, and then a steering wheel that's quite tilted towards you. So you do feel like it's sort of on your knees a bit, but everything in here just feels fit for purpose. There's no extraneous functions, no big stupid screen. I bet these were really good fun to drive, even when they were new. It's a bit of a bullet. Oh my God, look at this. Now, that is a piece of history right there. This is a very, very early Porsche 911. I think this is a 65, and the 911 actually started in about 1964, but they look very, very similar. Still a two-litre flat-six in the back, driving the rear wheels, and interestingly, these cars were originally going to be called 901, but because Peugeot at the time owned the trademark to number zero number for car names, this became the 911, and there was a cheaper 356-engine, four-cylinder version called the 912, which wasn't as fast or quite as good, but this, this is the kind of birth of the legend, and you can see where it came from with the 356. It's a very pretty car these days. The thing is, I want to have a quick look inside it as well, but honestly, this is really pretty. The weird thing is, you can definitely figure out where the 356 was and where it came to, so it's basically exactly the same, just a little bit kind of more mature. It's still got the same wheel. This wooden wheel just feels awesome, and you can actually turn the front tyres without power steering. These dials, though, this became something that was translated and evolved over time that you can still see in modern 911s, so you've got one big central rev counter and then the dials either side, but again, floor-mounted pedals, nicely positioned manual gearbox. This feels like a 356 that evolved, and essentially it is, but it also has an explicit link to the cars that I drove, you know, three months ago. It's amazing to come here and look at this. It feels so spacious as well. I mean, really thin pillars, loads of glass. You can see out of it. It feels tiny compared to modern cars. This is a bit special. The 60s were pretty good, weren't they? Ah, now this is interesting. This is the 914, and it's kind of a Franken-Porsche because this is a co-production between Porsche and Volkswagen. So, back in the early 70s, sort of late 60s, early 70s, Porsche wanted a cheaper entry-level car, and Volkswagen wanted something a bit sportier and faster, so they came together to make this. It's got a mid-mounted VW four-cylinder, still rear-wheel drive, still manual. Interestingly, later cars did get a Porsche flat-six, and they were called 914 forward slash six, and I used to think these were really ugly, but now I think the Volks-Porsche or the Porsche-Wagen is actually quite good-looking. 928. Now, back in the 70s, this car was supposed to replace the 911 with a V8 in the front and a transaxle layout, so it has the diff and the gearbox packaged up at the back and gives you more space inside, a bit more comfy. I used to think, again, that these were quite ugly, but they're getting expensive now, even second-hand, and I'd quite like one because they're supposed to be a bit more comfy and less twitchy than a 911. Looks good, though, eh? Oh, I think this is what I think it is. This is, yes it is, a 959. Now, this was a complete technological marvel of its time, so this had variable split four-wheel drive, it had adaptive ride height, it had really weird wheels that were made of magnesium with run-flat tyres, had all sorts of computer-controlled and aided things with a turboed engine. Back in the 80s, this was a complete game-changer, a 200-mile-an-hour marvel. It was originally developed for motorsport and went on to win the Dakar, but it also had a Le Mans version and a road car, but when it was supposed to be in Group B, the whole Group B thing got banned because it was too fast and too dangerous, so this car was a bit of a white elephant, still massively cool, though, one of my favourite ever Porsches. But Porsche is one of those companies that seems to have got it consistently right, and it's done so over a very long time. Now, this is a bit of a seminal moment for Porsche. This is the first time the Carrera name ever made an appearance on a 911, and also a little aerodynamic aid that became simply known as the Ducktail. This is the RS 2.7, and it's special because it was originally conceived as a homologation car for racing, but then Porsche started producing them for Porsche owners who were just a bit handy. They arrived in 1972 and it had lots of little tweaks to it, so it had these big rear arches because this was the first time that Porsche put wider tyres on the back than they did on the front, because the engine's back here, and they wanted to make use of the grip, but also mitigate the fact that it had loads of mass right at the back of the car, make it handle a little bit better. It's just one of those cars that was amazing, it didn't have a huge amount of power, 210-ish horsepower, but this thing only weighed about a tonne, so the stats were absolutely bonkers. This thing gets from 0-60 in under 6 seconds, 5.8, and that's respectable now, never mind back then in the early 70s. Now there were two versions of the RS 2.7, a Sport, which was the kind of proper stripped back racer's version that went straight off and did rallies and circuit racing and stuff, and a later car called the Touring like this one, which had a few more creature comforts, so more padding in the seats, carpets, back seats, just a little bit more road biased. But this car kind of represents the entirety of what Porsche should be doing, so you could drive to the racetrack, do business, and then drive home. It's got response and feeling and tactility to the moon, but you can still put your kids in the back and shopping in the front and drive it as a road car. This is a very special moment in Porsche's history, and it kind of defines what all of the RS cars are to this day. Now if we're going to chuck around the word icon, then this stands up for me. It is Porsche's first ever turbo-ed road car. It's a 911, but it's called the 930 Turbo, and it is delicious. It's very pretty, very, very green. Now obviously, this car came about because of Porsche's racing success with the 917 and the 935, but these things were absolutely mental back in 1975. Imagine that this had all the performance of something like a Lamborghini Countach or a contemporary Ferrari, but you could put the kids in the back and the shopping in the front. They were, however, not that easy to drive. I mean, most cars have got turbos these days, and they're absolutely happy as Larry, but back in the day, this had monster turbo lag. It only had about 265 brake horsepower, but when you hit the throttle, you'd have to wait and wait and wait, and then you'd get a load of power and boost. 265 brake horsepower straight to the back wheels, it made them a little bit naughty and got them a bit of a reputation. They became known as widow makers. The thing is, like I said, they were as fast as other sports cars at the time and just that bit more practical. This is Porsche listening to the lessons of its past and applying them to the future, coming up with new technologies to make cars that do multiple things, and then when you're inside it, this is just gorgeous. I mean, it's got this kind of biscuit-coloured leather. The gear stick is still in the same place as it was in 356, it's still a small, tiny gear stick that pokes up out of the floor. Floor-mounted pedals, the same place for the steering wheel, it's still quite tipped up, and then the five dials in a binnacle in front of me. You can see the direct relationship to history in this car, except it's full of new technology, and it is so pretty. This is a car of my childhood, I would daily this. The Porsche Cayenne, arguably one of Porsche's most important cars ever. It arrived in 2003 based on the same underpinnings as things like the Volkswagen Touareg and the Audi Q7, except a little bit better, and along with the Macan, these are now Porsche's best-selling models globally. The interesting thing is that if you don't like SUVs, you better get used to them, because things like this make the RS cars possible. See this? It's a Le Mans car from the year 2000, and it has a 5.5 litre naturally aspirated V10 engine. But why is this interesting when we're talking about road cars? Well, the engine from this went directly into the Carrera GT supercar. Now it's a little bit different, but only by about 100cc, and it's one of the reasons why Carrera GTs are really quite hard to drive, because essentially that's a race engine, and to get the gearbox to work, it has a very small clutch pack and a very light flywheel, so they rev really freely, but then the clutch snaps shut quite quick, so you hear people go, wah, wah, wah, wah, stalled. It's usually quite embarrassing, because lots of people are watching, because Carrera GT. Thing is, it's still a bit of a legend, isn't it? Okay, so I am pushing the definition of road car here, but this is a 911 GT1 Strassen version. It's got a 3.2 litre flat six with a big turbo on it, makes 600 brake horsepower, but essentially this is a road-legal Le Mans car. This is the line between motorsport and road things. You can drive that on a public road. Ah, the 918 Spyder. Now I've got a little bit of experience with these cars, and I still think that these are quite possibly one of the best modern supercars, bar none. It's not a hill I'm willing to die on, but I might be severely wounded. I actually tested these against the LaFerrari and the McLaren P1, and I thought that this car was the car I'd want to spend my actual money on. The engine, the 4.6 V8 in these, is actually derived from an LMP2 RS Spyder, so it's hugely powerful, massively revvy, it's properly epic, and these are the cars that I think have Porsche's engineering baked into them. They're properly cool. Sidewalls. And so to the modern Porsche electric family, the Porsche Macan has just arrived, and things like the Taycan and its variants, like this Cross Turismo, are exceptional electric cars in that they steer, and they handle, and they go, very much like Porsche's, which is not an easy thing to do. Okay, so that's a pretty whistle-stop tour of Porsche's heritage collection, and we've barely even scratched the surface. Thing is, this whole collection kind of tries to keep one of every significant model that Porsche has ever produced, and with 75 years of history, that means a lot of cars. It's deeply impressive, and there always seems to be just one more thing to look at. Oh, is that a 550 Spyder?