There’s a new Taycan on the horizon, and Porsche is all too happy to tell you about it after stealing Tesla’s Nürburgring throne.
The Porsche Taycan Turbo S might be the most desirable EV sedan on the market right now, but around the legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife race circuit, it’s not the fastest. Until very recently, that title went the way of the Tesla Model S Plaid, which in fact had knocked the Turbo S off the top step of the metaphorical podium. Now though, Porsche has thrown down a new gauntlet, slashing the Plaid’s time with a fresh, mysterious variant of Taycan.
What do we know about this new Taycan?
For now, details about the new Taycan’s specifications are firmly under wraps. Although Porsche has indeed admitted, and even promoted, its existence, we still have no idea what sort of powertrain or chassis revisions have been made to the car, nor do we know what tires it used for this run.
However, what we can see with our own eyes is that, although evidently not the finished product in terms of presentation, this Taycan prototype has some pretty serious aero going on. The front and rear splitters are certainly what you’d call ‘aggressive’, as is the spoiler. And yet, they don’t look too out of place on this luxury sedan. Then, there’s also the matter of the interior. The car’s insides have been stripped, and a roll cage and telemetry system has been fitted, The cage and bucket seats are explicitly there for as safety measures required by Nürburgring officials, so I’m doubtful that these aspects of this record-attempt car would make it to the final production version. For now though, it’s hard to definitively say anything about this car. After all, this new Taycan variant doesn’t even have a name yet, let alone an official production spec sheet.
The lap
To become the fastest EV sedan around the Green Hell, Porsche’s new Taycan prototype would have to beat the benchmark set by Tesla’s Model S Plaid. Swedish Nordschleife specialist Andreas Simonsen managed a lap time of 07:25.23 behind the wheel of the American car, which was around eight seconds quicker than the old Taycan record set by Lars Kern. However, the folks from Stuttgart have clearly upped their game considerably with this new revised version of Taycan. Kern was back in the driver’s seat again for this lap record attempt, and managed to blow Simonsen’s Tesla benchmark out of the water.
With the new secretive upgrades equipped to the Taycan, Kern set a blistering pace of 07:07.55 around the 12.9-mile course. For context, that’s only two seconds shy of the lap time logged by fellow pro racing driver Martin Kodrić in the limited-production Rimac Nevera hypercar! The pace is even more striking when compared to the Tesla, having eclipsed the Plaid by just under 18 seconds. Admittedly, the the sheer length of the Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit exaggerates the performance gap between the two. Such a divide wouldn’t happen around a regular length circuit, but there can be no doubt that this new Taycan is a measurably quicker beast than its arch-rival.
Will this new Taycan enter production?
It’s highly unlikely that Porsche would go through all the time and effort required to develop a car like this, just to dunk on Tesla. That’s not really how they operate. In fact, there’s not a single mention of, or reference to, the American marque anywhere in Porsche’s official coverage of this project. It’s also not as if Porsche are afraid of building extreme model variants. Admittedly, a red-hot track-focused Taycan probably has less of a customer base than, say, a GT3 or GT2-spec 911. But I’m sure they’d sell better than they have any right to.
As such, my answer to the question of “will they, won’t they?” is to watch this space. A video of Kern’s full lap is set to drop in March, so if there is a production version of this car on its way, I’d expect to hear about it at around the same time.
In the meantime, while we’re on the topic of Nordschleife runs, feel free to check out our compilation of the best Nürburgring lap record attempts.
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