Porsche’s long-awaited 1000-horsepower performance EV is a serious GT department effort
This was nothing if not predictable. Porsche’s cars tend to get faster and more powerful as they get older, one rarefied, GT-badged version at a time. The very idea of a near-1100bhp Porsche Taycan, if it had been mooted back in September 2019 during the digestion of those preliminary first drive verdicts on the original Taycan Turbo S – which, to the very last one, reported how savagely, almost problematically rapid was Porsche’s bold new (751bhp) electric pseudo-saloon – would have caused bouts of hysteria in certain quarters of the specialist media. And yet here we are: the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT has landed.Porsche will doubtless claim it’s only exploring the outer limits of what performance is already bound up in its facelifted electric poster child – in some cases quite accurately, as we’re about to explain. And yet it just so happens to have done enough exploring to put the forthcoming Lotus Emeya R firmly in its place on paper, and likewise the imminent Polestar 5 and latest Tesla Model S Plaid.We performance tested the Tesla last year (no one-foot rollout, here) at 2.4sec from rest to 60mph and it has a claimed top speed of 160mph. This new Taycan will crack 60mph in just 2.1sec, says Porsche, and goes on to 190mph on the button. Better chuck an extra SpaceX rocket booster on that new Tesla Roadster, Mr Musk: quite plainly, Weissach is not in a mood to be trifled with.
