Time can dull our affections. Conversely, glowing first impressions may stick unduly as the days stretch from moment to memory. One thing’s certain, hindsight provides context, and it’s worth viewing old flames through clear eyes. (Remember when Shakespeare In Love stole Best Picture honors from Saving Private Ryan in 1998? Hold that rage in your heart).
We crowned the Porsche 911 GT3 our Performance Car of the Year for 2022. In the written piece, we likened the car to a deity, rather than an armful of pistons and some German steel. So when it came to produce a new series of videos for our site (more on that later), we thought to invite the reigning champ back to defend its title. Porsche obliged. Would the 2022 Porsche 911 GT3 stand up to memory? Could it?
To raise the stakes, we also had PCOTY’s runner-up on hand, the Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing. The two competitors nearly split the jury at PCOTY, and I’m sure some of the editors questioned their own instincts after the votes were cast. Now, a chance to reevaluate. Enter the seeds of creeping doubt.
But I’ll cut out the drama: while the hype for this car is (still) very real, so is the 911 GT3’s excellence. It remains a masterpiece.
Good cars take miles to suss, but true greats let you know within mere feet. The GT3 is the latter. Its 4.0-liter mill and six-speed pairing remain high points, informing the experience from the second that flat-six fires. You feel the buzz of that engine in the seat of your pants, emanating from the steering wheel, buzzing through the shifter, and harmonizing with some part of your soul.
At low or high speeds, the Porsche’s six-speed transmits the same sense of robustness as the Blackwing, but feels far less cumbersome (many of my colleagues rave about the ka-thunk-a-thunk-a-thunk unit fitted to the Blackwing, but it feels a tad caveman to me). Somewhere deep in our PCOTY logbooks, I wrote something to the effect of, “this is the best engine and gearbox pairing on sale today.” This trip reconfirmed the sentiment.
And then there’s that four-liter flat-six at nine grand.
Revving out the GT3 is narcotic, every drive an excuse to bang against the tach until you run out of horizon. There’s the sensation of speed – sure – but the GT3’s 500 horses pale against the thrust from most modern supercars. Instead you revel in just how freely the engine’s rotating mass spins up to its redline, and how the exhaust note changes from a grating mechanical wallop down low into a wide-mouthed howl at the top end. Like I said, narcotic: this car begs you to wring it out everywhere. How many other vehicles do the same?
Every staffer who wriggled free from their racing helmet revealed a beaming smile after reacquainting with the GT3 on track. Shouts about the car’s miraculous front-end grip (much improved over the last-gen car) echoed through the staff (and a couple honest-to-goodness racing drivers we brought along).
“Spirited” road driving reaffirmed those lessons from the race track, and the car proved indefatigable over a few days of hard driving in the desert outside Palm Springs.
When faced with a featureless four-hour interstate trip from Palm Springs to Los Angeles, a boiling panic rose when the 911’s keys were nearly swiped from me. Every other car on our test was, on paper, the better option to crawl through LA’s traffic hellscape. But the other options felt stale next to the GT3. The Porsche’s tightly sprung suspension didn’t grow any softer since I last drove it, but I’ll suffer the slings and arrows of spinal misfortune to chase that needle up to the tach’s pointy limit. Over and over and over again.
Will more time dull or sharpen my affection for this car? We won’t find out for a while. But after dropping the keys off to the parking garage attendant and staring back at the 911 GT3 for more than a moment, I can’t wait for the day when I drive it again.
The only member of staff to flip a grain truck on its roof, Kyle Kinard is R&T's senior editor and resident malcontent. He lives near Seattle and enjoys the rain. His column, Kinardi Line, runs when it runs.
