11 GT2 RS world record at the Nürburgring Nordschleife. Full onboard-footage REVIEW
Channel: Premium Cars
Date: 2017-12-25

The sound of the $293,200 911 GT2 RS is like nothing in the current Porsche lineup – or on the road right now, period. Hammer the floor-mounted accelerator pedal and the GT2 RS spits raw, melodious frequencies that will rumble your spine and make your hair stand on end.  "We wanted to make an honest turbo," Porsche's Andreas Preuninger, who's in charge of Porsche high-performance GT range of cars like the 911 GT3 and Cayman GT4, says, "because nowadays turbos tend to get modified in a way that they feel like 10-liter [naturally aspirated] engines, and that's not the point." Preuninger's voice speeds up, like a whirring compressor. "I think a turbo motor has so many interesting sounds and characteristics... I wanted this turbo to burble and overrun, to make hissing sounds of the wastegate and mechanical noises. 

The breathing of the engine, the way it builds up power—even a little turbo lag, why not? The GT2 RS had to be different, and it is. Big time."  A large part of Preuninger's job involves preserving the company's sporting soul in roadgoing vehicles, which is a particularly critical part of Porsche's business. Get a GT right, and you can quell the critics who say the manufacturer is losing the plot by building Cayennes and Panameras; get it wrong, and you risk alienating the diehards and Porsche evangelists. This time around, Preuninger went old school to create that elusive difference: he dug into the Porsche museum collection and put a 1970s-era 935 Turbo and several turbocharged racecars on a lift, measuring things like intake runner lengths and the header diameters. The findings helped shape the GT2 RS's inimitable howl.