0:00
The Taycan Turbo S is not perhaps the best car Porsche makes for setting lap times in
0:14
but it is one of the most powerful and sophisticated cars it has yet produced
0:19
with 751 bhp and 774 pounds-feet of torque available on overboost from its all-electric
0:28
powertrain, which, by the way, is also four-wheel drive. It also has carbon ceramic brakes and weighs
0:34
2,295 kilograms. But before we get the stopwatches out and stand well back, what's it like just to
0:43
drive? I know there isn't much noise, but the noises that there are in this Taycan Turbo S I
0:52
really rather like. Just listen. I just love the gear change. I love and the
1:06
downshift Did you hear that Right hang on Upshift Wait for the downshift Anyway that the noise It a total spaceship this car but it is an increasingly relevant
1:26
spaceship. And in fact, nowadays this thing feels kind of down to earth, I suppose. This
1:35
is not its best environment, howling around a track. The Taycan Turbo S is just astonishingly
1:41
powerful, astonishingly torquey, astonishingly fast, but it is not designed to go around the
1:47
track, no matter what Porsche might want you to believe. This is not its natural habitat
1:54
because it just feels too heavy, too big, too cumbersome. And although it goes like stink in a straight line when you put your foot down, and it does
2:04
have lots of grip, and it is nicely balanced, and the steering is nice and accurate, and even
2:11
the brakes are bloody brilliant quite frankly considering how much mass there is to slow down
2:19
Ultimately you do feel like you're driving a really well sorted bus around the track
2:25
which is quite good fun but it's not ultimately very satisfying because it's all about managing
2:34
the weight on turning under brakes mid corner and then you can run out of track so easily at the exit of these corners because you just think right I can nail it now and then you get nearly 700 horsepower just
2:49
go whoomph like that and it just kind of puts you two or three feet wider than you want to be
2:54
it's quite mad anyway that's enough chat about how good it isn't how unportal like it is it's not
3:02
It's really pretty good. So let's see how quick it is against the stopwatch
4:26
It's hard to know whether to be impressed or mildly disappointed by the Taycan's time
4:34
overall, because a 1 minute 15.8 makes it faster than a 911 Carrera S, but slower than
4:41
a Jaguar Project 8, both of which it completely demolishes in a straight line. But at 2.3
4:47
tonnes, the Taycan Turbo S was never going to be mega fast. The fact that it's not much
4:53
fun to settle that time in either is probably the biggest letdown. But until they can get half a ton
4:59
out of it somehow, the Taycan is never going to light anyone's fire on a track, no matter how quick
5:05
it might be in a straight line. Plus, it burns through battery range like the starving man when
5:11
doing fast laps. One day they'll get there, but not just yet. Not with this kind. At any rate
