Top Car for spoiling yourself: Porsche 911 Turbo

Monday, 3 January 2022

The Porsche 911 Turbo is the 2021 Stuff Top Car for spoiling yourself.

Spoiling yourself can mean many things when it comes to buying a car. Do you fancy incredible luxury? How about a super lightweight track day toy?

Or, in the case of our winner for this category - how about face-melting performance with the almost polar-opposite ability to behave like a normal, sensible, everyday car around town?

Yeah, that is exactly what the Porsche 911 Turbo offers - utterly mind-blowing acceleration and internal organ-rearranging cornering abilities all wrapped up in a package that you can happily tootle down to the dairy in if you need bread.

Brain-melting speed, razor-sharp handling and everyday practicality? You can have all of that – it’s called the Porsche 911 Turbo.

The 911 Turbo is a refined and comfortable AWD grand tourer, but one that can turn utterly feral at the flick of a switch. Well, it’s actually the twist of a dial, but you get the idea - drop it into Sport or Sport + and it tenses up like a wild cat getting ready to pounce. Nail the throttle, and the world melts around you.

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Despite the touchscreen and digital display, it’s all very traditional inside the 911 Turbo. As it should be.

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The 911 Turbo will rocket to 100kmh from a standing start in 2.8 seconds which is undeniably impressive, but it is not so much the sheer acceleration that is the most remarkable part of the Turbo, rather the completely unrelenting nature of it – every gear change, every corner exit and almost every point in its rev range reveals a relentless surge of power that just keeps coming until you lift off. And you will lift off, because it is braver than you will ever be.

The S-Class is packed with mind-blowing technology as well as staggering luxury.

Yes, it is AWD, which is something that traditionally robs a 911 of a lot of its delightfully playful feel, but the belligerent aggression of the Turbo’s power delivery and some well-judged programming by Porsches engineers imbues it with a wonderfully rear-biased feel that allows considerable tail wagging play time before gently reigning things back in.

But that “refined and comfortable grand tourer” part I mentioned before is possibly the most impressive part of the 911 Turbo’s package - the engine is perfectly docile and tractable at lower revs, while the ride quality is also ridiculously good for something that can relocate your spleen with the g-forces it can generate through a corner.

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Quite how Porsche has managed to tame something so aggressively feral so that it is also capable of dealing with a daily commute is verging on being black magic, as opposed to just incredible engineering.

But they have, and the result is a truly superb car that simply shouldn’t be able to scratch both diametrically-opposed itches so easily, but it does.

Sure, the 911 Turbo costs a hefty $345,000 and some change, but you are spoiling yourself here, aren’t you? You may as well do it properly.

Runner up: Mercedes-Benz S-Class

Mercedes-Benz’s flagship S-Class has long been the leader when it comes to sheer luxury combined with incredible cutting-edge technology, and the newest iteration cranks that up several notches.

It seems strange to describe a car that costs between $215,000 and $297,500 as “incredible value for money”, but the sheer level of luxury and technology jammed into the S-Class actually ticks that box too.

Think of the S-Class as being a leather-lined lounge that can drive itself (if it were allowed to, that is…) and you are close to understanding what saw it come oh-so-close to taking out overall honours in this category.

But it is also excellent to drive it yourself, with the S-Class possessing a surprisingly agile nature for something so big, while the “entry level” S 450 packs possibly the best engine Mercedes-Benz makes today - the thoroughly awesome 3.0-litre twin-turbo straight six, that also happens to be hooked up to a 48-volt mild hybrid system and is good for 270kW and 500Nm.

Deeply impressive and truly special, the S-Class is certainly spoiling yourself in all the right ways and would be a perfectly valid alternative if the 911 Turbo just wasn’t your thing.

Other contenders

Other cars that were in contention of our pick to spoil yourself with included the obvious stuff, like the uber-luxurious, yet brutally fast Mercedes-AMG GLS 63, the BMW M5 Competition and Mercedes-AMG E 63 S that both combined luxury and brutal performance in traditional sedan form, and for the more budget-oriented choice, the fantastically fun Toyota GR Yaris.

One surprise, however, will be the Hyundai Ioniq 5, which cranked up the Korean company’s already impressive level of quality to another level, and was a surprisingly luxury car-like experience, particularly at the top end of its price spectrum.