Category: Exotic Sports 
Price Range: £61,744 to £128,307
Huge amounts of grip; sharp, direct steering; quick-shifting automatic gearbox; excellent performance.
Expensive to run, manual gearchange a little unwieldy, heavy clutch.
The four-wheel-drive Porsche 911 is now even better.
This is a supercar so don't expect it to come cheap. However, this is a decent effort and even the stockbroking community might enjoy the little extra spare change they've accrued from filling the tank up less often. According to official figures, this latest incarnation will achieve around 28mpg (25mpg for the S), which is no mean feat for a bona fide supercar.
There's no getting around the fact that owners will still face a hefty tax bill: no amount of tinkering can keep the emissions down. The coupe fares the best, emitting 237g/km of carbon dioxide: the 4S cabriolet is the worst offender emitting 263g/km. All four variants sit in the highest band (Band G) for road tax and those emissions mean you'll be facing a 35% company car tax bill.
Insurance is in group 20 and servicing is at 18,600-mile intervals, but don't expect Porsche labour rates to be cheap.
Porsche insists that this new generation 911 is cheaper to run than the previous model. It says the average cost of maintenance is down 7% on the coupes and 6% on the cabriolets and that the grand total of maintenance, service, fuel, insurance and tax is down 3%. This is fine if you view life from the glass-half-full perspective, but the reality is: it's an expensive business owning a 911.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Porsche 911
wrote on 05 07 2006