Porsche Taycan Turbo GT review

Those waiting for the now widely practiced cliches about very fast electric cars might be disappointed with what follows. Is the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT actually unpleasant when given its near-1100bhp head? Painful, even? Nope. 

It responds to the angle of your right foot superbly well - and in a way, from low speeds especially, that makes just about every other performance car you’ve ever driven seem like it must surely have been running in some secret limp mode.

Is it violent? Can be. But not brutish, or even boorish; not unless you are. The point is, it does precisely what you ask of it. The odd thing is simply being in a position to ask for so much, so very precisely indeed.

While you’re getting used to its potential, so much pure performance feels a bit mesmeric and otherworldly. More like being sucked into a wormhole than fired out of a cannon, I should very much imagine. Instant, constant, and apparently unending for all that it matters on the road; but utterly spectacular whichever metaphor you fancy. 

The Taycan Turbo GT's full quota of 1094bhp comes on stream automatically when using the car’s electronic launch control function – something that Porsche was keen to demonstrate on track at Monteblanco, and which left this tester a little short of breath.

The car surges off the line with utterly seamless force. It felt, to me, not far off Bugatti quick. By the time you’ve picked your head up off the headrest and acclimatised to the g-force, you’re the far side of 100mph – and even from there on out, the urgency doesn’t really abate much, as it can with other EVs.

Just as in other Taycans, you're made aware of the moment when the gearbox on the rear motor shifts up principally by the intonation of the car's synthesised motor noise, but it doesn't cause any drivability problems, nor really any interruption in a power delivery that always feels deliciously over-endowed.

On circuit, of course, you're either drinking in all of that power under a loaded throttle, or you're slowing the car down again on the brakes. There are no gears to shift, no revs to keep tabs on, and little to do beyond watch what's on the horizon getting yanked closer, corner by corner. But boy does it ever get closer quickly.

On the road, meanwhile, you've got more time to process just how fine the motor control of your ankle must be to mete out this car's leviathan performance absolutely perfectly. Once you're used to the instant, herculean response, it isn't actually difficult; but it isn't a bit like, say, letting a twelve-cylinder performance engine off the leash, either.

It's a strangely detailed experiment in restraint, at first; then, of trust; and, finally, of intuition. You don't kick this car in the guts and hold on; you develop a rapport, and get to know every percent of the pedal travel intimately. And, while you might only get to the very bottom of it once of twice on an eighty-mile weekend drive, it's always a thrill when you do.