The new Porsche 911 Carrera GTS is heinously quick (4.0 seconds to 60 mph) and vulgarly fast (190 mph). It's also something of a personal fashion statement. Our test car, in "Guards" red with black-lacquer center-lock wheels, looked as if it had been drinking the blood of German supermodels. It sounds amazing, thanks in part to a sport-exhaust switch in the dash that uncorks the smut pipes. To fully engage the GTS's 3.8-liter flat-six is to answer the question: What does it sound like to cut Iron Man's head off with a chain saw?

And even though I actually, visibly crumpled when I looked at the price tag—$120,725, fully loaded—the car is kind of a bargain, considering it's from Zuffenhausen. The GTS is essentially an optioned-out version of the rear-drive Carrera S with an additional 23 hp. If you're ordering a Carrera S, that additional horseflesh will cost you $16,900 (the optional power kit). With the GTS, you get it free, sort of, as well as the wide-body, Amber Rose rear fender flares borrowed from the all-wheel-drive Carrera 4.

Repeat after me: Honey, we can't afford not to buy a GTS.

Alas, the car is obsolete. Porsche will unveil a new generation 911 at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September (see sidebar). That car promises to be even quicker and faster, more fuel efficient, more comfortable and refined than the car it replaces, and it will avail itself of the Panamera's splendid console and switchgear design. Why would anyone buy a sports car that's instantly old, unless they have some sort of depreciation fetish?

I can only speculate.

The Porsche 911 is a special case in car connoisseurship, the only sports car for which enthusiasts actually pine for the older, less evolved versions of the car. There are many reasons for this. First, because the 911 has been around since 1963, there are generations of gearheads who became imprinted like ducklings on the 911's of their youth. Then there's reflected glory, guys wanting to buy a 911 like the one Steve McQueen drove at the beginning of "Le Mans" or like the one Hurley Haywood drove at Daytona. We're talking about the most-winning car in motorsports history. Plenty of glory to go around.

Then there's the weird mentality of 911 aficionados. The older cars, with their snatchy throttles, eruptions of turbo boost and catch-me-if-you-can oversteer, constitute a kind of hazing to be endured before one can join the 911 fraternity. Sure, anybody—even a poseur like me—can be fast around Laguna Seca in a new 911. To be fast in a '76 Turbo whale tail? That takes talent.

All the software and circuitry that makes modern Porsches safer and more accessible—traction and stability control, torque-vectoring, brake-force distribution, adaptive suspension and shift-by-wire double-clutch gearboxes—are regarded by many as dulling overburden between the driver and the pleasure of machine mastery.

It's a strange thing in the history of industrial design. Nobody goes in for a quadruple bypass and asks the doctor to pull the old heart-lung machine from storage. Nobody's shopping airline tickets looking to fly on a Douglas DC-3. But sports cars are sensual things, and the older cars are, well, more sensual.

Again, Porsche 911's are different. It's a rare and seriously unhinged car guy, or gal, who longs for the vital animism of an early 1990s Chevrolet Corvette. The guy on the block with a first-gen Viper is clueless. Older Porsches somehow get a pass—as do their owners.

The 911 GTS is not exactly a stone axe, of course. The engine is amazing: a direct-injection flat-six with Porsche Variocam timing and lift, punched up with a variable intake geometry acctuated by six butterflies, one for each cylinder. Some grinding and polishing, and more aggressive programming in the ECU, pencils out to an additional 23 hp (408 hp total) over the stock Carrera S, and delivers a flatter torque curve, plateauing from 310 pound-feet from 4,200 rpm to about 6,000 rpm (my estimate).

My test car's wick was further turned up with the double-clutch PDK gearbox and the Sport Chrono Plus package. It is certainly not the most powerful car in Porsche's lineup—that distinction goes to the 620-hp GT2 RS streetable race car, which could easily be the star in the remake of "How to Murder Your Wife." Nor is it the most focused. The variable-rate steering feels noticeably relaxed on center, compared to some of the company's more dance-y products. The cabin ambience is more relaxing and quieter than the sawmill that is the GT3.

But the GTS pushes all the right 911 buttons. For one thing, it's just plain fast, with a stern and devouring sports car demeanor from corner to corner that encourages you to brake ever later and get back to the throttle ever earlier, counting on the car's good manners to be there when you have to catch it. It's a wonderful combination of edginess and easiness.

Turn up the three-way suspension dampers and the GTS will utterly rattle the bone house, very like a proper sports car. The interior and steering wheel is wrapped in suede-like Alcantara. The seats fit me like a 42-Long suit. And, swathed in the company's SportDesign front spoiler and side skirts, the GTS offers much more of the usual curbside malevolence.

More than anything, this car makes me instantly, preemptively nostalgic. Can the blue-tipped acetylene of the current 911 survive another modernizing redesign? Gone soon will be the hydraulic power steering, the hilariously tiny rear seats, and the super-short wheelbase, which gives the car that ax-juggling, toss-and-catch thrill.

I can easily imagine purists waiting for the deep discounts to come on the superseded 911, the last real 911, by some accounts. I too find myself strangely dreading a better 911.

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You Did What to My Porsche?: A Short History of 911 Sacrilege

Eternal and ever-changing, Porsche's 911 is nothing less than sports-car religion—or maybe a cult. Whenever the company changes the 911 in the interests of comfort, drivability or even performance, Porsche can expect to hear from zealots who fret the car is being softened, civilized, weenie-fied.

The next-generation 911 will be unveiled in September at the Frankfurt Motor Show but we already know the car (codenamed 991) will have 4-inch longer wheelbase in order to accommodate larger back seats and, a few years from now, a hybrid powertrain. Bigger back seats? Hybrids? Are they mad? Not only that, a longer wheelbase could threaten the nimbleness, the flick-ability that 911 fundamentalists cherish. The handbrake lever is going away (adieu, bootleg turns). And, greatest apostasy of all, the new car will have electric-assisted power steering, replacing the 911's much-beloved, nigh-perfect hydraulic system. Expect another chorus of indignation.

Below is a brief list of other Porsche 911 sacrileges. It should be noted that all of these changes ultimately made the car better.

1948 Type 356 'Gmund'
Arguably, Porsche's original sin. Rather than follow the example of the mid-engine 356 Number 1 Prototype, the series-production 356 situated the engine in the rear, over the axle, in order to take advantage of part sharing with the Volkswagen Beetle. The arrangement is less than ideal dynamically because it tends to make a car tail-heavy, more likely to over-rotate in corners and spin. The 911, introduced in 1963, followed the 356's rear-engine template. Porsche has spent decades perfecting the 911's rear-engine design, turning a handling vice into race-winning virtue.


1963 Type 911
Introduced in 1963, the car that would go on to be the most successful racing sports car in history was itself bigger, more comfortable and less severely elemental than the 356, which the 911 eventually replaced. Some purists get off the Porsche bandwagon with the 356.

1990 Type 964
A long-overdue update of the 911, the Type 964—first introduced as the Carrera 4, with all-wheel drive—deployed power steering, anti-lock brakes and coil-spring rear suspension, all of which made the car less demanding to drive and so less of a shibboleth barring ownership to the unskilled. The subsequent two-wheel drive version of the car introduced a torque converter-based automatic transmission, called Tiptronic.

1998 Model 996
For some Porsche-ophiles, this generation marks the division between Old and New Testament. This is the first 911 to have a water-cooled engine, as opposed to the time-honored air-cooled design. The end of history for some, the beginning for others.