There are days in your life that define you. The day you get married. The day your child is born. The day you eat raw Wasabi by accident, you think you’re going to meet your maker.
And then… There are days like this. A day when you wake up, wander outside, and find a queue of Porsches lined up, Stuttgart’s finest army. The mad one. The pretty one. The stupidly fast one. The electric one. And the one that thinks it’s a fridge.
And then someone, some wonderful, misinformed, insurance-blind individual hands you the keys to all of them. Oh, and just for fun, they throw in an actual Formula One circuit. This was the Porsche World Road Show. This was Buddh International Circuit. This was India. And this… this was either going to be the greatest day of my life, or a headline on the evening news.
For the uninitiated, the Porsche World Road Show (PWRS) is Stuttgart’s roving boot-camp: a factory-run fleet of 20-plus cars, 30-odd professional instructors and several articulated lorries that hop from country to country, laying out four driving “stations”, handling laps, slalom, launch-control alley and an off-road playground. The cars are LHD German plates, the insurance excess is eye-watering, and the brief is simple: drive them like you stole them so you realise you want to buy one.
This year’s Indian stop coincided with a furnace-like summer morning, with a 45 °C track temperature by nine-thirty. That detail matters because many performance EVs melt into limp mode after half a hot lap; none of these did.
So, there we were, lined up like naughty schoolchildren for the briefing session, being told how to sit properly in a seat by a man who looked like he hadn’t blinked since 2012. “You must look far ahead,” he said. “Further than you usually would.” Yes, thank you. I wasn’t planning on staring at my shoelaces while doing 260 kmph into Turn 1. Apparently, sitting like a chimpanzee wrapped around a banana is not ideal either when cornering at 200 kmph.
We were grouped and paired off with instructors, who were all either ex-racers or possessed of that terrifying German calm that makes you feel like they’d critique your funeral for line discipline. My instructor was Malaysian motorsport driver, Admi. Polite. Deadpan. Likely has overtaken a 911 with his eyes closed.
“Start with the SUV,” they said, “ease yourself in.” Right. First up, we got to experience the new all-electric Macan.
Now, in the hierarchy of Porsche badges, “Macan” has historically been the one that makes purists squint. It’s always been capable, fast-ish, and quite good-looking in the same way a German Shepherd is muscular, but a bit businesslike.
However, in the new one, the seating position is absolutely spot on. Lower than the old Macan, far lower, surprisingly, it feels more like a 911 than a Taycan or Panamera. You sit deep, the dashboard is high, and the doors wrap around you. It's the opposite of floaty or SUV-ish; it’s tight, hunkered down, and purposeful.
Look, I don’t know what witchcraft they've done under the skin, but this Macan is bloody brilliant on a racetrack. It handles better than it has any right to be, sharp, responsive, and shockingly capable at speed. You feel the rear motors working. The brakes are absolutely on point. The regen-to-disc transition is all seamless, strong, and intuitive. And yet, yes, you do feel the weight, especially on tighter corners, but it's all placed down low. More so than in the Taycan, even the Cayenne. Part of that might be down to the 21-inch wheels; the others had bigger boots, and that makes a difference when you're playing Jenga with physics. What’s more shocking is how much fun it is. It’s agile. It’s quick. It feels like it wants to play. It’s not a compromise, it’s a riot. For something shaped like a crossover, it moves like a sports car wearing platform shoes. You’d do this daily. And you’d enjoy every second.
So after a couple of laps of the BIC, you get out of the electric Macan, and you’re thinking, “That was fast.” Then Porsche hands you the Taycan Turbo GT and informs you it has more than 1,000 brake horsepower and more than 1,300 Nm of torque. You do the maths, which results in a four-door family saloon that is quicker to 100 kmph than a Formula One car. The goal in this section was to experience the rapid acceleration and deceleration.
We are lined up at the home stretch, and we’re warned. “Press the brake. Hold the accelerator. Wait.” What they don’t say is how unprepared your body will be. You lift your left leg. You vanish. The car stays grounded. You don’t. Your stomach finds a new postcode. Your organs lag behind. Your brain just sits there, stunned, trying to figure out what part of reality you’ve just broken. And then you brake, and the carbon-ceramics yank you back like a bungee. It’s ridiculous. Ludicrous. And yet weirdly… precise. The Weissach pack deletes the rear seats, shaves the weight, and turns it into something that feels like a road-legal spaceship. A four-door two-seater car with a boot and a carbon fibre spoiler, how many times can you say that?
You climb out, shaking your head. Looking at the 718 Spyder RS! Essentially, a GT4 RS with a soft top. Mid-mounted, naturally aspirated GT3 engine, 9,000 RPM redline, and the sort of balance that makes race engineers weep with joy. Porsche, bless them, chose it for the slalom test. Because of “mid-engine dynamics.” But really, because they wanted us to feel like proper heroes flicking cones at 90. And it works. Each steering input to turn is direct, crisp, and alive. The feedback is telepathic. The steering wheel provides incredible feedback, one of the best out there! You can sense the front Michelin Cup 2 biting tarmac one sipe at a time. One gripe: we weren’t allowed to take the roof down. Because rules. Apparently, safety trumps wind-in-your-hair vibes. Someone at BIC clearly doesn’t understand joy.
Now, to brace myself. It was time to drive the new 911, GTS Hybrid. Hybrid! In a 911. There’s scepticism here. A 911 is sacred. You don’t mess with that recipe. I braced for sadness. Instead, it blew my mind.
It’s quick but not in the “smack you” way of the Taycan. It’s more… seamless. Intelligent. Linear. It’s not a hybrid for fuel economy. It’s for torque fill. Seamless power delivery. Electric motor steps in where the engine breathes out. The result is smooth, predictable, and fast. Weight penalty over the old GTS? A mere 50 kg. Lap pace? Botheringly close to the GT3 RS, which costs a whole kidney more. And yet still pure. It hasn’t lost its 911 soul. It’s gained another layer. You press the throttle and there’s no lag, no gap. Just force. And just as you’re adjusting to how clever Porsche’s future is, you meet the GT3 RS.
It’s a threat. It looks like it belongs in a wind tunnel, not a car park. Vents everywhere. A rear wing big enough to serve breakfast on. At 285 kmph, it makes 860 kg of downforce, roughly the weight of an adult polar bear sitting on the roof. Intimidating! DRS. Aerodynamics that you can feel working even at moderate speeds. It should be terrifying. But it isn’t. It’s surgical.
Brake late. Turn in. Stay in it. The grip never runs out. It rotates precisely. Mid-corner corrections feel natural. There’s no drama, just clarity. Everything the car does, it tells you first. The flat-six behind you screams through the cabin. Every gear shift is a jolt of theatre. You exit corners faster than you entered them, brain catching up a second late.
In fact, it feels weirdly intuitive. The thing just sticks at any speed. It’s like it’s glued to a rail made of witchcraft and Michelin Cup 2 rubber. The GT4 RS was the first car that had me on the verge of happy tears. The GT3 RS? That just took it to the next level, amplified that feeling, strapped wings to it, and launched it. Absolutely defying physics.
After all that madness, we slipped into a base 911 Carrera. No turbos. No wings. Just pure, clean, 911. And you know what? It was one of the best cars of the day.
Lighter, nimbler, friendlier. You can chuck it around with confidence. You can misbehave without worrying about destroying one crore in composite carbon. It reminded me that Porsche really is a company that builds sports cars. Not tech showcases. Not EV rockets. Drivers’ cars.
We ended with the Cayenne GTS on an off-road course.
We did tilts. Climbs. Descents. Side leans. And the Cayenne, God bless it, just strolled through the whole thing like it was wearing Timberlands. “As slow as possible, as fast as necessary”, that’s what our Porsche instructor kept saying, like it was a haiku for speed. And the more I drove, the more it made sense.
At the end of the day, after hours of laps, cones, launches, and off-road tricks, I came away with one very clear, very expensive conclusion:
There isn’t a single bad-handling Porsche.
By the end of it, after a full day of launches, slides, slaloms, full-chat laps, and unexpected off-road antics, something clicked. Across the electric ones, the winged monsters, the softtop screamer, the hybrids and the quietly brilliant base models, there wasn’t a single moment where the car felt out of sorts. Not one. Some were heavier. Some needed more commitment. Some wanted finesse. But none ever felt like they didn’t belong. None handled badly.
You could drive a different Porsche every day of the week, and they’d all feel different, but they'd all speak the same language. They’d all tell you where the weight was, what the tyres were doing, what the throttle wanted from you next. That’s the throughline. That’s the thread. That’s what makes them all Porsches.
Not one bad-handling car in the whole lineup. Just different shades of excellent. It’s almost annoying, honestly. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to check my credit score. And maybe sell a kidney.
