Porsche Taycan GT Brief Drive: Corby samples an insanely fast EV and then draws a memorable link with a watermelon. Huh?

The absurdly talented and almost dementedly determined engineers deemed worth of working at Porsche are not the kind of people you want to be stuck next to at a dinner party.

Oh sure, if you’re a car nerd you’ll spend one illuminating hour listening to them explaining why it’s the company’s brake technology that’s even more interesting than the reasons its steering systems are the world’s best, but beyond that it will quickly become clear that they are almost dangerously boring people with absolutely no other interests beside their work.

As you enter the second hour they will probably reach for a napkin and start trying to draw you diagrams of how active suspension works (I’m not making this up, I’ve been to these dinners, in Germany, so I had to put with boredom AND sauerkraut), but really they’re just trying to distract themselves from a deep desire to go home and spend a few hours doing something fun, like dusting their collection of collectible Porsche model cars, or rearranging their sock drawer so that not a single fibre is touching another one, with each pair folded with military precision, and every single sock the same drab, charcoal grey.

Look, it sounds like I’m complaining, but honestly, I’m so glad these people – who I consider to be the most important and impressive car engineers on the plant – exist, particularly after spending a week bruising my internal organs and weakening my spinal column in a Porsche Taycan Turbo GT.

I drove quite a few EVs before the first Taycan came along, and while I could see the they were amusing, even entertaining in some cases, and that they were definitely the answer to finding a way to keep cars on the road and a habitable planet around us, I wasn’t convinced that any electric car would genuinely move me, other than in the literal sense.

The Taycan, from the start, was typical Porsche – looking at a problem, like EVs being a bit dull and lifeless, and then fixing it by applying more speed, more madness and as much driver involvement as possible. 

A proper Porsche was still more thrilling, of course, and even the magicians with spanners couldn’t quite fix the problem of how big and heavy the Taycan was, so it didn’t feel quite like a driver’s car, but it was closer than anyone else had gotten.

So the Taycan was good, and the more money you paid for one the more invigorating it was, at least in a straight line, but you can bet that result wasn’t enough for our friends in their grey turtle neck skivvies under their grey suits and their grave faces. Oh no, they were constantly working on something better, on not just perfecting the electric car, but reinventing it – ultifying it.

And the Taycan Turbo GT I’ve just driven – which was fitted with the Weissach package for even more ultimate-ness – is that car; a properly astonishing machine that is quite simply the fastest vehicle I’ve ever driven, and one of the best.

How fast? Well, at the car’s launch one of those Porsche engineers pointed out that EVs like this are getting so fast, with their zero to 100 speeds limited only by tyre technology, that it would be more appropriate now to measure them on their zero to 200km/h sprints, which, in this case, takes just 6.4 seconds.

That’s a whole two seconds faster than a 911 Turbo S can do the same, meaning even that incredible super car wouldn’t be able to see which way this thing went (well, it would be going in a straight line at that speed, so that’s not correct, really). 

If you’re curious, the 100km/h mark comes up in 2.1 seconds, or the same speed as the ridiculous Ferrari F80 I drove last year, or slightly quicker than a Formula One car (which does cane it to 200km/h, still, hitting that in 4.5 seconds).

The numbers are crazy, but what this does to your body is even more so. I took my teenage son for a drive and it actually made him express emotions, which is quite some miracle these days. He  said it felt like his organs were being shoved through the back of his ribs into the seat. It also made him, and me, huff and puff with strain, like we were giving birth, or shitting out a watermelon. 

Mostly, though, it made me cackle in disbelief, and as much as the acceleration hurt, I couldn’t stop doing it. And you don’t have to hit 100, it’s equally as smashingly superb from 60 to 80, or 40 to 90km/h. 

My son also made the apt comparison of the fake noises this Taycan makes, once you turn its “Attack Mode” from Normal up to Sport or SportPlus. While most fake noises in EVs are a bit rubbish, this one genuinely sounds like the Light Cycle from the Tron movies – or in other words, quite cool.

So just how much grunt does it take to produce this kind of performance, particularly in a car that weighs 2.2 tonnes and its very nearly 5m long? Well, the addition of my Weissach package makes some attempt at weight saving, by throwing out the rear seats and replacing them with slabs of sexy carbon fibre.

It also has very sporty carbon seats, which are hugely uncomfortable and difficult to get into and out of – fortunately you can have proper seats at no extra cost, and you really should.

The headline numbers, however, are that with full maximum attack boost engaged you’re getting a whopping 815kW and 1340Nm. Yes, you only get that for 10 seconds of madness at a time, by pulling in a shift lever on the wheel and holding on for grim death, but even outside those frenzied moments it still feels stupidly fast. Like faster than a Buggati Chiron fast (speaking of which, you’d really have compare this Taycan GT Turbo to a Bugatti to make its $417,600 price seem anywhere near reasonable).

What truly blew me away, though, perhaps almost as much as the numbers and the eyeball squelching performance, is just how good this big, heavy rocket ship is to drive.

Part of this is just typical Porsche perfection – beautiful steering, an attention to every detail, and the ability to make heavy things feel light that suggests the involvement of helium somewhere – but a large part of it is also due to an ingenious system called Porsche Active Ride (PAR), first seen on the far less exciting Panamera. 

Active suspension is a term that gets thrown around a lot, but this version  – which uses motor pumps and dual-valve adaptive dampers working constantly on each wheel to seemingly to eliminate body roll and pitch – really works. So much so that it feels like you can drive it in an unhinged manner and never feel like you’re going to come unstuck.

Something this massive, and overpowered, just shouldn’t be this easy, and enjoyable, to drive.

Sure, it’s overly expensive and overly everything, but hot damn, the Porsche Taycan GT Turbo really is one of the most pure examples of what the Porsche boffins are so good at – making magic happen. 

Just be washing your hair the night they invite you to dinner.

Porsche Taycan GT with Weissach Package price and specifications

Price: $417,600 plus on-road costs
Basics: EV, 5 seats, 5 doors, sedan, AWD
Range: 605km
Battery capacity: 105kWh
Battery warranty: 8 years/160,000km
Energy consumption: 18.4kWh/100km
Motors: 1 front and 1 rear 815kW/1340Nm
AC charging: 11kW, Type 2 plug
DC charging: 320kW, CCS combo plug type
0-100km/h: 2.1 seconds