2023 Porsche 911 GT3 RS PVOTY Review: Master of the Road Course
Time and again, the Porsche 911 GT3 RS proves your idea of limits is a long, long way off from what is possible.
Pros
- Insane downforce
- Insane handling
- Seemingly limitless capability
Cons
- Needs an experienced driver to extract its maximum
- Not a daily driver for most people
- Worth the trade-offs over the base GT3?
If you’ve followed our previous coverage of the 2023 Porsche 911 GT3 RS, you’ll forgive us for asking: What haven’t we reported by now in terms of how spectacularly this car performs? What haven’t we said that leaves any doubt about the track-focused abilities of the most dynamically capable, factory-built, road-legal, series-production 911 of all time? We raved about it in our first drive story and in our second drive story. We pitted it head to head against a 911 Cup race car at Road America. We ran it through our official MotorTrend testing regimen.
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It warped our minds every time.
One upside of our Of The Year programs is that they allow more MT drivers to get behind the wheel of cars that don’t regularly roll through our test fleet. Our staffers work hand in hand daily and share opinions and tales of the cars they drive, yet sometimes we must take each other’s word for it in terms of how good or not so good a vehicle is. And prior to hitting the track during this year’s Performance Vehicle of the Year throwdown, it was apparent to the handful of us who had previously driven the GT3 RS that others who hadn’t were still perhaps a bit skeptical we weren’t drowning them in hypebeast hyperbole. But any lingering cynicism from a group of evaluators with more than enough industry experience to justify that cynicism evaporated by the time our track running concluded; the notes we kept on the Porsche included fresh statements like:
“Probably the best performance road car ever made.”
“I have never experienced grip and chassis tuning like this before.”
“This car is a cheat code. It’s just not fair. It’s on another planet.”
“OMG WTF. Its grip felt like 10 pounds of Gorilla glue was permanently squirted on the tires. Wow.”
“It’s one of the only cars in this year’s field that I exited from after my lapping session sweaty with my heart rate jacked.”
Those of us who already knew just laughed. “Race car for the street” is a cheap, easy, overused description that’s almost never accurate when it comes to even the most extreme road cars, but the GT3 RS justifies the label more than anything so far in our modern era (at least apart from million-plus-dollar ultra hypercars). Its hypodermic-pointy steering seems to change direction the moment you even think of doing so, and the brakes—oh, the brakes. Think you’ve gone far too deep on the binders, past the point of no return? Unless you’re truly, completely, clinically not right in the head, you haven’t.
So why isn’t the 2023 Porsche 911 GT3 RS our PVOTY winner? It easily could have been. But its handling is so outer limits, you need a lot of experience—talent, even—to get the absolute best out of the car. We don’t mean it’s scary or evil to drive if you aren’t a pro, because it isn’t. It puts a permagrin on the face of practically anyone who wheels it around a track at whatever speed they choose, by the simple fact they can feel how capable it is and see their confidence grow exponentially as a result. Still, if you’re into chasing its true max, most drivers will need to raise their game substantially and readjust their perceptions of what’s possible on the brakes, on corner entry, in how much midcorner speed you can carry, and how soon you can get on the throttle at the exit.
If you’re not a hugely experienced and capable driver, if not at least a club-level racer, some of our judges questioned if the RS is worth the extra cost and practical trade-offs compared to the already immensely track-capable, intoxicatingly fun standard 911 GT3 that won our PVOTY contest in 2022. Not for nothing, the regular GT3 offers a notably more compliant ride and practicality on the street—our panel was split on the RS’ suitability for regular road use, with this author finding it livable if extremely aggressive, countered by features editor Scott Evans responding: “You’re out of your mind. You cannot commute in this car. The ride is just acceptable on the freeway, but in traffic and on city streets, it’s miserable.”
His view isn’t a unanimous one around these parts, but drivers who side with him resultingly note this characteristic makes the RS a rather limited-use-case vehicle, a singular-purpose track tool. Likewise, the typical 911 frunk storage is eliminated due to an upgraded cooling system and aero ductwork taking up the space usually reserved for cargo. You can still jam a somewhat surprising amount of stuff behind the two seats, but only the most granite of the hardcore will look at the GT3 RS in their garage and say, “Let’s take a long road trip.”
You can, no matter who you are, certainly drive it to your local track day, send everyone else home in tears, and drive home afterward, content in the knowledge you just felt performance on a level usually reserved for racing drivers and uberwealthy uberhypercar owners. Not that the 2023 Porsche 911 GT3 RS is remotely cheap, if you can even get one, especially right now on the secondhand market, but it remains a bargain in the context of the full breadth of its powers.
I’m not sure if this is bizarre, amusing, interesting, or none of those, but I remember picking up the inaugural issue of Automobile from the magazine rack at a Meijer grocery store in metro Detroit. At 9 years old in 1986, I was already a devoted consumer of car magazines, and this new one with the funky font on the cover caught my eye immediately. Longtime Automobile editor and present-day contributor Michael Jordan despises this story, but I once used his original review of Ferrari’s F40 as source material for a fifth-grade research project. I still have the handwritten report on a shelf at home. Sometimes I text MJ pictures of it — just to brighten his day. I’ve always been a car fan, but I never had any grand dreams, schemes, or plans of making it onto this publication’s masthead. I did earn a journalism degree from Michigan State University but at the time never planned to use it for its intended purpose. Law school made more sense to me for some reason. And then, thankfully, it didn’t. I blame two dates for this: May 1 and May 29, 1994. The former was the day Formula 1 star Ayrton Senna died. As a kid, I’d seen him race years earlier on the streets of Detroit, and though I didn’t follow F1 especially closely, the news of his demise shocked me. It’s the only story I remember following in the ensuing weeks, which just happened to lead right into the latter date. By pure chance, I had earlier accepted a friend’s invitation to accompany him and his father to the Indy 500. You’ve probably heard people say nothing prepares you for the sight of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, especially in real life on race day, with more than 250,000 spectators on the ground. It sounds like clichéd hyperbole, but it’s true. And along with my renewed interest in F1 in the wake of Senna’s death, that first encounter with Indy ignited a passion for motorsports I never expected to find. Without charting the entire course here, the upshot is that it led me to a brief stint working at a racing school, and then to Autoweek, where I worked as a full-time staffer for 13 years, the majority of them as motorsports editor. I was also a tester and reviewer of road cars, a fleet manager, and just about everything in between that is commonplace at automotive enthusiast outlets. Eventually, my work there led me to Automobile in early 2015 — almost 29 years to the day that I first picked up that funky new car mag as my mom checked-off her grocery list. What else do you probably not want to know? I — along with three other people, I’m told frequently — am an avid NBA fan, evidenced by a disturbingly large number of Nikes taking up almost all of my closet space. I enjoy racing/driving video games and simulators, though for me they’ll never replace the real thing. Road cars are cool, race cars are better. I’ve seen the original “Point Break” at least 147 times start to finish. I’ve seen “Top Gun” even more. The millennials on our staff think my favorite decade is the ’80s. They’re wrong. It’s the ’90s. I always have too many books to read and no time to do so. Despite the present histrionics, I do not believe fully autonomous cars will dominate our roads any time soon, probably not for decades. I used to think anyone who didn’t drive a manual transmission wasn’t a real driver, but I was wrong. I wish I could disinvent social media, or at least somehow ensure it is used only for good. And I appreciate being part of Automobile’s proud history, enjoying the ride alongside all of you.
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