2021 Porsche 911 Targa 4S - Jay Leno's Garage

[Music] okay put on the break take it up about four grand hit the button and see what you let go yeah launch control works yeah oh yeah yeah that's uh pretty good [Music] welcome to an episode of jay leno's garage pandemic edition this is the first brand new car we have done in quite a while this is a 2021 porsche 911 targa 4s all-wheel drive 443 horsepower twin turbo you know these are fascinating automobiles there are cars obviously that have more horsepower in the old days 440 horsepower would have been unbelievable and it's still incredible the thing that makes this different is the precision i'm not a gun guy but a friend of mine collects shotguns and things and he has a holland and holland shotgun and when you hold that just the way it snaps shut just the way it feels just just heavy enough to have weight but still i'm just a man and that's the feeling you get from this this has absolutely the best electric steering rack i've ever seen in a car and the fun part about it is a lot of times well porsche's in a weird place if they make something that doesn't look like a 911 people go after them if they make something new it's never quite as popular i like the 911 because this is every year is a constant improvement on the year before whatever little thing bothered you about last year's model it's fixed on the next year's model precision is really the key element here i mean look at these shunt lines there's no manufacturer that's that consistent i mean you could barely get a mcdonald's single patty hamburger through there that's how that's how tight that is that's pretty amazing there are cars that impress you with just their horsepower this impresses you as a whole complete automobile if you've never driven an automobile like this you have no idea what you're missing because it really is a unique experience it feels like it's solid ability it's from one piece this is the all-wheel drive model i prefer the rear wheel drive model myself it's a little bit lighter it's maybe a tenth of a second faster but i don't think you could really tell the difference but the other thing i like about porsche is even though they are super cars and hyper cars or whatever you want to call them they're also just cars and people use them year-round i mean i have friends with snow tires on their portion when they're using the winter i don't know anyone that puts snow tires on their enzo or their lamborghini it they just don't you know this is something you can use for whatever purpose you want you know i love the fact that porsche owners brag about how many miles their cars have on them as opposed to a lot of owners who go well i've got a an enzo with 12 miles well it's pretty impressive you know i meet people all the time with 60 70 80 100 and something thousand miles on it i mean i've got a 911 and i had 125 000 on it when i got it and we rebuilt it and resto modded a little bit took it up to 2.5 and four plug head and a few other things but it's still basically what it is this has the classic water-cooled version of the traditional 911 flat six you know what's funny to me and maybe it's just psychological the one thing i like about my early 911 is when i drive it i hear the fins and the cylinder head sort of ringing you know you hear that kind of sort of sound that you get that metallic sound that comes with a flat boxer engine like this actually you know where boxer comes from a lot of people ask me about that people think oh they call it a boxer engine because it's flat and it fits in a box no that's not what it means at all the boxer engine comes in the fact that the con rods they are opposed and they're like this so it's like like two boxers fighting that's sort of where the the concept of the boxer engine comes from just one of those useless facts that we throw in occasionally uh that's what's interesting to me it's this is about as far from my 1971 911 t as you could get yet when i get into it it still conjures up images and and audio sounds it to me it sounds like an air-cooled motor i know it's not i know it's a water-cooled very modern engine but it still has that traditional porsche sound it's also the only rear engine car sold in america which is kind of interesting to me because when i was going out there were tons of rear engine cars this is uh this is the only one sold by rear engine that means the engine is behind the axle which traditionally i guess if you're designing a car from scratch is not the best way to go but you know this is a classic case of evolution over revolution i guess it's just evolved and they've made it better and it's become a unique automobile in itself it's it's really the precision is what makes this car every little piece is improved over the year before i mean the body shape stays relatively the same although from year to year a lot of times i know body panels are interchangeable because the changes are so subtle let me show you how this target top works it's actually quite clever this is sort of a holdover from the original target top that they've had for years so that's not brand new uh i myself prefer just a coupe um this seems like added weight to me but it's it's quite clever let's take a look here let me unlock this thing see when you press when you press the unlock see the handle comes out and i will i will put the top down show you how this works there you go it doesn't get more german than that kind of reminds me of my 66 lincoln four-door with you know with that top ticket yeah porsche wouldn't like that comparison but okay so now you have basically a convertible you got the target top here which is a rollover bar as well i don't think this is a whole lot heavier than it needs to be i don't think it's excessive but if you're someone like me i'm more concerned about just the flat out performance of the car but these are all luxury features uh the nice thing i like about this interior is it's extremely comfortable it's not those buttock raccaros and i'm sitting like this and i i just like this it's a nice comfortable driving car and again precision is the key word you really have to drive this car and this steering rack is unbelievable the rear wheel steering i don't think the rear wheel moves more than maybe what a quarter of an inch or something but you you get on a freeway off ramp and you could be going three times the speed which of course would be wrong and just get right through there i mean uh it handles and drives it feels like it's made out of billet that's that's what i kind of like you know a lot of manufacturers every two or three years they come out with a brand new car and that's okay too whereas this is just constant subtle improvement and i've never driven a porsche yet that wasn't actually faster than what it said in the book a lot of people exaggerate whereas uh porsche underplays it the only thing i don't care for is this little sort of shifter sticking up out of the center console i don't know it annoys me but that's really my only my only complaint and plus the radio you need a phd to figure out how to play a song but that's okay but you know that's more my age than anything else i think younger people adapt to that better than i do you just want to keep driving that's sort of the great part about this i don't know how you could have this car and not put 25 000 miles on it in the first year just because it's such an enjoyable place to be you've got all you've got the usual normal you got sport you got wet weather you got sport plus you got all the you can you can tune it to exactly what you want i love the steering wheel exactly the right size you know so much thought has gone into this car because what it is it's just constant improvement that's what uh that's the real key here it's not you're not redesigning the the entire car every year you know well that being said there is a manual option and this is my favorite thing the manual option is a no-cost extra which i think is fantastic you know when i was a kid you always paid extra for the automatic and the manual was standard and then it then it turned around and all of a sudden all the manual's going to cost you more but with porsche you can either get the automatic or the amount i would choose the manual i really don't care if i like the involvement you know the again it comes down to precision it comes down to that feeling you get it's like winding the spring of a really well made expensive watch i love the fact that you you click through each gear i know the automatic is faster and all that kind of stuff but when i go for a drive i like the enjoyment i like to be involved in the car and to me two-wheel drive with a manual box that's the ultimate involvement because you can feel the car move around a little bit more this thing is so incredibly stable with the four-wheel drive the only weird thing is you really can't see the engine in this thing you know let me let me show you how this works when you want to check your fluids and stuff you hit this switch here okay there we go oh [Music] see that comes up and then you get out and you over here and you can check your uh well you can see it right there there's oil and water and whatnot which see the target well it really covers it but you can't see look i know there's an engine in there okay i i know it's back there i've seen the blueprints you just can't really get to it i i do like the fact that i can put my hands on a motor again psychological but that's pretty much uh yeah that seems as an old school old school kind of car guy that seems really odd to me so that's sort of funny but that's basically what does this clam shell then goes back down again let's put it down let's see what kind of trunk or frank we have you know there's a really funny ad i don't know if i think the porsche files have seen it some stupid uh like clothing designer and they were selling women's clothes and had this woman packing for a trip and she had a 911 with that open and she's starting to put a suitcase back there and i'm going who doesn't know that how do you shoot that it was like the funniest ad i'd ever seen because obviously they had no clue they just assumed people would think oh whatever but it was kind of funny all right let's open the trunk and see what that looks like all right it's fairly deep i think two people could go on a trip in this thing and carry enough luggage yeah that's fine that's about average size pretty much par for the course that way it's not exceptional but i think you've got more than enough room in there let's shut this and we'll take it for a ride again that's what really sold me on this car was the drive as you'll find out in just a minute you know because i you get a little jaded doing this job you drive a lot of cars and i like porsches i've got a couple of them myself they're fantastic cars i just haven't driven a brand new one and like this in quite a while and again that electric steering rack it really is it really is pretty amazing come on let's take it for a spin and we'll show you what we're talking about here i mean obviously you can go on the porsche website and get all the of the torque figures i think it's 390 foot-pounds and brakes and weight i think this weighs about probably 3 600 pounds you know and it's also as ridiculous as this sounds a four-seater i mean there are back seats assuming you have really if you have children that can sit in a teacup they'll be very comfortable back here yeah but i never think it was porsche as being a four-seater car but it is and uh it's uh it's just a very comfortable place to be let's start it up and of course you can adjust the noise level adjust i'll put it on sport plus and uh let's take it for a spin you know there are so many electronic features on this thing you got this sport response i i don't know if i have this right because i'm i've just got the car here there's no uh porsche person here to explain this to me but you've got i think it says sport response when you put it into sport plus and you hit this button you have 20 seconds of well unbridled enthusiasm i guess you'd call it i'm not sure whether it spools the turbos for you or what it does but it gives you additional power they don't tell you how much power you just get quite a bit more for lunch control and it pulls really hard uh yeah it's it's amazing hear it blip the throttle when you down shift i'll be curious to get your comments on the target top if you like it or not i would prefer just the standard hard top maybe with the sunroof it was not much heavier um it's interesting but i it doesn't seem as pure i mean to me i think of a porsche sports car as pure and as light as possible and as much performance as possible like i would always leave it in sport plus i don't think i'd ever put it in in the normal mode but that's just me it just makes all the right noises you know when you turn the turn signal it's the time just clicks in you know i always remember those uh chryslers from the 70s the k cars and whatnot when every time you put on the uh the left or right turn signal it's like you're breaking a chicken leg like just like this crack all the time you always felt like oh did i did it bust off inside there i always used to make me laugh he's a crack whereas this just has a nice sharp click to it which is again it's it's it's all how a car makes you feel and this makes you feel like you're the greatest driver in the world even though i'm not i'm not a race car driver i i enjoy driving cars and i enjoy driving quickly i don't drive crazy you know when i get on the freeway and just go nuts with the thing but i just like the feeling of of confidence that it gives me i mean you can easily take an exit ramp at three times the speed on the exit ramp with this thing and this rear wheel steering i mean it just it's like right now you know the wonderful thing is porsche builds these guys for people who appreciate those those small differences like i've said a million times i know nothing about wine you could give me a ten thousand dollar bottle of wine i don't know just tastes like wine to me i guess but when i drive this i can really feel the difference between this as i said i'm in sport plus right now i'll push that button and get my 20 seconds of fame let's see what happens here yeah oh yeah yeah that's pretty good quite impressive yeah no i'm not a porsche expert there are guys like patrick long and all those guys uh come to the garage and they're just porsche well i mean they're forced geniuses these guys know everything about it i to me i just compared to other cars and it's uh it's right at the top of the list it really is i can't imagine having one of these and damaging it and being able to repair it to the level of the factory you know what i mean it almost seems like it would be a total all the time everything on this car fits so perfectly the shunt lines i mean i just it's just incredible i couldn't imagine damaging this and giving it to a collision repair shop to fix and coming back like brand new it almost seems like it would be impossible also i'm told this model has a lot less steel in it it probably has i think the earlier cars are like 50 steel this is like a third steel a lot of aluminum a lot of magnesium yeah carbon fiber just all the lightweight fabric uh lightweight materials rather as all the classic porsche little clues you know the key on the left side that goes back to le mans so you could start the car and move the gear shift at the same time [Music] yeah that eight speed is pretty amazing you can never shift as quickly as this doesn't that's okay though and i can't say enough about the steering wheel just the way the size the feel it's really excellent probably one of the best stock steering wheels i've ever felt not too many buttons on it so it's not overdone okay foot on the break take it up about four grand hit the button and see what you let go yeah launch control works you know i really use launch control but in this car it's so easy so many cars you got to do this and pat your head and do this hold down the radio button while adjusting the clock yeah there's so many stupid things you got to do this thing you just kind of put your foot on the brake and the gas at the same time take it up to about four grand hit that button and release and and well you saw how hard it pulls pretty impressive pretty impressive and the great thing is you can do it in this car all day long you know a lot of cars you know after half a dozen launch controls uh-oh what's that noise oh something broke uh is this thing no no well i want to thank portia for dropping this off with the garage i i didn't have a whole lot of literature on it i tried to tell you what i knew and what my seat of the pants impression of the car is uh i think you'll be as impressed as i was and again we didn't we don't have my crew we can't go to a track i'm just driving it the way i think the average guy would drive it on the street especially if they owned it you know i don't like when they when i get a car from manufacturing people beat the hell out of the thing you know because that's not what you do to your own car i like to drive this the way i drive my own car and this it doesn't get much better than this so if you're a porsche fan i think you'll like it and if you're not a ford fan i think you will be so anyway we'll see you guys next week thanks bye-bye [Music] uh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 401,691

Rating: 4.9258103 out of 5

Keywords: Jay, Lenos, Garage, Porsche, Targa, 911, 4S, twin turbo, boxer engine, Patrick Long, German cars, sports cars, car porn, car nerd, AWD, rear wheel steering, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, classic cars, vintage cars, super cars, cars, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, 2021 Porsche 911, 2021 Porsche 911 Targa, 2021 Porsche Targa 4S, Porsche 911, 2021 Porsche, Porsche 911 Targa, Targa 4S, Porsche Targa 4S, Porsche’s latest Targa, jl garage

Id: TGS8QyheQz0

Length: 21min 51sec (1311 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 19 2020