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Porsche Taycan Turbo GT: There’s now a Taycan for enthusiasts
The Taycan from Porsche remains an insanely fast, great-to-drive, brilliantly built, and practical electric car that has challenged everyone’s preconceptions about EVs, and despite being fully electric, it still looked like a Porsche. Is that about right?
Even in its regular setting, the Porsche Taycan offers real driving pleasure, and while it comes with a full range of options, the newly-revealed Taycan Turbo GT is a force to be reckoned with, but it’s not cheap.
Priced at R5,765,000, the Turbo GT is also available with the Weissach package suitable for track use for the same price. It’s also the most powerful Taycan Porsche has ever built, thanks to a total of 580kW of power, or 769kW with the Attack Mode function, or up to 815kW for two seconds.
That makes the Taycan Turbo GT a silent rocket that can accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in 2.3 seconds or 2.2 seconds with the Weissach package, making it one or two-tenths (depending on the package) of a second faster than the Taycan Turbo S.
Porsche says the Taycan Turbo GT has an EV range of 555km as well as a mountainous torque figure of 1,340Nm.
When it comes to vehicle weight, the Taycan Turbo GT features what Porsche calls intelligent lightweight construction. Weight has been reduced by approximately 75kg compared to the Taycan Turbo S, thanks to the use of carbon fibre for the trims on the B-pillars, the upper shells on the door mirrors, and the side skirt inlays, among other things.
Porsche has also made use of carbon fibre for the full bucket seats with what is said to be a lightweight luggage compartment. The carmaker further opted to delete the electric soft-closing function of the tailgate to further reduce weight.
The Taycan Turbo GT comes standard with the dynamics package, which includes the Porsche Active Ride suspension with GT-specific tuning and 21-inch lightweight forged wheels with relief-milled spokes for additional dieting and improved ceramic brake ventilation.
For enhanced aerodynamics, the models feature an exclusive front spoiler with aero blades and a rear adaptive spoiler, while the track-focused Weissach Package adds air deflector elements on the underbody and a new front diffuser. The rear comes fitted with a fixed rear wing, which generates 220kg of downforce.
Changes even extend to the rear seat that's been removed and replaced with a custom-made, high-quality lightweight carbon cladding with a storage compartment behind the seat shells.
Porsche South Africa confirmed that the order books for these models are open, and the first batch is expected to be available in 2025.
The Porsche Taycan, with its exceptional features and performance, certainly strikes all the right chords for a high-end vehicle. As far as EVs go, the Taycan resonates well with automotive enthusiasts, and the Turbo GT variants, in particular, elevate the driving experience to an even higher level.
As a side note, the Taycan Turbo GT with the Weissach package lapped around the Nurburgring in 7:07:55 seconds, thus making it the fastest electric Porsche to ever do so, dethroning Tesla’s record-breaking time of 7:25:23 set by the Model S Plaid in the process.
