Driving the Porsche 911 Targa 4S and Panamera S E-Hybrid in Singapore

Set against the Kranji War Memorial gate, the Targa 4S cuts a strikingly proud profile.

As a motoring journalist, I get to travel quite often. While it seems glamorous, the reality is that traveling is very stressful if it’s work-related.

I may be out of the country for five days at a time, especially when traveling to Europe, but in reality I’m only on terra firma for less than two of those days. The rest is spent up in the air in cramped, cooped-up economy-class seats, sharing your personal space with strangers and eating airplane food. Strange, but I think I’ve grown an addiction to airline food.

The flip side, of course, is reaching new lands, becoming familiar and ultimately comfortable with these new places.

Singapore is one such destination. I’ve been to this fine city state numerous times.

If you’ve ventured outside shopping-crazy Orchard Road, you’ll actually find a good number of beautiful driving roads. I’ve watched the first-ever night race Singapore Grand Prix way back. I’ve attended the famous Subaru Palm Challenge numerous times, as well as the Singapore Motorshow and a variety of regional events.

On a side note, I’ve become very acquainted with the food in SG, as I like to call it, with everything from hawker places to some of the best fine-dining restaurants throughout the city-state.

I’ve been to SG many times for car-related events, but I’ve never actually driven in SG. I’d spend a few minutes each afternoon in SG’s Orchard Road, oggling at supercars and exotics.

For a car guy, that’s a tough habit to kick, wherever you are in the world. It may sound like a cliché, but a glamorous setting such as Orchard Road best frames supercars and exotics.

So imagine my surprise when Porsche Asia-Pacific invited me and some other journalists to try out the Porsche 911 Targa 4S and Panamera S E-Hybrid in Singapore.

Some of you might be thinking, what’s so special about driving in Singapore? Nothing really outstanding, with its confusing road network (continually evolving and changing). And coming from an LHD market, driving an RHD car there can be a truly daunting experience.

The 911 Targa S had a more interesting route planned. We were basically going up and down Singapore’s coastline, starting at our Crowne Plaza hotel near Changi Airport then going off to Seletar Airport, which is where you land if you have your own private jet.

Seletar is a smaller, less busy airport compared to Changi (which was already building its fourth terminal, compared to Naia which is honestly a joke for international standards, but has thankfully been improving), but the road network going through it was impressive: wide, well-organized, and freshly paved and laid.

The Targa’s beautiful lines are best enhanced with the roof down.

Afterward we headed out to Kranji War Cemetery, which honors Malaysia’s and Singapore’s heroes who fought during  World War II, and finally to Upper Thomson Road, which played host to the original Singapore Grand Prix in 1961.

We also passed through the former Singapore International Airport, now known as the Paya Lebar Air Base, and a very long stretch of road that our driving host Karl Daruwalla from Porsche Asia-Pacific told us would be the place to go if we felt like pushing our luck and testing Singapore’s speed limits.

Not that we did. Promise.

Because traffic is also quite bad in Singapore, the drive (plus a few breaks along the way) took us an entire day considering we only drove less than 200 kilometers.

But before heading back to the hotel, I had to make one detour: a drive through Orchard Road. SatNav set and our toll card still full, we ventured to Singapore’s ritziest, classiest neighborhood for a slow casual drive, and with the Targa’s roof down, of course.

What followed was sheer bliss: We felt what it was like to be driving down Orchard Road while onlookers rubbernecked to admire the Targa’s beautiful lines.

The warmth streaming down and the noise that we could clearly hear permeating through the alfresco cabin was truly memorable. It’s truly a different experience walking down Orchard Road versus driving down Orchard Road.

It was a very short 15 minutes of fame—literally, with the heat suddenly overwhelming, the noise of constant roadwork and construction overpowering, and the time limit set by our hosts cutting this dream drive short.

To put a stamp of finality to our drive, a bellowing raging bull in the form of a Lamborghini Murciélago roadster blowing past us put things in perspective: we needed to return the car ASAP.

The Changi Airport complex is about 45 minutes away from Orchard Road. We closed the roof, set the car in manual mode, and the responsive seven-speed PDK came alive. The Porsche’s flat-six came alive, and before we knew it, all 400 horsepower and 414 Newton-meters of torque scurried us past slower-moving traffic.

While the flat-six might not have a snarl as melodious as an Italian V8, it sounds very real and honest, unlike some sports cars that seem to have exhaust notes that are too perfectly fabricated.

The Targa comes with an all-wheel drive that improves grip, which during our slow-to-medium-speed drive didn’t really account for much as we were too slow to see its benefits.

Arriving at our hotel, we took a few more minutes to admire the Targa’s beautiful lines. The entire rear portion of the canopy is made of high-tempered glass, and lifts up to conceal the fabric roof. It adds significant weight to the 911’s base 1450 to 1555  kilograms. The aluminum B-pillars are a thing of modern sculpted beauty.

These are forged lightweight and super-formed aluminum that help to minimize weight, act as a stiffening structure when locked in place, and just look so Art Deco with its finned/louvered vents on the side.

Though a nod to 911 Targas of the past, it nevertheless looks so timelessly beautiful on the current Targa.

Inside, everything else is as you’d expect in a 911: purposeful, functional, solidly screwed together, and engaging to drive at any speed.

The Targa bridges the gap between the cabriolet with its open-air experience, and the coupe, with a closed-off, more intimate and solid structure.

The glass rear is heavy, making the rear end playful—just as I experienced at the Porsche Sport Driving School in Düsseldorf  last year—but bringing with it a characterful experience from 911s of old.

Someday, I’ll own a 911.