Frisky Business: The Joy of Porsche at the Clark Speedway

Try as we might, throughout the morning, we couldn’t get the image of Tom Cruise’s grinning mug proclaiming: Porsche—there is no substitute. Truth was, we were doing a lot of ear-to-ear grinning ourselves, after we were let loose on the Clark International Speedway with a bunch of Porsches. Which Porsches, you may ask? All of them.

Welcome to the Porsche World Roadshow, a traveling menagerie of the company’s vehicles, meant to showcase their special abilities. PGA Cars, Philippine exclusive distributor, has seen fit to bring in the Roadshow once again, this time at Clark. The Prancing Horse stable (yes, Porsche has one in its logo too) has been expanding, adding to the core sports cars 911, Boxster, and Cayman the infamous Cayenne full-size SUV and Panamera large five-door hatchback. So for this edition of the roadshow, the cars were divided into three groups: the limo group: Cayenne and Panamera; the sports car group: Cayman and the all-new 911; and the off-road group: of course, the Cayenne. There is also a special group of one for the slalom, featuring the Boxster Spyder. The cars come with a specially trained cadre of German instructors who live and breathe Porsche.

First off, the limousine group. The Panamera was a pleasant surprise when we drove it around Clark last year, belying its large and heavy frame with its highly responsive trackside demeanor. This time, the full-sized five-door is joined by the even more massive Cayenne SUV. The instructor wasted no time, taking off in a 911 and expecting us to follow his lines in vehicles that could not possibly follow in any decent manner. The Panamera and Cayenne don’t carry the Porsche badge for no reason. The Panamera gamely followed a fast line around Clark’s short course. For its part, the Cayenne was no slouch either. It leaned into corners, but it felt absolutely confident and stable even when cornering at what should not have been possible for a tall SUV. The Cayenne Turbo, with its 500bhp and massive 700 Nm should have been an unruly beast on the track, but it fed the power to all four wheels with hardly a shrug of its 19-inch wheels. There was even a Cayenne Hybrid in the mix. The Hybrid uses a 3.0-liter supercharged V6 good for 333 bhp and 440 Nm, and combines it with an electric motor with an additional 47 bhp. Total power goes up to 380 bhp and torque to 580 Nm. This was no fuel economy run, so we could hardly use the all-electric mode.

Next up was a slalom session using the Boxster Spyder. The name might sound like a redundancy, but the Spyder looks different thanks to its Speedster-like aerodynamic fairings. A soft top (bikini top, in the instructors’ parlance) clips on via a pair of latches. With its mid-engined chassis, the Boxster was ideal for a slalom, with a pleasingly well-planted feel that was difficult to upset even with our untrained feet and hands. The Spyder features a lowered chassis and 10 additional horsepower from the regular Boxster. Most of our group landed within a 10% range in the slalom timing, a testament to the Spyder’s driver-friendliness.

The moment we were waiting for was seat time behind the new 911. The all-new 911, the seventh generation since the car’s inception in 1963, features 90% new or heavily revised components. You wouldn’t guess just by looking at it, but the car is massively different. It feels smoother and more accessible on the track, while being quite a bit more comfortable. The Porsche GTS was the beast of the sports car group, but the 911 is the car to pick if long-distance touring is in the cards.

This was also borne out on the open road, which was a welcome opportunity to drive the cars other than on the track. With one eye on the speed limit signs, we zipped our way around Clark’s smoothly-paved and mostly traffic-free roads. The bark of boxer engines was particularly entertaining when bounced off fenced areas. The targa top 911, with its sliding glass roof, afforded some pleasantly warm driving.

The afternoon’s surprise was the offroad driving, featuring the Cayenne. We knew that the Cayenne was designed for true offroad capability, but this was our first chance to test just how much so. We started by plunging the Cayenne Turbo into what seemed like a 25-degree banking to test its hill descent control. Then followed a series of classic offroad demonstration maneuvers on the loose dirt and soil around the track. Two-wheels on loose sand, one wheel in the air, climbing up rutted tracks from standstill—the Cayenne ate them all up as much as any supposedly dedicated offroader. The traction was remarkable, needing only a steady press on the accelerator as the all-wheel drive system directed torque to pull the car through.

Capping the day off was a taxi ride through Clark on board one of the sports cars, with one of the instructors behind the wheel. Though we were deprived of any control, this allowed the professionals to let loose, drifting the 911s through the corners with the greatest of ease. At the end of the day, Porsche made believers of us once again. It’s somewhat like preaching to the converted, but a lot of affirmation never hurts.