"You should never meet your heroes", they say...

Ever since I was old enough to recognize and associate cars with something fascinating - I was about as tall as your average garden gnome at that time - I was obsessed with the brand carrying the prancing horse in their emblem. No, it was not the brand you are thinking of seeing these pictures, but the one with the fast, red cars from Maranello. How can you not love Ferrari as a child? Red, loud, extrovert machines, running up and down the beach boulevard in our favorite Italian holiday destination. All these Testarossas, 348s and what have you were just about the most incredible objects I ever witnessed. Porsche? Nope, thank you, not for me. Not loud enough, too subdued looking.

However, over the last 10 years things have changed for me. While I still have a soft spot in my heart for machinery from Maranello, it's fair to say I am now a massive fan of the brand Porsche. My admiration was pretty much initiated by a brief shotgun ride in a 997.2 GT3. Just an utterly eye-widening experience that was. Never would I have imagined these rear-engined sportscars from Stuttgart being this explosive, poised, aurally entertaining and downright exiting. It just blew me away straight out of the box. Ever since I had this encounter, I knew I wanted to drive a 911 myself at one point. Of course, I would be more than happy enough to have a go in a standard Carrera, which I did a couple of times already. However, my biggest goal was always to put my hands on a real Porsche GT product. In the overall Porsche lineup or shall I better state, in the overall car world, the GT3RS is my ultimate hero-car. Why? Because it represents Porsche, especially "Porsche Motorsport", in its purest, distilled form. Just unfiltered racing heritage put on display, in the most precise and tactile package on offer. Wide body, lightweight materials everywhere, a big wing, a roll cage, and a screamer of a naturally aspirated 4-litre flat-6 engine. Is there a better combination out there? Don't think so.

After hunting for opportunities for years, I finally found one - a 991.2 RS "Weissach" - to have a go in. Not only was it a brief stint just somewhere, but I had an epic mountain-pass blast through the Austrian-Slowenian "Karawanken" in it. To top the whole experience off, I had an Austrian Rallye icon on the passenger seat. I'm not sure if it can possibly get any better than that. So it's fair to say, this is real bucket list stuff for me.

The drive kickstarted with meeting Achim at a local café in southern Corinth. He is a super sympathetic bloke, and of course a petrolhead like me. Could have nearly forgotten what's about to come just talking car stuff and listening to him narrating about the times when he was racing guys like Makkinen and Solberg in the WRC.

But now to the center of attention. Just walking up to this machine is something else. The overall presence it has got is something to behold. It screams racecar from about 10 miles away. The paint-job for sure helps with that. With its one-piece carbon buckets, roll cage, and alcantara steering wheel with "noon marker", it also achieves to feel special from the inside. Another highlight: Observing the massive rear wing and flared arches from the side-, and rear-view mirrors. The specialness continues once you fire it up and listen to its very unusual sounding idle. The engine sounds so mechanical. You don't ever hear noises like that from any other car. It's a feast on the senses, right from the start.

After getting strapped in, we already headed towards the first section of twisties. Initial impressions? Well, what becomes apparent from the moment you gain a little momentum is, how absolutely unfiltered and raw the car feels. The rather stiff suspension, even without having touched the "suspension mode" articulates every road undulation towards your backside. The steering wheel jiggles in your hands, telling you exactly what's going on underneath those massive front tires. You feel immediately connected to the car in a way you never will with modern cars bar special super-lightweights. Attacking corners a little more aggressively makes you recalibrate your driving style for the first time. The car reacts so instantaneously on turn-in, you are always turning in a little early at first, forcing you to slightly open the steering and turn in again. I didn't realize that until Achim told me. It took me a good half an hour into the drive to sort that out. I literally had to force myself to turn in marginally later than I'm used to. In general, everything about this car instantly feels telepathic, every input being transmitted without the slightest delay. It starts with the razer sharp steering, continues with the racecar-like throttle response of that naturally aspirated powerplant combined with its lightening-quick-reacting double-clutch gearbox, and ends with the wonderfully natural feeling carbon ceramic brakes. The feel of every control in this car is bar none, period. The whole car feels like an extension of your body from the get-go.

Once I had fully acclimatized myself, it was time to tap a little deeper into its motorsport-derived 4-litre naturally aspirated engine. Engine is maybe a bit of an understatement, it's an event. It offers the kind of throttle response you just don't get in a turbocharged car. Power-delivery is very linear and super-approachable. Below 3500RPM, it doesn't exactly feel quick. But from around 3500 on, you get a very rich, and surprisingly torquey punch, pushing you along very briskly and with great serenity. Above 5000 it already starts to properly take off, until it finally explodes into its upper 3000 revs, right until its utterly ridiculous redline at 9000 forces you to pull the upshift paddle. The noise it emits while doing so sounds pure racecar. There is no better way to put it, even though I have used the word "racecar" probably too often already. It already sounds very purposeful at lower revs, hardens into a very throaty tone through the mid-range, until it screams its heart out towards the top-end. Its spinetingling, bewitching, beautifully organic, unfiltered flat-6 howl still sits in my head, and probably will never leave. It's that sensational. Did I feel short-changed because it has no turbos? No, absolutely not. I would take this over a GT2 RS every day of the week. It offers more than enough torque, better drivability and usability, explosive top-end power, and on top arguably one of the most glorious soundtracks to ever come out of exhaust pipes. Of course you have to work the engine a touch harder than a turbo-engine. But it just rewards you with a much more emotional, connected experience than any modern turbo-setup will ever be able to deliver. And on top it is still capitol letters FAST.

Deeper into the drive, as we wound our way up the "Karawanken's Seebergsattel" - fantastic piece of road by the way - I got into a wonderful flow with the car. One switchback after another - it finally came apparent that, despite being pushed along by this sensational masterpiece of an engine, the RS's true standout features are its simply phenomenal chassis and handling. First of all, you don't simply go around corners in this, you dissect them. In the process of doing so, the car acts as an incredibly trustworthy, and communicative scalpel. I already went into the feels and fizzes its chassis and steering give you. It's simply providing you with all the feedback you need whilst braking into a corner, turning in, maintaining a proper line, and accelerating out again. The kind of feedback that honestly feels alien to a person used to driving modern, big, heavy, and insulated cars. Turn-in? Brutally sharp. Body control? Sublime. Cornering grip? Seemingly infinite and simply unexploitable for your average "driving-Joe" like me, especially on a public road. Traction out of tight corners is unflappable, almost all-wheel-drive-like. The whole car feels so light, nimble and up on its toes all the time, even when you are taking it easy. The big carbon ceramic brakes are mercilessly effective and don't feel over-assisted. The whole set up feels like it was created on a racetrack, and perfected on the road. As cheesy as it may sound like, but there is simply no better way to put it. Just absolute masterclass, pinnacle automotive engineering.

Any other takeaways I haven't mentioned yet? Well, mostly that the overall package feels so cohesive, and honed to perfection, to a point where it is pretty hard to comprehend. You are looking for things that are not on point, but you just don't find any. Once you are familiarized with its telepathic responses, you can get into such a brilliant flow with it, the car being always on your side and showering you with confidence, urging you to push a little harder.

Brake, downshift, turn-in, accelerate, upshift, repeat - fully indulged in the process of piloting this magnificent automobile. This went on for miles and miles. Hard not to get carried away, and all too easy to miss the beautiful scenery that surrounded us. We wound our way down the Slowenian side of the mountain range, then went through picturesque valleys, strictly sticking to the rather draconically enforced speed limits, until we went up the faster sweeping "Loiblpass" to finally head back into Austria again. A few tunnels offered the chance to exploit its monstrous soundtrack a couple more times again, before we finally headed back down towards the start and destination of the trip.

If anything like a "Driving Nirvana" exists, this was about as close as it can possibly get. Fantastic, wonderfully flowing, abandoned roads, and simply stunning scenery, explored in a car that is the epitome of a modern day high precision driving machine. Pure perfection - the only thing that comes into my mind when I think about it. I went into this with sky-high expectations. It's fair to say the RS not only delivered, but overachieved. It's also hard to think of any other car on this planet, that can touch it in terms of all the intangibles that make a great driver's car. A bold statement, but prove me wrong. So in case I can give you any advise on paying attention to old adages - don't take them too seriously, just go out and meet your heroes if you have the chance to. Otherwise, you'll never know what would have and could have. For me however, there is one big caveat, that could potentially give this saying some meaning after all. After having driven this car, everything I will ever drive in the future will feel dull, disconnected and imprecise. So thank you, big-winged, lizard green monster for ruining every future car experience I will ever have in my life.

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