Thank Frankel it's Friday: Which is the best Porsche RS?

I’d gone there to try the brand new GT3 RS but when they threw open the door of the hangar at Ronaldsway airport where it had been stowed overnight, it was like gazing upon the promised land. There appeared to be GT3 RSs of every generation littered about the place. ‘Could they be driven?’ I enquired. ‘There’d not be much point in bringing them if they could not’ came the reply.

The term GT3 RS has been part of the automotive enthusiast’s lexicon for 15 years now, so it was the original 996 version I tried first. In isolation it felt terrific: quick, lucid and responsive as it flew across the island. A decade and a half ago I remember it felt like something of a game-changer and it’s not hard to see why. Yes, it was hard work and it would probably have been even more at home on a race track, but this was the car that provided the template for all subsequent GT3 RSs to follow.

That said, transferring to the second generation GT3 RS from the subsequent 997 series felt like a simply enormous step. Yes the car was quite a lot quicker in every aspect of performance, but that’s not what grabbed my attention and did not let go. It was how accessible and easy it was. You don’t fight this car: on the contrary, it is entirely on your side. While you might step of out its forebear interested and impressed, the 997 left me little less than besotted. The car is eight years old now and despite the fact I depend on an ability to find fault in all things automotive, there is almost nothing on that car I would change. In fact, make that nothing. It’s one of those cars that makes you wonder if even the people in charge of creating it really knew how unbelievably good it would turn out to be.

The leap from there to the first generation of 991 GT3 RS – the one before the current car – is interesting. What Porsche appeared to want to design was a much more capable track car and put a far greater gap between it and the more road orientated standard GT3. And it succeeded. I’ve driven these cars on the track and they are mesmeric, but out here on the island it still didn’t feel that far from its comfort zone. No, it was not quite as playful as the 997, not least because like all modern 911s it has electrically assisted power steering rather than the hydraulic set up of earlier cars, but it still devoured the Isle of Man seemingly at a single gulp.

And then I drove the brand new GT3 RS. It looks very similar to the previous car, but it is anything but. I can think of no fully homologated standard production car from any mainstream manufacturer that is more hardcore than this, save Porsche’s own GT2 RS which is basically this car with a twin turbo engine. There were times when even the open roads of the Isle of Man still felt restrictive to this car. It’s a machine you have to drive with restraint because to let it completely off the leash out here, where there may be no speed limits but there are a few other road users and millions of sheep, would be completely insane. It needs a race track and colleagues who have driven one on a circuit tell me it is out of this world. And I believe them.

So what, I wondered, would Porsche’s first RS road car feel like after that lot? Hiding in the corner of the hangar was an immaculate 1973 2.7 Carrera RS, the true daddy of all them all. I was not expecting much beyond quaint and charming.

But it was incredible. You notice first the dimensions. It’s so small it actually has the effect of making the roads seem much wider so you can take a line through bends without ever crossing the centre line. Then you notice the steering: Porsche has made some of the best power assisted steering systems of all time, but none that can compare with the purity of the messages coming back through the unassisted helm of the 2.7. And finally there is the mass or lack thereof: Weighing hundreds of kilos less than even the lightest of the GT3 RSs, it felt so nimble and on its toes I enjoyed driving it as much as any other car here, despite its modest performance, awkward gearbox, limited braking ability, unsupportive seats and crazy ergonomics.

What can we conclude from this all? The current range of Porsche GT3 RS cars count among the finest road and track cars ever produced. But they owe it all to the original. Few cars truly deserve the title ‘icon’, but the 2.7 Carrera RS is unquestionably one of them.