The Porsche 911 Carrera is a car I could drive for the rest of my life | Thank Frankel it’s Friday

You know, too, that all the mainstream models need to be offered with the choice of open, closed or Targa configuration, and that most will need to provide the option of two or four-wheel drive and some at least both two and three pedal transmissions. Before anyone has so much as picked up an options sheet, the possible number of permutations of ‘standard’ Porsche 911 is already mind-boggling.

So, Oliver, you’re the big cheese, but you trust the guys and girls below you. You’re a busy man, too, because the 911 is just one of six model ranges within your purview. So you’re not going to sit down and spend the next six months nickel ‘n’ diming the precise specification, configuration and settings of each individual 911 model. What you’re going to do instead is ask the man wearing the mantle of ‘Mr 911’ (yes, there is one, and no, sadly, so far as I am aware no woman has yet been given than title) to come up with the hard points of just one car and pitch it to you and the board. Once agreed, you’ll give him a wardrobe full of cash and tell him to go and make it, which is what he’ll do: design just one car.

Of course, he’ll keep in mind the many and disparate directions in which his design will need to be pulled, he will doubtless task teams of the literally thousands of engineers who report to him to work up proposals for each version in tandem, and he’ll make sure the design is protected to ensure there’s space to fit a stowable roof at the back, driveshafts at the front and so on. But the essential design work, the one where the bulk of the time, effort, and money gets spent, is directed towards just one car.

One car. Almost certainly in this case, the base Carrera. The new 911 you buy because you can’t afford the one you actually want. This is the unloved, underappreciated bulb beneath the surface from which all those more powerful, eye-catching – and eye-wateringly expensive – 911s gratefully sprout. For while a Turbo S really couldn’t care less whether Porsche made a GT3 or not, it would care more deeply about the base Carrera because, without it, neither it nor any of its vaunted stablemates would even exist.

And it just so happens I’ve been hanging out in an entry level Carrera for a while now – a car so shorn of goodies the total options spend is less than £1,000. And do you know what? If someone were to say to me, “Andrew, that’s it. You’re never going to drive another modern car again,” I’d not be delighted (in fact, I’d probably be quite put out by the news) but I’d know, too, that there was barely a car in the world I’d rather spend the rest of my life driving. It’s quiet, comfortable, it handles brilliantly, it feel indestructible and it has almost all the equipment I want on it, because things like cruise, seat heater and CarPlay are all standard even on this most meanly specified model. And it’s fast enough for me. I know someone who has recorded a V/box logged 3.54sec 0-60mph run in this least powerful 911 and that’s plenty.

Moreover, so many of the other ‘attributes’ you might pay to add will only make the car worse; a convertible roof or targa top will just make it heavier and floppier, while four-wheel drive adds weight and messes with the handling balance. I don’t want active roll bars or ceramic brakes (just as well as neither is available on this model), and chintzy slivers of carbon trim here and there are about as far from ‘me’ as you can get. Of the options that are available – so not including a limited slip differential or manual gears – the only one I’d really like is the mid-range BOSE sound system, because the standard item makes music sound a bit tinny. But that really is it.

And that’s just an illustration of the more general point I’m trying to make, using the 911 as an example. It holds true for a wildly disparate array of cars over a huge price range. So, next time you’re in the market for a new or newish car, ask not what’s the fastest or most expensive, but which is likely to be the best. Rare indeed is the occasion when they turn out to be one and the same.