THIS IS FIAT PANDA 4X4 COUNTRY. IF ITALY IS shaped like a boot, we’re near its first metatarsal, just inland from the coast, where hairpins coil like bunched snakes and deep potholes lie in wait to strike. The sun baked tarmac is scarred, pockmarked and lined with verdant, view-blocking overgrowth. Many of the remote towns and villages predate the invention of the car by hundreds of years, so negotiating the bottlenecked streets in their centres occasionally requires the door mirrors to be folded in.
That’s why every other car parked higgledy-piggledy along the gutters and verges, ambling along ahead of us, or framed neatly by the carbonfibre roll-cage in the rear-view mirror, is a classic Panda 4x4. (Most of them look to be in fine fettle too; the Mediterranean climate is obviously good for cars’ health as well as people’s.) Not the kind of place, on the face of it, for testing a £230k limited-edition sports car with magnesium wheels. But this is no ordinary sports car.
The 911 S/T is Porsche’s 60th birthday present to the 911 itself and to its fans, although only a select, well-heeled bunch of them: 1963 S/Ts will be built, referencing the year of the 911’s original launch – or the 901’s launch, pre-name-change, if we’re being pedantic. Prices in the UK start at £231,600, making this by
