Porsche

Which Porsche to Pick

A Porsche rental covers a wider range than most exotic badges, from a Macan that nobody films to a GT3 RS that everybody does. Rent a Porsche for the drive and the 911 is the answer, in several flavors. Rent one for a coastal weekend for 2 and the 718 Boxster is the answer. Rent one because 4 people and their bags are coming, and the Macan or the Panamera is the answer. It is the sports car rental for the road, not the photograph.

The 911 Carrera is the arrive-without-announcing car. Rear engine, the tach dead center, and a feeling in corners of pivoting around a point behind your hips. The Carrera 4S adds a front axle that hooks up and goes where a rear-drive car asks for care, which makes it the 911 without conditions on a foggy coast morning. The Carrera GTS is the strangest, a hybrid with no electric mode at all, whose battery exists purely so the turbo never lags.

The 911 GT3 RS is nobody's first exotic. A wing the size of a picnic table, 4 dials on the wheel that adjust the dampers, and a flat-six that screams past 8,000 rpm. It is famously hard to buy new, which is part of why people rent it. It has no trunk at all.

The 718 Boxster is the mid-engine roadster, the car whose natural habitat is exactly what you are renting it for. It is entertaining at 45 mph, the roof opens in 9 seconds on the move, and it has a trunk at each end. The Macan and Panamera are the support cars, the airport-to-hotel car for 4 adults and real luggage, and the second car on a 2-car booking.

What a Porsche Says

A slate-grey 911 says something a Lamborghini cannot. It says I do not need your approval, I need the approval of the people who understand what this is. Strangers read a Porsche as successful rather than rich, money that does not need to argue. Civilians see a nice Porsche. Car people read the exact spec from 50 feet and give a nod. In Los Angeles the badge is common enough to be invisible, which is the point for an arrival and the weakness for a spectacle. Valets treat it as routine, which is precisely what the person who books a 911 is paying for.

The GT3 RS is the exception. A Carrera gets a glance. The RS gets filmed, because the wing is legible at 50 feet to someone who knows nothing about cars.

Where the Precision Comes From

Everything in the cabin is angled at the driver. The rev counter sits in the center because, in Porsche's words, it counts what counts. The start switch is on the left of the wheel. Press the button in the middle of the mode dial and the car gives you 20 seconds of maximum attack, sharpest throttle, optimum gear, boost pre-spooled, then silently returns to whatever you were in.

The 911 puts the engine behind the rear axle, which is why it hooks up out of a corner where a front-engine car lights its tires, and why the feeling is rotation rather than fear. The Boxster puts the engine behind your shoulders instead, so the balance is available at legal speed. The GT3 RS hangs its wing from swan-neck mounts so the working underside stays clean, flattens it on a straight at the push of a button, and lets you re-valve the dampers from the steering wheel while moving.

Porsche Rentals Across Southern California

Southern California has the roads a Porsche was built to explain itself on. Angeles Crest Highway from La Canada up to Newcomb's is the 911 road, 2 hours of switchbacks with the engine behind you. Ortega Highway between San Juan Capistrano and Lake Elsinore is the Orange County version. Palomar Mountain is the San Diego version. Pacific Coast Highway through Laguna and Malibu is the Boxster's road, roof down, at exactly the speed the road allows. The Macan and Panamera do the boring miles between all of it.

We deliver Porsches across Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, the Inland Empire and Palm Springs, to hotels, residences and the curb at LAX, SNA, BUR, LGB, ONT, SAN and PSP. Porsche rentals run from $295 to $1,695 a day depending on the car, with the Macan and Boxster at the lower end, the 911s in the middle and the GT3 RS at the top. Multi-day and weekly bookings lower the daily rate.

Drive a Porsche

You sit low with the beltline high, and the tach fills the view. Twist the switch on the left. On a 911 the first thing you feel is that the back of the car is where the weight is, a sense of pivoting from behind your hips in a corner, and the second is that it grips out of the corner harder than you were braced for. The steering is quick without being nervous. In traffic it is just a car. On a clear road it becomes the reason.

The GT3 RS is the surprise. It is easy in traffic, light steering at low speed, busy but never crashy over bumps, and then in the mid-range the flat-six howls, and at the top it screams, and the whole cabin fills with it. Public roads only. Track use is not permitted.