The trip to Finland gave me the unique opportunity to drive all 4 cars back to back albeit in unusual and somewhat extreme conditions. All the cars had winter tyres with 4.5mm spikes. All the cars had the sport selector on the steering wheel and for me this worked really well as we were constantly trying different settings. The Turbo and Turbo S are only just coming to the market. The first thing I would say about the C2 and C4 is that if you were not told they were turbocharged you would not know as throttle response is very good. They drive well but are for my taste a little too quiet for reasons we all understand (the Turbo suppresses the noise) and for me the sports exhaust would be a must have option. The C2 feels very nimble in a drift and it is very easy to provoke understeer so you need quick hands. The C4 needs a different technique to drift common to all 4 wheel drive cars but the car still feels quite light and obviously the 4 wheel drive gives better grip. To drift a 4 wheel drive car properly you have to enter the corner sideways, use very little countersteer as the car starts to slide and then use lots of throttle and very little steering. This can seem quite alien to any one who likes to hang the back out on a 2 wheel drive car.
When you step into the Turbo the car immediately feels more substantial and when you press the go pedal there is so much more there. The wider wheels and tyres means it has more grip and you have to put more energy into the flick to get it to drift and the control the car on the throttle with less steering input. For dry road use this means the car has a lot more grip
When you start to drive the Turbo S at first it seems similar to the Turbo BUT it has PDCC which makes the car much more stable (it was very noticeable) and so to drift the car you really have to be aggressive with the flick and the throttle and use very little steering as just a little countersteering kills the drift. What this means for normal road use is this car will be very stable and have mountains of grip which I guess is what Porsche intended for such a fast car that any one can buy. It was interesting that all my serious OFFS were in the Turbo S. I guess I have opposite lock in my DNA and given the speeds we were carrying just a little too much opposite lock and a squirt of the throttle(especially in sports plus) killed the drift and shot you into the snow bank. Of course for normal road use you don't enter the corner in a 90 degree drift and so I would say this is a very fast and safe car which is a joy to drive but don't exceed the cars limits unless you really know what you are doing especially if you have the PSM off as the car will bite. The grunt of the Turbo S meant we were approaching some of the corners at 150KPH with PSM off which on sheet ice is pretty quick and getting the car completely sideways approx 20 yards before the APEX , waiting until you could see the Apex and then gunning it onto the next straight.
I enjoyed driving all of these cars and they are all very good in their own way. It comes down to what you prefer and what you want to pay. For me the Turbo charging in the C2 and C4 works well but the Turbo and Turbo S feel more substantial, are a lot faster and have a lot more grip. I was surprised how much I enjoyed driving the Turbo S and it would be my choice of the 4 cars here but it is a beast and overall the GT 3 RS was still the most enjoyable drivers car which will be the subject off a separate post
I forgot to mention 2 guys in my group owned Gen 1 Turbo S and they were not sure the improvements in the Gen 2 were sufficient to get them to upgrade. Its clearly a step forward but a modest one. I guess its difficult to improve an already great car
This video shows one of the instructors I had driving a Turbo and gives a good idea of what the stages were like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxKTtaFyliI
