The Globe and Mail

Perhaps the best, the most appealing, the most telling view of the 2010 Porsche 911 Turbo is from behind. From there the view is low and wide and powerful.

And, of course, the view from behind the all-wheel-drive 911 Turbo is a common one for the rest of the world – the world not inside this 500 horsepower super sports car. With its twin turbos blowing out 500 horsepower, a 0-100 km/h time of 3.2 seconds and Ceramic Composite Brakes the size of garbage can lids (and optional at $12,050), this is a serious high-performance machine.

The price says it all. The base on my tester is $165,300, but the final car came in at $192,585, including freight. For that kind of money, a real buyer wants not only a ride that carves apexes and flies down straights, but also makes sense for a Saturday night out with the significant other.

This is what separates Porsche in general terms from all its rivals. The cars are fast and handle beautifully, but they do not punish you in stop-and-go traffic. In particular, the 911 Turbo is arguably the ultimate everyday supercar.

In meandering drives through and around the city, what comes through are such things as seat comfort (firm but not painful), suspension tuning (firm but not painful), PDK transmission programming (nice, clean shifts under modest throttle) and an updated navigation (with an easy-to-manage touch screen).

Sure, you can go like lightning in a Nissan GT-R, and spend less than half the money ($98,900 base) in doing so. But this is a brittle ride at school-zone speeds. You cannot live with the GT-R on a day-to-day basis.

Or what about the Lamborghini Gallardo ($260,000)? Loud and flamboyant. If you want to be noticed, fill your boots. The Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 ($128,515) is a 638-horsepower brute, but like the Lambo, it’s loud and flamboyant.

Only the Audi R8 5.2 FSI stands out as a completely well-rounded supercar on par with the 911 Turbo. The Audi is the audacious newcomer, while the Porsche is tried and true – though updated for 2010.

You guessed it: the 2010 Porsche 911 Turbo is more of everything: more comfortable, more powerful, more capable, more fuel-efficient and only a little more expensive. The perfect storm of fast-car joy.

At the heart of it all is the Turbo’s powerplant. Sit down before I tell you this. Okay? Seated? It makes an astounding 132 horsepower with each litre of displacement, or 83.3 hp per cylinder. GULP!

Each cylinder is slightly smaller than the size of a typical 750 ml bottle of wine and yet the flat six-pack makes 500 hp and 516 lb-ft of torque. This engine is based on the recently released 3.8-litre flat-six in the 2009 911 Carrera S.

Here, the twin-turbocharged six-cylinder is essentially a brand-new unit from the bottom up. While variable turbine geometry (VTG) debuted on the 997-I Turbo (2006-’09), the new 997-II Turbo’s closed-deck block now features direct fuel injection (DFI), first used on the V8-powered 2008 Cayenne (I know, I know, all this sounds like a deep dive into the worst kind of automotive geek-speak, but we’ve got to document these things).

If you know high-horsepower cars, you’ll also be happy to read that the Turbo engine uses an integrated dry-sump oil lubrication system with six oil-scavenge pumps. This system keeps the engine lubricated even if you’re pulling major Gs on a race track and we first saw it on the water-cooled 911s in 1999. But never on the 911 Turbo, until now.