At California’s Laguna Seca raceway, the Turbo GT managed a lap time of 1min 27.87sec, only just trailing the 1min 26.75sec set by Tesla tuner Unplugged Performance’s radically overhauled Model S Plaid, which ran on non-road-legal Yokohama tyres.
Kevin Giek, who heads up development of all Taycan models, told Autocar that the Turbo GT was something of a personal passion project, carried out separately from the actual GT division, run by Andreas Preuninger.
“It was me and my team. I have a Preuninger for myself,” he said, referring to the hundreds of engineers involved in the new Taycan’s creation. “We managed this together. It was my idea to have GT for electric, but it’s our baby.”
This is as extreme as the Taycan can feasibly get, he added: “You could go a bit further if you used race tyres and throw out more weight, but then it’s not street-legal anymore.”
While the Turbo GT’s acceleration figures and lap times shade nearly every other car that wears a numberplate, Giek is adamant that it remains a true dual-purpose proposition: “You can drive it anywhere you want, but you can also take it on the track.”
Work began in April 2021, only around 18 months after the Taycan was launched and well before the arrival of the facelifted 2024 car, but Giek explained that the Turbo GT could not have been developed using the original Taycan as the basis because its huge power reserves are contingent on the very latest technology.
