I Took Porsche's Manthey Taycan To The Nürburgring. It's A Different Animal: Driven
The Taycan Turbo GT was already wild. The Manthey kit makes it faster, sharper, and considerably more focused.
The origin story goes like this: Porsche creates the Taycan Turbo GT Weissach, one of the more improbable electric vehicles ever cooked up. It’s a 1,032-horsepower four-door sedan with two seats and extensive light weighting (i.e., trash-canning the back seats).
A caged version of this car set some production-car EV lap records—at Laguna Seca, the Shanghai F1 circuit, and, most notably, the Nürburgring Nordschleife. Fast guy Lars Kern did the deed in 7:07.05, annihilating the previous electric champ, the Tesla Model S Plaid, and its time of 7:35.58.
Then something named the Yangwang U9 Extreme, a possibly more unlikely hyper sedan from China, used all 2,978 of its horses to beat the Taycan’s ‘Ring Record, posting up a 6:59.16 (and on cheaty tires, too). There was another crazy-fast Chinese EV in there, too, the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra with Track Package, that posted up a 7:04.98.
As The Dude said—"this aggression will not stand, man." As such, Porsche phoned up its pals at Manthey to help them figure out a solution.
The result is quite literally the wildest electric car currently on sale: the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT Weissach with Manthey Kit. Hell of a catchy name, no doubt, and the prototype was able to cut 12 seconds off the regular Turbo GT Weissach’s lap, and much more importantly, beat the Yangwang by 4 seconds, regaining the EV Nürburgring record.
Lars once again did the fancy driving for Porsche, first working as the development driver for the Turbo GT, and then hand in hand with Manthey to concoct the new world beater. Notably, this is the first Manthey you can actually buy new direct from a Porsche factory, though if you want to retrofit your older Turbo GT with Manthey bits, it’s the same price.
That price, by the way, is $125,510 for the Manthey Kit by itself, or a rather hefty $371,560 according to Porsche.com. To celebrate all this, Porsche flew some journalists out to Germany to drive some ferociously fast Taycans around the greatest track on earth.
Five Laps Of (Green) Hell
Porsche Taycan Turbo GT Weissach
I began the day in a plain old normal Turbo GT Weissach, not that there’s anything remotely normal about such a car. The plan was to do one reconnaissance lap to warm the almost plebian Pirelli P Zero street tires, and get a skosh more familiar with the Nordschleife’s 12-mile length and 150+ corners.
Porsche stuck a local hot shoe named Timo in a 911 Turbo S in front of our pack of four Taycan Turbo GTs. Armed with a walkie-talkie and a lifetime of ‘Ring experience, Timo would guide us around at whatever pace we could manage. I’m fortunate enough to have driven around 50 laps of the Nürburgring before this trip. I wasn’t intimidated, though my last trip had been in 2019. Blame Covid.
Regardless, it was most excellent to be back on the track that myself and most other car lovers know to be the greatest place on earth. I remembered about 60 percent of the corners, though I was a little shocked to notice that eight weeks of record-breaking heat and drought had turned the Green Hell quite brown. Sad.
Reccy lap over, time to get on the gas—er, throttle.
The first fast lap felt great. The all-wheel drive combined with those relatively normal Pirellis put the power down with brutal authority, and the brakes seemed up to the task of whoaing down the 4,900-pound wunder wagen. The first hot lap.
During the second lap, things began to fall apart. The brake pedal got increasingly long and difficult to modulate. I found myself inadvertently getting into the ABS in brake zones where I simply should not have been. What had felt like a fine front end just moments before was suddenly pushing and squealing.
All sense of accuracy seemed to have left the helm. Not only was I truly sweating by lap 4, but the tire screen on the left side of the digital dash was showing bad news. The fronts in particular were roasting away at 169 degrees and 54 pounds of pressure. Not in any way ideal.
I also noticed that the Turbo GT in question already had nearly 12,000 miles on the odometer. Press car years are akin to dog years, quite rough. I later found out this car had actually been on the launch in 2024.
As far as battery consumption went, starting with a 100 percent state of charge, my car was at 90 percent after the first (warm-up) lap, 77 percent after the second, 63 percent, then 43 percent, and finally 22 percent after lap 5. Meaning we were increasing our pace each time while the car simultaneously got more and more difficult to drive.
I made it through the four hot laps fine enough. It wasn’t pretty. I, like the car, was beat.
Riding With The 'Ring God
Back at our base camp, I’m told to put my helmet back on, as I’m about to set off with Lars as his passenger for a hot lap. The purple car is the same car I witnessed him set the record with at Laguna Seca, as it’s the car given to Manthey to be chopped up and turned into the first working prototype, as well as the car used to retake the Nürburgring EV record.
This car is caged, and as we wait, Lars explains that the cage isn’t the advantage people on the internet think it is. There’s no stiffening effect, as modern monocoques reinforced with structural battery packs are plenty stiff. And it adds weight, which Manthey balanced by stripping parts of the interior like the passenger door card.
The cage is purely a safety thing, he explains, emphasizing that he has three little kids at home. Also, we would need a few corners to warm the tires. Those two last bits put me at ease too. By the time we hit the third corner—a 90-degree right-hander where the proper line is putting the two driver-side wheels on brick under full acceleration—I saw Lars sawing rapidly at the wheel and felt the car squirming for traction.
"Not warm yet!" He shouted. Oh boy.
Once the tires did get up to temperature, I was treated to one of the more remarkable passenger experiences of my life. Like all professional drivers I’ve sat next to, the folks who get paid actual money to drive sport such an amazing combination of talent and fearlessness. I’m not sure how to describe what Lars did beyond stating that if aliens came down and compared my lap to his, they would conclude we’re not the same species.
At one point on the back straights leading up to the Carousel, Lars had the Taycan moving so quickly at such high speeds that I could not understand how he was processing what he was seeing. My brain basically switched off.
'Not warm yet!' He shouted. Oh boy.
Then we hit the hard concrete of the Carousel and my helmeted head was violently smacked back and forth between the protruding seat bolsters. I could do nothing but giggle. “You can really attack here,” Lars tells me. “The car loves it.”
After we’re out of the car, I ask him how hard he was actually pushing compared to his 6:55 record lap. He thinks for a second and says, “With no traffic, that would have been a 7:05.” Gulp. I notice that Lars had taken the battery from 99 to 48 percent SOC on just one lap. Double gulp.
The Manthey Difference
Porsche Taycan Turbo GT Manthey Kit
Next up, I’m behind the wheel of a Shark Blue 2027 Manthey kitted-out Taycan Turbo GT. The big changes compared to a "standard" car are that the 265-section front wheels are replaced with the rear wheels off a GT3, 305 across and 21 inches high. The rear wheels are 335 wide and also 21 inches tall. Those massive wheels are wrapped in uber-sticky Pirelli P Zero Trofeo RS rubber.
The front suspension has been tweaked as well to accommodate the larger wheels and tires. Aside from mechanical grip, the other area Manthey focused on was aero. Everywhere you look, the Manthey kit Taycans have surfaces, holes, bulges, slashes, body panels, diffusers, and wings that visually distinguish it from an "ordinary" version. All quite functional, of course, with 1,628 pounds of downforce at 305 kilometers per hour. Which is 190 mph, a speed these cars can easily hit on the Nordschleife’s long front straight. Should be fun!
We set off again, this time Timo, like Lars, telling us that we only had to drive cautiously for the first few corners as the Trofeos heat up real quick. I’m immediately behind Timo on the first lap (the four Manthey’d Taycans switch position at the start of each lap) and yeah, it’s instantly apparent this modded car is much happier being pushed hard around the track than the "regular" one, Weissach or not.
The added grip helps everywhere, and sure, putting Trofeo RSs on the other car would help, but it’s as much the increased contact patch as it is pure tire grip. The brakes feel much better, as does stability through corners. I’m not a race car driver, so I find every time I’m in an aero car, it takes me a lap or three before I’m able to "Trust the downforce." Remember: you’re asking the aero car to do a thing a normal car can’t—it’s a mental game as much as anything else.
I’m not leaning on the aero on this lap, but I’m making mental notes of places where I can forgo the brake pedal and rely on downforce instead.
About two miles into the second lap, Timo tells us to slow down; there’s been an accident somewhere near Höhe Acht, the highest part of the track. I notice the lights around the ‘Ring are flashing red, and all the corner workers are waving red flags. A flashing/waving red, as opposed to a standing one, means that no one is seriously injured. It’s just some bent metal.
With a pace similar to the day’s initial pace, we flow in formation behind Timo’s blue Turbo until we finally see the poor dark gray Boxster GT4 that spun, crunched into something, and is missing its front wheel as a result.
"That could easily be you," my brain tells me as we head back to the four fast chargers keeping the fleet of nine Taycans Porsche brought along fully juiced. It’s going to be a minute before the crash is cleared and the barriers repaired, meaning about an hour. We break for lunch at the Pistenklaus.
It’s instantly apparent this modded car is much happier being pushed hard around the track than the 'regular' one, Weissach or not.
Track now open, I climb back into the blue car. This time it’s just Timo, myself, and a red Manthey piloted by a German journalist named Alex. Everything starts clicking.
The Taycan’s chassis wants more than 45 degrees of input for most corners. Even when the street tires on the other car were fresh, it just seemed like too much steering angle. Hard to be precise, and I found myself correcting my input several times per corner. By contrast, the 305-section fronts and the rethunk suspension geometry of the Manthey car love the big steering angles the car demands.
There’s a noticeable increase in precision, with the result being you stop thinking about the car and begin concentrating on the track. I was no longer thinking about the long brake pedal; I was thinking about braking points.
At the start of the section where my brain shut down as Lars did the seemingly impossible, there’s a nameless left kink. It is quite fast, however, and I remember working up to taking it flat in a previous generation BMW M4 CS.
For the first laps of the day, I simply couldn’t fully lean into the kink, either reflexively tapping the brake pedal or lifting as I chickened out. This time I decided I’d trust the aero.
Just blistering, even on that first trust lap. On the second lap of the two-lap session, I went even quicker, registering 129 mph out of the corner of my eye. Timo told us he’d drive as fast as we were able to follow, and in my estimation, we got going pretty good.
German men don’t fist bump. Rather, when excited, they do that awkward Schwarzenegger/Carl Weathers thing I stopped doing once I graduated eighth grade. After we were out of the cars, Alex ran up to me, and we embraced, Predator-style. Yeah, baby! Those were the kind of laps you dream about. The battery had dropped from 99 to 52 percent SOC. We were pushing.
One Last Attack
I’m given one final session in "my" Shark Blue Manthey. This time it’s just Timo and me. It’s even better these last two laps. I’m on the throttle earlier, using all 914 lb-ft of torque to stay on Timo’s bumper as much as I’m able.
We pass half a dozen other instructor-led trains of fast cars, as were the rules this track day—every manner of Porsche GT product, Ferrari 296s, BMW M3s and M4s, even a weirdly wrapped Lamborghini Revuelto. I realize we’re in an era where weight no longer matters. The engineers have engineered their way around the problem. The only cars we let past us are 992.1 GT3 RSs and GT3 RSs with the Manthey kits, two cars that are quicker around the ‘Ring than the Taycan by Manthey. Respect.
As for the incredible electric super sedan that Porsche and Manthey have cooked up, I’m still not sure who it’s for exactly. There are a lot of headwinds blowing against EVs in the enthusiast world right now, and the near-enough $400,000 price doesn’t help. But maybe it will be a Bull Durham situation: build it, and the customers will come?
Either way, know that the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT Weissach w/ Manthey Kit will give you one hell of an excellent time on the world’s greatest track. Especially if no one else is using the four fast chargers.
Competitors
More Track Tests
2027 Porsche Taycan Turbo GT w/Manthey Kit
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