I must profess: I’ve always found the Porsche 911 a little intimidating.
Everyone knows the reputation the 930 Turbo earned as the “widowmaker” back in its day. Big power for its time, equally big turbo lag, and the engine hanging over the rear wheels meant the 930 was more than a little unhinged. If you slipped up, it wasn’t so much a car as it was a pendulum ready to knock you out if you slipped up. In the years since, 911s became more capable and advanced, but also more tame and sanitized. But that reputation still sticks with me, heading out onto the paddock at Porsche’s new Experience Centre in Toronto.
PECTO — not pesto — is the newest addition to the Porsche Experience Centre network. It’s one of 10 worldwide, the third in North America, and the first in Canada. Think of Porsche Experience Centre Toronto as a brick-and-mortar boutique where you can enjoy a coffee and a croissant, buy a keychain — then do a few hot laps in a new 911, natch. It’s technically located in Pickering, a suburb about 45 minutes outside of downtown Toronto, but that’s because you need space to accommodate a two-kilometre track inspired by some of the world’s most iconic racetracks, along with an infield featuring a dry skid pad, second soaking wet skidpad with polished concrete underneath, and a tight, dry circuit with with more polished concrete.
The wild thing is, anyone with a driver’s licence can do this. We sampled the full 90-minute program recently, with pricing ranging from $850 to $1,700 depending on the car you pick. It’s admittedly a tough sell for most of us, but to the right person — someone ready to trade up to a 992.2 from their old-hat 992.1, and wanting to sample the latest-and-greatest before putting a deposit down — we can see it making sense.
Or, if you bought a new Porsche at any point so far this year, you can do the whole thing for free. You can also choose to have your new Porsche delivered at PECTO; it’s a four-hour total experience including track time, a thorough walkaround of your new car, and lunch. Walk-ins and Porsche customers alike can choose between one of 64 cars in their fleet — most of which are maintained on-site in a facility whose floors you could eat off of — so you can pretty much drive almost anything you want.
Our brisk fall morning started behind the wheel of a 2025 Porsche 911 GTS T-Hybrid. This year brings an exceptionally thorough refresh and a very significant powertrain update. A new 3.6-litre turbocharged flat-six hangs out the back — the new 911 Turbo uses a similar engine, but it’s twin-turbo there — and works with an electric motor integrated into the eight-speed PDK transmission. All told, the new 911 GTS puts out 532 horsepower and 449 pound-feet of torque, and does the zero-to-100 km/h sprint in well under three seconds. That used to be 911 Turbo territory not even a decade ago, let alone five.
We haven’t had the privilege of taking the 2025 911 out on the street just yet, but this very short stint behind the wheel showed it’s still the do-it-all sports car. PECTO’s track-day-lite experience puts you through two high-speed and two low-speed courses, and pairs you with an instructor coaching you through each exercise all the way through. We started our day with the slower “low-friction handling circuit,” an intimidatingly narrow mini-track made up of a series of extremely tight and technical corners. We then moved onto the “low-friction drift circle,” essentially a continuous circle flanked with sprinklers.
The kicker is, the handling circuit and drift circle both had a polished concrete surface. That makes it slippery; the intention here is to teach sports-car reflexes and driving dynamics to those who might not be experienced with them. Experiencing under- or oversteer for the first time on public roads, in less-than-ideal weather, is scary at best. PECTO and their instructors teach you all about it, you experience it in a safe and fun way, and you come away with the knowledge to better your skills on the road. At least, in theory.
In reality, it’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time going 30 km/h. Say what you will about the 911 growing in size, weight, and complexity over the years, the 992.2-gen car still feels engaging and chatty in the modern age. Its quick steering and well-honed chassis make it easy to use your fingertips, ears, and posterior to catch the back end kicking out before the electronic nannies kick in. Said nannies aren’t even that intrusive, either; pop the 911 into Sport Plus, goose the skinny pedal, and there’s enough time to catch and hold the drift before the car reigns it in. Once you’re more comfortable with the 911’s reflexes and inputs, it becomes less of a lesson in car control, and more a fun game of how long you can keep the drift going.
Moving onto the speedier “dynamics pad” and “handling circuit,” the 992.2 GTS is almost too good. Both courses are fully dry asphalt; the dynamics pad starts off with a launch-control run, a slalom leading into a hard and tight left, then a long straight slowed down by an emergency lane change, and finally a hard stop. Nothing about the new 911 is surprising here: it launches hard, it’s wicked fast, and you don’t need the carbon-ceramics unless every stop on your commute is a panic-stop. It’s a lot like an autocross course; I knocked over a cone, but wonderful instructor Khloe mercifully spared me the two-second penalty.
The larger and even-faster “handling circuit” is only two kilometres, but it makes up for that in a few awesome ways. It’s got a couple of straights where you can flirt with 200 km/h, and many of the corners are inspired by some of the world’s most iconic tracks. There’s a very banked left-hander inspired by the Nurburgring’s Karussell, one of the aforementioned straights takes after Le Mans, and my favourite, a Laguna Seca-style corkscrew. It isn’t as tall as the real thing, but it’s still a very fun ride down.
Addressing the elephant in the room: you can scratch that go-fast-in-a-supercar itch for much less than what Porsche charges for the PECTO track experience. There are no shortage of local companies offering track days at Cayuga and public cruises, you can rent something cool off Turo for a whole day, and heck, even Porsche lets you rent a 911 directly through them for less money, and you have 400 kilometres to do whatever you want.
But the Porsche Experience Centre Toronto scratches a different itch. It brings new fans into the fold, it’s a great way for new owners to learn their cars, and it’s just a cool spot altogether. Where else can you literally walk through the front door, rip a brand-new 2025 Porsche 911 around a track, then sip a coffee and munch on a muffin, take a Zoom call, then knock off some more laps in a racing sim and call it a day?
