MJBO wrote Actually I’d argue that is exactly the purpose of the 911 Turbo, always has been.
Totally agree, but Porsche made the decision years ago to make all of it's sports cars turbo minus most of the GT cars. Now you can make a standard/base 911 as fast or faster than a 911 Turbo with a set of aftermarket turbos and a tune. In terms of acceleration, the only advantage of the 911 Turbo is it's standstill launch capability.
It was inevitable I guess. People think they want more and more power and most don't understand the impact that has on daily driving and flogging the car. Sure, it's amusing to have a car that rips to 60 in under 3 seconds and runs the 1/4 mile in the low 11s, but around town, you can't dip into even 50% of the power or fully rip through gears without risk of jail time. 500hp+ cars is just so silly and unnecessary, IMO.
It's just sad that Porsche doesn't offer an NA motor in it's non-GT cars anymore. There are tons of potential buyers that want a Cayman/Boxster/911 with a nice 300-400hp NA flat 6 and don't give a crap if it's slower than a current gen M2 or the like.
No matter how well it may be tuned, turbo motors just don't have the feel, connection, linearity, and sound of a well tuned NA motor. And the gas mileage argument doesn't apply either. When driven like an NA motor, turbo motors do not get significantly better mpgs.