In essence, the answer is pragmatism. Not once in its life that I can recall has the 911 ever held a road car record. No 911 has ever been the fastest, and it’s certainly not the longest-serving sports car still to be in production, nor even has it been built in the largest numbers. The Chevrolet Corvette, launched 10 years before the 911, passed the one million mark 35 years ago and 1.5 million in 2013. By now, it must be close to two million. Yes, the 911 was the first to make a real success of turbocharging, but it was not even close to being the first turbocharged road car. Only on the track, where it is head, shoulders, knees and toes the most successful racing car of all time, has it proven indomitable. And yet the real reason for the 911’s success is that it works.

Seems simple, doesn’t it? Simplistic even. But it’s true: had the 911 not combined a wild spirit with the ease of ownership of a Miele dishwasher from the outset, I’d not be writing these words now. It slipped deftly into people’s lives yet turned every journey into an occasion. And it never went wrong.

After a while, even that reputation for being tricky on the limit started to help. It marked out 911 owners as adventurers, skilled hands who laughed in the face of danger. No matter that the 911 was nothing like as difficult as my predecessors made out, or that to avoid all chance of encountering its dark side, all you had to do was keep away from the limit. And even if you did feel like prodding the tiger, so long as you obeyed the one basic ‘slow in, fast out’ rule that really should apply to all cars being driven quickly on public roads, even early 911s were fine. Pussy cats indeed.

The last normal 911 that was in any way over-exuberant on the limit (for ‘normal’, read pretty much all save the GT2s) went out of production more than 30 years ago, but the legacy lives on. Which means the legend of the 911 has become selfperpetuating to a very great extent, insofar as can you imagine how big a duffer Porsche would have to produce to kill it now? Me neither.

And it has stayed faithful to the formula. You might scoff at the very notion when you see how large the 911 has become, but relative to the generational growth of family cars like, say, a Volkswagen Golf, it has hardly grown at all. The 911 still has easily the shortest wheelbase of its competitor set, and if you have cause to keep up with a powerful midengined supercar, you’ll appreciate its relative narrowness as much now as you’d ever have done then. Probably more.