When ice becomes a racetrack, the 911 in Lapland We travelled to Luleå, in the heart of Lapland, to test the revamped Porsche 911 range
Driving on a seventy-centimeter-thick sheet of ice is hardly something that fits into the everyday imagination of those raised among ring roads, cobblestones, and cliffside highways. In Italy, ice is an unexpected obstacle, a logistical nuisance - not exactly a surface to test a driver’s skills. Yet, heading north, where winter is less a season than a state of mind, it becomes the perfect terrain to transform driving into an almost surreal experience. It is here that Porsche has chosen to bring its purest vision of performance to life. For years, the German brand has made Luleå, in the heart of Lapland, an extreme laboratory where not only cars are tested, but also the nerves and sensitivity of those behind the wheel. The result is not just an ice-driving course, but an immersive ritual blending technique, landscape, and imagination.
For those arriving from Southern Europe, everything feels unreal: the muffled silence, the milky light bouncing off the snow, the sound of tires scraping across the icy surface. It’s an environment that commands respect and concentration, and for that very reason it becomes the ideal stage to truly understand what it means to control a high-performance car. Here, you don’t drive to get from point A to point B. You drive to listen, correct, and anticipate. Every movement of the steering wheel becomes a language, with an instructor ready to guide you and refine your driving experience.
The experience built around the renewed 911 doesn’t aim to impress with numbers or technical specifications, but to convey sensations. The car becomes a sensory instrument: communicating through vibrations and controlled micro-slips. On ice, everything is amplified and nothing can be hidden. This is where the true identity of the model emerges - the one that over the years has earned its reputation as a timeless icon.
The context, however, is an integral part of the narrative. This is not just about driving. The experience is conceived as a full immersion into Arctic aesthetics, across white expanses that seem infinite, and activities that turn the journey into a story. Icebreaker cruises and snowmobile rides are not mere extras - they are chapters of a single narrative that fully encapsulate our 48 hours with Porsche Experience. Ultimately, that’s the charm of the event. It’s not a test drive, not a course, not a vacation. It’s a unique moment where focus, trajectory, and extreme conditions merge, transforming driving into a pure, intense, and unforgettable experience.
