From Car and Driver:

All-wheel drive can cover for a lot of driver ineptitude. Carry too much speed into a corner, stand on the gas anyway, and you can squirt out the other side none the wiser. Do that in a rear-drive car and you’ll be hangin’ it out like Jason Bourne eluding the CIA yet again, or worse, stuffing it into a curb, as hundreds of Cars and Coffee wipeout videos on YouTube prove. Notice how almost every last one of those single-car crashes involves a rear-wheel-drive car, too much throttle, and a clueless pilot. This is no coincidence.

In most situations, the latest Porsche 911 all-wheel-drive models, the Carrera 4 and Carrera 4S (or C4S, the car tested here), operate as rear-drive vehicles. When Porsche Traction Management (PTM) detects or anticipates slippage, it engages a clutch, directing some of the available torque to the front axle. Porsche says that more torque than ever before can be directed forward in the seventh-generation 911 (all-wheel drive first appeared on the 1989 Type 964 after being used on the 959 supercar). We believe it. Mashing the throttle on corner exit rarely results in wheelspin. You have to really provoke this car into a drift. Don’t get us wrong, the C4S will go all Dukes of Hazzard on you if prodded, but its general demeanor is subdued.