A side from the hereditary members of the House of Lords , who can no longer make laws for us “commoners”, it’s natural to treat anything possessed of a long lineage with a degree of respect, if not reverence. Like the Toyota Corolla, Mini and Ford Mustang , nameplates that have been around for about half the time the motor car has roamed the earth, the Porsche 911 is such an established fixture that it’s difficult to imagine a world without it. That’s even allowing for the fact that the originals from the 1960s have comparatively little in common with their modern descendants, as in the philosophical puzzle now known as Trigger’s Broom . The 911, though, also commands respect because it is, as it has always been, a powerful machine that makes more demands of its drivers than its drivers make of it. Hence the untimely death, on a California highway in 1955, of James Dean in his Porsche 550 Spyder, a forerunner of the 911, which he nicknamed “Little Bastard”.…