What's the news?
Porsche, increasingly looking to its glory days of the 1970s for new model inspiration, is taking the mildly-retro, road-biased efforts of the 911 GT3 Touring Pack and applying some of its methods to the basic Carrera.
Yes we realise it's absurd to paint a circa-€150,000, 370hp sports car as 'basic' but that really is the idea behind this, the new 911 Carrera T. Taking the most affordable 370hp 911 Carrera as its basis, the T (for Touring) giveth and taketh away at the same time.
On the giveth side, you get a grey finish for the door mirrors, a special air dam with lip spoiler, Carrera T logos on the side, and a standard sports exhaust, as well as a 20mm lower ride height, the Chrono Sport pack, and special lightweight side glass. On the inside, there are simple, black seats with centres in fabric, (full buckets are an option), and a stubbier, chopped-down manual gear shifter with the shift pattern picked out in red (the PDK dual-clutch auto is an option). The doors also get lightweight (although we're suspicious of how much weight they actually save) fabric pulls instead of normal handles.
And taketh? Well, the back seats are gone, as is the Porsche Communications Management (PCM) touch screen and infotainment system (although you can have both back at no extra charge). Some sound deadening has been binned too, and so the 911 T is claimed to be 20kg lighter than standard.
The engine is the same 3.0-litre low-pressure turbo flat six as usual, but Porsche has a shorter rear axle ratio and a standard mechanical diff lock, so that the 0-100km/h time is now 4.5 seconds (with manual gearbox) or 4.2 seconds with the PDK dual-clutch. There's also the rear-wheel steering system, pinched from the GT3 model, which hasn't previously been available on any Carrera version. Top speed is on the naughty side of 290km/h.
Deliveries start in January, and you can choose your colour from Black, Lava Orange, Guards Red, Racing Yellow, White and Miami Blue, as well as the metallic colours Carrara White, Jet Black and GT Silver.