- The T’s one of the few manual-shift cars left, even at Porsche
- No automatic, no rear seats, no sunroof—no problem
- 911 T is priced from $135,995 for the coupe, $149,295 for the cabrio
The Porsche 911 entered the hybrid era for the 2025 model year, but it hasn’t given up the keys to its old place in the gas-powered era. In fact, the latest 911 in the family looks directly to that past for inspiration.
It’s that point in the lifecycle for the 2025 911 Carrera T, which turns back the clock ever so slightly on the 911’s relentless technological evolution. Priced from $135,995 for the coupe and $149,295 for the Cabriolet, the Carrera T pitches a more basic 911 experience to those drivers who want that taste of nostalgia—but don’t really want to give up much in the way of modernity.
The Carrera T (for “Touring”) name dates to the 37th Monte Carlo rally, which Porsche won in 1968 with a stripped-down edition of its archetypal sports car. Today’s rendition slots in as usual between the Carrera and GTS 911s, where it puts its marker down on lighter weight and sensory pleasure.
Porsche pitches it to drivers who might not drive it every day, but will take it to a club event when they do, before recycling their Blue Bottle cup and heading home to watch motorsports on the 85-inch flat screen in the great room.
The T gets an asterisk, though. Those owners want to feel the fantasy of a lightweight sports car—but they also want a 911 with a bigger fuel tank, rear seats, a front-axle lift, and 18-way power front seats, more often than not. All of those features can be ticked back into the T on the order sheet. It loses weight before the holidays, only to pack some of it back on.
Still, the Carrera T’s the sole manual Carrera, for now, until an S arrives. It’s one of the few manual convertibles of any brand left, Wrangler and Mustang included. It’s a car that evokes Porsche’s past, without provoking the gods—gods like Porsche’s own 911 GT3.
2025 Porsche 911 Carrera T test drive review
Porsche 911 Carrera T: How it works
Most of the time I spend driving new cars now focuses on measuring miles per kilowatt hour. The Carrera T offers an entirely different experience. If not quite analog, it’s certainly, definitely not purely digital.
Today it’s also an edge case in traction. I’m north of Atlanta, on roads with almost no runoff, scattered with gravel from potholes long since fallen into disrepair, where the last bit of fall leaves have been pulverized into a fine red miasma. The irony: October was Atlanta’s first month without measurable rainfall in more than a century, and now, rain pounds on the windshield, forcing me to focus on the sensory pleasures that don’t involve the tires slowly giving up grip. The car knows it: it instructs me to switch into wet mode once it slips a wheel for the first of a thousand times, so I do.
Behind the place where a back seat normally would fit, Porsche’s Carrera engine sits and sings. The twin-turbo 3.0-liter flat-6 flouts its power card, putting out 388 hp and 332 lb-ft of torque, which sends the T to 60 mph in 4.3 seconds (or 4.5 seconds for the thicc-er Cabrio).
Even at lower speeds, I pull higher revs through some early esses. The whammering of the engine enchants me to the point where I can ignore the hollow patriotism of the red, white, and blue signs still posted on flanking hillsides. The Carrera T has less sound insulation and thinner glass than other models, so more engine noise needles into the cabin. I’m thankful for it, though it keeps me from dictating notes through wireless CarPlay at times. “Siri, write a note” gets me a half-dozen reminders and a calendar date for a meeting that never will happen.
A shorter-throw 6-speed manual coordinates the comms between the engine and the drive wheels. The stiff, springy clutch travels up and high before it engages—another state of tune that commands the driver to pay attention to the act of driving instead of the radio. And yet, its rev-matching software ensures every shift throw’s sweetly executed. Porsche wraps the lever’s cap in open-pore walnut. Your fingertips understand the retro cue before your brain does.
This 6-speed is actually the other Carreras’ 7-speed, minus the top gear. It doesn’t use the 6-speed GT3 transmission, which would be unsuited: the GT3’s a rev-happy maniac all the way to 9,000 rpm, while the Carrera’s torque-focused out of the gate, down low.
Flip through the 911’s drive modes—Sport Chrono package comes standard—and the rev-matching can be disabled and launch control enabled. That’s impossible to enjoy today, though, as the rain goes from steady to swole. I fiddle with the sport exhaust instead, and rattle the cage of a heavy-duty truck driver who thinks his rolling coal’s going to be the most bratty indulgence on the street today. (Charlie Murphy voice: “Wrong!)
2025 Porsche 911 Carrera T test drive review
Porsche 911 Carrera T: How it twerks
The state roads downconvert into county roads as the tripometer flicks through its digits. The rain tapers off some, so the 911 Carrera T’s chassis gets to show off more of its range. With a little less weight on board—I’ll get to that in a minute—the T packs on the weight of adaptive dampers, rear-wheel steering, and a 0.4-inch lowered suspension to liven up its responses.
It works. Though it still weighs 3,316 pounds in base spec as a coupe (3,283 with available carbon-fiber seats, 3,505 pounds as a Cabrio), the T twerks around the slim connecting trails that link the home of the Cabbage Patch doll with the home of our Best Car To Buy testing—because of course it does. The negligible weight differences matter a little less than the optimized handling content stuffed into the T, which also gets 20-inch front and 21-inch rear wheels with 245/35 tires up front and 305/30s in back, as well as a mechanical differential lock and 6-piston front, 4-piston rear brakes. Porsche shod my car with carbon-ceramic brakes as well.
The digital doesn’t interfere with the analog vibe the T conjures. Even though it has rear-wheel steering, it dials in degree by degree of carefully placed and weighted steering—it doesn’t just free-associate a direction while the driver wrestles it down. The ride’s classic 911 firm—and also comes in this car with active anti-roll tech that cuts body lean even more than the stock setup. Yep, more weight, but also a more confident, planted feel as it arrows through rapidly switching esses.
I flick off some of the traction and stability controls on a safe stretch, to see if the drying roads have any more grip to give. It’s better, which eggs me to put a T foot on the centerline here and there. Active lane control warns me not to, with a low whub-whub voice that sounds like a sidekick robot from a 1970s TV drama. Or R2D2 once puberty settled in.
2025 Porsche 911 Carrera T test drive review
2025 Porsche 911 Carrera T test drive review
2025 Porsche 911 Carrera T test drive review
2025 Porsche 911 Carrera T test drive review
Porsche 911 Carrera T: Most of the perks
The 911 Carrera T makes few other concessions to comfort. This copy has a steel roof, but you can go without a roof entirely—and Cabriolets do pack on the pounds. Inside, the wall of digital displays challenges the throwback aesthetic from door to door, but most of its functions can be set and forgotten. Skip using the cupholder, too: it’s mounted directly in line with that sweetly tuned 6-speed shift lever. Even coffee doesn’t outrank its crisp snicks.
Elsewhere inside the Carrera T wears black synthetic leather with black-on-black plaid textile seating—but you’ll want the available blue trim package, which renders the seats in gray and blue like a fine windowpane suit. Blue rims the console, the exterior, the Sport Chrono block, and the seat belts. By the time you configure a Carrera T with a custom matrix of options, it might weigh just as much as a standard Carrera.
The shifter makes the difference. Porsche has gathered up the manual-trans fans who’ve been left behind by the likes of Jaguar and Chevrolet, and funnels them here. While it launches a new hybrid powertrainin other Carreras and plots updates for the 911 GT3 RS and 911 Turbo, the Carrera T gives those orphans a home.
It’s just one way in which the 911 pulls off its time-honored party trick: constant progress cloaked in familiar bits of the past. Today’s 911 Carrera T may have a transmission right out of the 20th century—but it teams up masterfully with all the digital bits that make it quicker, faster, safer, and more assured at its driving limits.
It’s nowhere near as expensive or as demanding to drive as the stunning GT3, either. The 911 Carrera T compels your hands and your feet to act—and, it turns out, that’s all the compelling it needs.
Porsche provided a hotel room and a lot of rain to make this test drive review a reality.
Read the full article here
