Porsche 911 Carrera T – the ‘T’ stands for “Touring”

By Stuart Johnston

There was presumably a time in  Porsche’s history when if you wanted to tour around Europe, you stripped a bunch of stuff out of your car so that you could get even more in touch with the feel of the tyres on the road, hear more engine noise, and have a sharpness of turn-in that comes with carrying less weight into a corner.

Oh, and while you were at it, you ditched the rear seat, so you could then fill that space with maybe a tent and a couple of extra gas bottles for camp-side cooking.

The fact is, the T in the new budget-orientated Porsche 911 Carrera could stand for a lot of things that were more appropriate than “touring”, because this car, in many ways, is the polar opposite of what today would constitute a relaxed, long-distance hauler.

In fact, the T is more of a lightweight mountain pass car

For starters, Porsche have fitted the Carrera T with lightweight glass in the rear windows. There has also been a fair amount of sound-deadening material removed from the underside of the car. The rear seat is no longer there (although you can order one fitted as an option).

The ride-height has been lowered by 20 mm and the gear ratios in the manual version are shorter, which means revs are going to be generally higher as you eat up the kilometres on a cross-country trip.

To us petrol-heads, all this would normally mean “sport” or “club racer”, but not the kind of package that you would associate with “touring.”

Monte Carlo Rally heritage

It all becomes a little clearer when you  read the information package accompanying the new 911 T, and realise the name is associated with car that won the 1968 Monte Carlo Rally for the Stuttgart firm. That particular car was a 911 T, and presumably was chosen by Porsche specifically because it weighed a bit less than a standard 911 some 50 years ago. Whatever, Porsche  is reviving the  name and the concept with this new car, which is one of the less-expensive models in the 911 line-up.

Available with both seven-speed manual and PDK Gearbox

The new Carrera T is available with both a seven-speed manual transmission and a PDK or dual-clutch gearbox, which as Porsche People know, gives you better-than-manual acceleration  with all the benefits of an automatic gearbox. The trend in 911 sales over the past few years has been firmly towards PDK, so it was a surprise that at the media launch there were two manual models on offer.

There is something about a manual gearbox that puts you more in touch with the essence of a car, as you are physically  required to keep the engine speed in line with your current or intended rate of progress at all times. Porsches don’t really need too much in the way of inducing extra driver involvement, because these cars give you all the feedback you’d ever want from a car from the moment you hit the starter button. The noise from that flat-six motor is spine-chilling, and in this Carrera T it is even more so, because sound-deadening material is at a minimum.

You can notice the lack of sound-deadening when threading your way through traffic in the manual transmission car, because there is a distinct sound of the gears meshing at the rear end of the car. Of course, when you hit the accelerator, there is simply a howl of pleasure from the engine, and if you are a red-blooded boy or girl, you’ll no doubt be howling in pleasure along with the engine.

The Carrera 911 T engine delivers 272 kW and  450 Nm of torque, and it will rev to 7 000 rpm. That’s the same output from the twin-turbo  2 981 cc motor that you get in the standard 911 Carrera. The T model weighs 20 kg less than the standard entry-level Carrera, and is marginally faster to 100 km/h, by 0,1 seconds in fact

I found the manual box had a shift gate that was too narrow

In fact the seven-speed manual takes 0,3 seconds longer to reach 100 km/h than the PDK version. The manual reaches 100 in 4,5 seconds, while the PDK model of the Carrera takes 4,2 seconds to 100 km/h. I am not surprised by this difference, as I found the seven-speed manual gearbox takes lots of care and attention to make ensure that you are in the right gear.

I love manual gearboxes as a concept, but on the Carrera T I found I needed to concentrate too much to ensure I was selecting the right ratio. I found the gate too narrow, because there are now four vertical planes for the gear lever to move through. Porsche people I spoke to said they didn’t have this trouble, but also mentioned that they pretty much left seventh gear out of the equation, and treated the ‘box as a six-speed. Seventh gear was merely there as an “overdrive” ratio.

Pleasing lightweight detailing

Apart from my experience with the manual gearbox, I found the 911 Carrera T to be just as delightful as any other 911, if not more so. Even though the rear seats have been removed, there is still a shaped, carpeted area in the rear where you could carry a third passenger if required. And I really liked the door opening loops that replace the traditional handles inside the car, reminding you that this Carrera T is indeed a special lightweight model with a heritage going back 50 years to that first Monte Carlo Rally win.

If it were legal to do so in this country you could run the car all the way up to its top speed of just over 290 km/h. And yet, if you drove the car at speed limit compliant velocities on a long trip, you would return a fuel consumption figure in the region of eight litres/100 km!

A reminder of 911 essence

To me the Carrera T is the 911 you would choose if you wanted to be reminded all the time about how well-rounded a Porsche 911 is in essence. How its steering is perfectly-weighted at low and high speeds, how the car’s suspension is firm but never jarring, how that flat-six engine configuration feeds a sound back into the cockpit that is like no other.

When it is standing in your garage or driveway, you could simply stare at those 20-inch Carrera S wheels , finished in Titanium Grey, and absorb the other special details such as the matte black engine vent at the rear and the Carrera T sill striping on the flanks. Or hop inside and appreciate the minimalistic approach to instrumentation and switchgear.

The price of this car is R1 536 000, and Porsche South Africa will be importing 50 examples, many of which have no doubt already been pre-sold. For me, the base-line 911 models offer more than enough Essence-of-Porsche without all the wings and drama of the more radical GT3 and RS models. And this Carrera T, which slots in at near the bottom end of the 911 range, offers a very pure and telling dosage of that unique, utterly addictive Porsche essence.