We’ve been waiting for the updated Porsche 911 Carrera S to arrive for a few months, and although it features a significant jump in power, some loyalists might be disappointed. See, it’s the first 911 Carrera S ever to arrive without a manual gearbox, and that leaves a massive gap in the 911 range for customers who want to row their own gears while going heavy on equipment.
Let’s start with the headline figure, 473 horsepower. With new turbochargers and revised intercooling, the new 911 Carrera S is officially as powerful as the old 911 Carrera GTS, but it doesn’t make the same torque. See, torque output of 391 lb.-ft. lines up with that of the old Carrera S, so the added power up top should make it more rewarding to chase the redline, if you dare. As noted earlier, an eight-speed dual-clutch PDK transaxle is the only way of transmitting power from the engine to the rear wheels, but a few tricks including launch control and a limited-slip differential make models with the Sport Chrono package capable of sprinting from zero-to-60 mph in 3.1 seconds and onto a top speed of 191 mph.
Of course, extra power requires extra control, starting with brakes. The new 911 Carrera S boasts monster 16.06-inch front discs and sizeable 14.96-inch rear discs from the old Carrera GTS that ought to have serious heat capacity for repeated high-speed braking, such as trackday work or hauling things down from left-lane derestricted Autobahn speeds. Add in tweaked dampers to optimize the handling, staggered 20 and 21-inch wheels, a sports exhaust system, and a whole lot more leather as standard, and boom, that puts the S in Carrera S.
However, let’s circle back for a second. With the 911 Carrera S going automatic-only, the only 911 models available with a manual transmission are the $135,995 911 Carrera T and the $224,495 911 GT3. The former takes a base Carrera, adds a few performance options like rear-wheel steering, removes a bit of weight to compensate, and installs a manual transmission. The latter is a hardcore trackday monster with a screaming naturally aspirated flat-six and a price tag verging on supercar territory. That’s an $88,500 delta between the only stick-shift 911s you can currently buy, and with the mid-engined 718 cars slated for discontinuation in October, these are the only manual Porsches confirmed to live beyond the month of Halloween.
So, will Porsche fill that gap? For now, probably not. However, I’d be surprised if it stays quite this big forever. See, Porsche’s known for its largely a-la-carte options menu, and many of the more enthusiastic new Porsche buyers are known to spend tens of thousands of dollars on options. We’re going beyond hoping for a Paint To Sample allocation and choosing from an extended color palette. From wheels to stitching to leathers to interior trim options, buyers of these dream cars go hard, and a whole bunch of options available on the Carrera S aren’t available off the standard options menu for the Carrera T. Think wood dashboard trims, the fabulous Carrera Classic wheels, and upholstery in something other than black, just to name a few.
Now, buyers who opt for manual transmissions are typically quite selective, so as long as options like these offer decent margins, it would make a great deal of sense to offer more of them on the Carrera T and bring equipment levels closer to what you can get on a Carrera S, even if the added performance doesn’t carry over. Alternatively, if you want a better-equipped 911 Carrera T now, ask your dealer if Sonderwunsch is right for you.
Anyway, if you like the sound of more power and a long options list, and would go with the PDK dual-clutch anyway, the 2025 Porsche 911 Carrera S starts at $148,395 including freight in coupe trim. That’s $26,300 more than what a base 911 Carrera starts at, but once you add in the leather interior and sport exhaust and the wheels that the Carrera S comes standard with, that delta shrinks to $17,020. Oh, and if you want to really let the sun in, the cabriolet will run you $161,595. I reckon my money would still be on the $135,995 stick-shift Carrera T, but greater choice is rarely a bad thing, right? I just wish you could still choose to row your own gears in a 911 Carrera S.
(Photo credits: Porsche)
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I have never owned a Porsche even though I often have dreamed of dropping huge coin on one. A GTS or GT3 with a manual would be my first choice but a $200k car purchase is not realistic even though I own a 2023 Z06 and a 2024 CT5-V Blackwing with a manual transmission. I believe the backlash from the very avid Porsche folks may change this in the future.
Anyone planning to spend this much on a car should be able to demand a stick. I mean, they don’t have to make production-line cars with them. Just have an option that might take a few months.
I think this is a mistake Porsche might come back on. The GTS has an excuse because it’s a hybrid but the regular S should have a manual option.
991.1 GT3 values are much lower than 991.2 because the former was auto only.
I am here to hear Stef’s take on this and her call to action that she promised in another article that stated something along the lines of “we ride at dawn if Porsche does away with the manual” though technically its not totally away, just much less attainable now
Do you mean to tell me that a car I will never be able to afford will no longer come with a feature I would have preferred? I am outraged, good sir, outraged.
I will take my money elsewhere!
“Elsewhere” being “Amazon to buy cheap lower control arms for my 27 year old beater BMW.”
Hear hear, fellow sophisicate! And I shall likewise take my money to Amazon and purchase a new set of front shocks and struts and I may well splurge on some new ball joints! Well done us, caviar toast points all around
Porsche really missed out here. If they had offered to equip the Carrera S with a manual, I would’ve posted a “take my (non-existent) money” meme…and done nothing else.
I don’t think this is that big of a deal. For better or worse Porsche has been making the 911 into more of a grand tourer with every generation and the 992 is the most grand tourer-ey of all of them. I’m not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just what the market wants. Us enthusiasts might love the idea of a sketchy 911 that you need to tame and respect but the average douche bag who has $200,000 laying around to drop on a car almost certainly does not.
The Ts (which ironically stand for touring) are pretty much the base enthusiast spec across the board for Porsche now. They’re the “value” play for a bunch of the hardware from the highest trims without the extra power. On one hand even though I’m not a manual diehard I think paywalling sticks is incredibly lame and cynical…but on the other I do think the Ts make for a very appealing package because the GTS and higher trims of any Porsche all have way, way, way more power than you’ll ever be able to appreciate on public roads unless you have ze autobahn.
So basically, just get the T if you want stick. Or get a 718, because they’re almost certainly getting a stay of execution due to the EV replacement being delayed and not really wanted by potential buyers. That being said the appearance stuff on the T that includes the little manual logo on the car is incredibly cringe…although I do know a sizable portion of manual diehards who make it their entire personality so I do think Porsche knows what they’re doing.
I have to vent. I get so, so, so sick of the “douche bag” comments about people who can buy a car like this. I had a slot for a 992 Carrera T, but just before my order they had a gently used 991.2 GTS and I bought that. I did a 6,033 mi, road trip in it. It was an epic trip, and I hope to do another soon.
This is my second 911. I worked my ass off for 15 years, saving money where I could, splitting my house in 2 so I could rent the other side (not a happy wife then) and pay the mortgage, and putting money aside to buy my first 997 911, for 35k. I worked on it, did the clutch and more. Then I sold it to buy another exotic, with miles, as I wanted it. I worked on that one and eventually sold it for a bit more than I bought it for. Then, wanting a new 911, built to my spec. I ending up getting the GTS. I rebuilt my house, over 3 years, and saved a buttload doing it. I then sold that house and made just enough money, with the sale of the other car, to buy this newer 911.
Not everyone who buys a 911 or other exotic is a “douche bag” or born in to money. Some of us just want one so bad, we will work even harder to eventually be in a position to get one.
Finally, as someone who does like to row his own gears, I found it impractical as a nearly daily driver. Especially after having lived in a busy congested traffic area before moving. I love my PDK and will continue to drive it all the time.
Not everyone who buys a car like this is rich. Maybe talk to some people. A ton of owners may be that way, but stop lumping us all in to that same category. But, no matter what, the smiles I generate on myself, the little kids who get rides (and adults), looking at it in the sunlight, hearing the sound, make it all worth while.
My 2 cents
I mean, fair enough. But if you can afford to drop 6 figures on a car you are, in fact, rich. And very, very rich at that. The average person in this country can barely afford their $40,000 cars as we’ve seen in all the recent loan data. The average transaction price of a new car right now is a shade under $50,000. That’s about 1/3 of the price of a modestly equipped 911. If you can afford 3 times the cost of that then you’re doing exponentially better than 99% of the population…and therefore quite wealthy. The median household income is about half of the cost of an option-less 911.
I mean I’m not going to sit here and tell you you didn’t earn it because that would be shitty, and I’m glad you have your dream car and are enjoying it…and my dirty secret is if I could spec out a new 911 I would also choose PDK so no shade there. But to act like a new 911 is something an average Joe can just bootstrap their way to is rather out of touch. With all that said enjoy the hell out of yours and drive it as god intended because few 911s get that privilege. If nothing else I’m happy there’s a GTS out there getting to live its best life.
While I won’t go into the assumption’s you make about my wealth or not, I will concede one caveat. I have no children. And as I am in my mid 50’s now, I appreciate the end of your reply and I will enjoy it everyday.
P.s. I love going to the once a month Savannah cars and coffee. Always a group of great cars. 1st Saturday of the month on Habersham. Always there to chat. Car is white.
I should also clarify-I don’t just blindly hate rich people and probably could’ve left the douche bag descriptor on the shelf. I actually have no issue with people accumulating reasonable amounts of wealth if they do it ethically. I’ve got no beef with a trauma surgeon or civil rights attorney making big paychecks and having millionaires in reasonable quantities has economic benefits. And hey, if you worked hard and made a nice chunk of money on your house then well done.
All that sort of stuff just seems like the American dream to me, it’s the people making hundreds of millions or billions through shit like the military industrial complex that I take issue with. Guys like you and V10emous working hard to get your dream car is something we should all strive for to be honest.
I live in DC so I doubt I’ll ever be in your neck of the woods for a prolonged period of time, but drive the 911 in good health! I’m saving so my next car can be a certified Porsche. I’d love for it to be a 991 911 of some sort but seeing as we’ve got a baby, a dog, and ideally another wee one on the way in a few years I have a feeling that wife is going to say “get one with four doors or don’t get one at all” haha.
I have driven my aunt’s Panamera and I will say it’s a lovely experience…and just looking out over the hood you probably wouldn’t even realize you’re in a sedan and not a dedicated sports car. But for me mentally the ideal Porsche will always be something with a flat 6 mounted behind you.
Any word on the take rate for the manual on the 2024 model?
For the entire run of 992.1 “T” – it was 70% in the US. I can’t find an official stat for the “S” other than 20-30% range.
Thanks for finding that.
The 20-30% was actually higher than I was expecting. I’m a little surprised they’re dropping it for the S trim, but perhaps it’s been trending down and they’re just expecting it was going to fall further.
I wouldn’t think it would be that expensive for Porsche to retain the option at that trim level, given the manual is available with the T and GTS. But companies make business decisions I don’t understand all the time.
They dropped the manual for the GTS as well when they moved to 992.2 (2025+) from the 992.1 (2020-2024). So it’s “T” or “GT3” to get a manual at this time. Enjoy the day!
Well I started being very uninterested in almost any way with this current gen of 911, and I guess I’ll be able to get even less interested!
As could be said of many recent events:
Just because I knew this day was coming, doesn’t mean I have to like it.
You might as well only make note of a car’s transmission when there is a manual. Save you a lot of time and typing.
“regular old automatic instead of CVT” is the new “manual”
Instead of getting pissed off about cars being marked as a “manual” on Autotrader with photos showing an automatic, we will move to being pissed off at cars being listed as an automatic and having a Jatco CVT.
We should be lucky enough that it was noted in the first paragraph (and headline).
But, after that note, I became uninterested in those Porsches.
In a few months there will be a review that the car “is fine,” and you will search until the end of the article to discover that it comes only with an automatic.
One would think that the manual would be a theft deterrent, for the younger car thieves.
I used to unscrew my shift knob and lock it in the trunk for long-term parking or sketchy areas. Little did I know that simply owning a manual was all that was necessary.
There was a video that went around a couple months ago from my area of teenage car thieves trying to take a WRX and having to give up and run because they couldn’t drive stick. On a super high end car like a 911 going with a manual as a theft deterrent actually isn’t a bad idea.
A similar news story ran in the city I was living in a decade ago of security camera footage of three guys trying to steal a Jeep. The first guy broke in, jumped in, then jumped out and ran to the second guy, gesturing the act of shifting a manual transmission. The second guy shrugged his shoulders while shaking his head, and the the third guy, who was driving the car they drove up in, got out and started arguing with the other two. The third guy then got in the Jeep, tried to start it without the clutch in and then dove out when it lurched forward from the starter moving it. They then all three ran to the car they drove up in and left. The news anchor called them something like “the three stooges of auto theft”.
I live in DC and if I was going to street park a Porsche I would absolutely get a manual one for this reason.
Blame it on the death of 55mph as a 3spd auto could do that, so 4spd autos were “optional”
A cursory search isn’t actually showing me any data that support or refute this idea.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/is-a-stick-shift-an-anti-theft-device
This is a 2011 article, so maybe it’s out-of-date, but it points out that insurance companies don’t ask or change rates based on what transmission a vehicle has.
https://www.kbb.com/car-news/survey-surprise-most-american-drivers-know-how-to-drive-stick/
This is from a Cadillac survey so who knows how accurate it is, but it claims 66% of drivers know how to drive stick (as distinct from people who would buy another stick-shift vehicle).
I imagine it’s incredibly difficult to actually suss out whether stick-shift is an anti-theft device or not. Correcting for factors such as:
…to me, sounds like an impossible task.
My gut instinct (and, indeed, from many anecdotes that are the most common result of searches, from Reddit, etc.) is that it can be an anti-theft deterrent, but it obviously will not stop everyone. Not unlike a catalytic converter shield on a 2nd-gen Prius in that way.
But that’s far too broad of a conclusion to be helpful here.
Any anti-theft device, even a manual, is for the express purpose of getting a car thief to choose another car.
How would we get this info? We’d probably have to get a split of manual/auto on the most popular stolen cars that come in both manual and automatic, and see if the ratio of the two differs from the ratio of cars sold. We’d probably have to go back several years to find credible data.
We can also survey car thieves to see if they can drive sticks, and even if they can, if it was a deterrent to them.
When I was 9, I went on a road trip with my dad over Spring Break. We drove a Corvette from Michigan to Atlanta where we traded it, plus some cash, for a 911 Carrera. It kicked off a love of 911s that has lasted over 30 years, and it’s still one of my best memories with my dad. The Easter Bunny (who I was too old to believe in, but young enough to want to believe in) even followed us and left a basket for me in our hotel room.
Anyway. Hopefully I will still be able to fulfill my dream of owning a 911 Carrera someday, although based on this article, I guess it will be used.
The tall gearing on Porsche manuals made them pretty crap anyway.
You’re thinking of the gearing in the Boxster/Cayman.
911 gearing is fantastic.