It’s really hard to argue with a Porsche 911. Even though the new, manual only, base-engined Carrera T now costs what a 911 GT3 used to cost, the increase in price comes with old 911 GT3 performance. Then Porsche has this special talent—charging more for less equipment. Because the Carrera T gets less engine, an old-fashioned manual, and some lightweight parts, it can cost as much as a 911 with 100 more horsepower. But that would be missing the point of the Carrera T.
I had just eight hours with the new 992.2 Carrera T, most I dedicated to filming our latest YouTube video. But the spec sheet boded well: 388 horsepower from a refreshed 3.0-liter twin-turbo flat-six, complete with 992.1 Carrera GTS turbos. Brakes from the 992.1 Carrera S. Suspension from the 992.1 GTS. But the most delicious line item was a holy grail: Six-speed manual transmission with 911 GT3 shifter linkage, it said.
It wasn’t the six-speed, rather the maligned seven-speed manual with a gear removed. The seven-speed always caught flak that I never quite understood, with critics complaining of sloppy shifts and easy-to-miss gates. It’s not something I ever experienced, but I will concede that the seven-speed was always less satisfying than the six-speed in the 997 and 987 Cayman. Yet they are all cable shifted, meaning that the gearbox experience is largely defined by the shifter box and cables.
As it turns out, simply removing a gear and using the GT3’s entire shifter mechanism is magic dust. Let me explain it to you in our latest video above.
