TIME FOR T
As William Blake once said, hindsight is a wonderful thing. It’s been just over two years since we brought you our first drive of the 991 Carrera T, that being a continental drive from the mountains above Monaco to the bumpy B-roads of Britain (it’s in Issue 162, if you’d like to take a look).
After our first drive with the Carrera T, we came away with mixed emotions. We loved the concept, Porsche bringing the ‘less is more’ axiom to its base 911 which, in fairness, has defined the genre of GT models further up the chain.
We liked how engaging the T was to drive, that added focus supplied by a Sports chassis, revised final drive borrowed from the Carrera S, a stubbier, manual shifter, and thinner glass in the rear to let a bit more engine noise in. This was a T absolutely worth the eight grand premium over a base (and comparatively more diluted) Carrera.
However, our bursts of pleasure at the wheel were matched by pangs of disappointment thereafter, not for what the T was, but what it could have been. That seven-speed manual gearbox remained, long a point of contention for the 991 era in these pages, its throw imprecise, the shift a little too clunky through each gate. It was no different in the
