Here’s Why the 911 Carrera 4 GTS is the One You Actually Want
Is there a happy medium in Porsche’s 911 lineup offering the best of everything? Car and Driver thinks so.
Headlines all over the internet will tell you which Porsche 911 is the best Porsche 911. Especially when it comes to new models. If you’ve logged on any major auto website recently, it’s somewhere between the GT2 fire-breather, GT3 RS and its triumphant return to a manual gearbox, or just a few weeks prior, the limited production 911R. It’s overwhelming, but thankfully there’s Porsche nerds all over the internet who’ll happily tell you exactly why one is better than the other.
Outside of that realm is the viewpoint from the long-established car journalist. Car and Driver‘s John Pearly Huffman is just such an esteemed writer. He spent some time with the Carerra 4 GTS.
Porsche’s 911 stew contains a mix of ingredients, and names are organized by the make-up of those ingredients. Except when they aren’t.
Leaving AWD aside, the Carerra, Carerra S and Carerra GTS all get their own respective engine outputs, unless you opt for the GTS engine in your S… So some lines are blurred here and there, but essentially Porsche will make just about any 911 you’d like these days.
That’s what makes the GTS such a fine machine. We all know that with extreme performance comes extreme discomfort. The “loss” of performance when pushing to the limit is made up for the fact that the GTS is still a car by which you can live with comfortably.
Porsche’s new turbo engines, the ones specifically not labeled turbo that is, provide for an amount of usable grunt that was previously not available in the engines that inhaled air unassisted. Instead of wringing out an engine, the meat of the torque is within a relatively tame RPM range. It offers the opportunity to just select one gear and enjoy a drive through twisty mountain roads.
There’s a premium to pay for this Goldilocks car though. MSRP of the car tested here is $142,945, and that’s…well that’s a lot. But for that price you’ll get the car you want, and the only car you’ll ever need.
