Styling
As before, the Carrera T sits between the two obvious candidates in the 992.2 line-up, which are the
entry-level (for want of a much better phrase) Carrera and then the uprated
Carrera S. It therefore has styling cues in line with either of these, such as the unadorned and wonderfully simplistic 911 Coupe shape of the Carrera with the bigger 20-inch front, 21-inch rear Carrera S alloys.
But the T then overlays all of this with its own aesthetic flourishes which work a treat. The car you see in the pictures here is white, although our tester was in the unusual Cartagena Yellow metallic (£1,704), a shade which we weren't sure of when we first saw it over in Stuttgart driving the 992.2 Carrera S. Yet, with those decals on the doors and Vanadium Grey detailing for both the alloys and the mirror caps, it teams up spectacularly with the retro-esque appearance of the T in general. Basically, what we're saying here is get the Carrera T in a bold colour, not an insipid one that's designed to protect residual values, for the best overall kerbside effect.
What won't win as many fans are the repeated and perhaps heavy-handed allusions to the Carrera T's not-quite-unique-but-still-very-special (more anon) selling point in the 992.2 range: its six-speed manual gearbox. Along with the sensational
GT3, the T is the only three-pedal 911 you can now order new. And to make sure you don't forget this fact, there are little H-gate circular graphics on each of the rear windows on the sides of the 911, while if you option up the Exclusive Manufaktur LED puddle lamps for £246 (as seen on our test model) then the same logo is beamed onto the ground near the car in darker conditions. And that's not all...
Interior
The 'don't forget this car's a manual' theme continues within the 992.2 Carrera T. That exterior emblem is repeated on the passenger-side dashboard, albeit in a more discreet fashion, while at the base of the shorter gearlever is a little plaque bearing the inscription 'MT'. This is just in case you've somehow failed to notice the three pedals situated in the driver's footwell, nor picked up on the stubby shifter in the transmission tunnel that features an exquisite open-pore walnut wooden knob, which ties it in with such past road and track legends in the company's exalted history as the 917 and the monumental
Carrera GT supercar.
It might all get a bit much for some, this constant hammering home of the manual message, but what a joy it is to still see a H-pattern lever sitting there amidst the familiar surroundings of a 992.2's exemplary cabin. Which it is, of course. Like any other updated Mk8 911, the Carrera T now has the fully digital 12.6-inch Curved Display instrument cluster, which works beautifully even if it does away with the glorious old centrally mounted analogue rev counter of the 992.1 era. There are also some tasteful fillets of body-coloured trim to pep up the ambience, as well as the usual superb fixtures and fittings, ergonomics which are spot-on to the point of perfect, and then the magnificent driving position. Afforded, in this instance, by a pair of majestic fixed-back carbon-fibre bucket seats (£4,621) that look the business and which are also brilliant to sit in - once you're in them. More on that in the next section.
Practicality
The door aperture of a 911 is not big, and while the steering wheel adjusts fully for rake and reach, if you leave it in your preferred driving position then getting into and out of the car with those bucket seats fitted becomes a right faff, especially if you're of the larger-built persuasion (aka, unfit and overweight) like us. The side bolsters obviously have no give whatsoever, so getting in requires bracing your left leg in the footwell while lifting your backside over and into the seat; that's not so bad, but the strange 'hermit crab exiting its shell'-like manoeuvres you must do to then get out of the car are ungainly and would likely leave a lasting bruise on the back of your right thigh before too long. We so,
so want to say the buckets are essential in the Carrera T for the sensation they give once you're happily installed behind the wheel, plus they also look like works of art too, but £4,600-plus to make what is one of the more practical upper-end cars going into something in which getting into and out of it is almost as inelegant an ingress/egress procedure as you'd find in the old
Lotus Exige seems daft. You'd be just as well off with the standard four-way-adjustable Sports Plus pews, or even the 18-way electrically adjustable Adaptive Sports Plus seats (£2,428) if you need an upgrade here.
Beyond that, cargo space is at a premium in the Porsche 911, as you'd expect of a dedicated sports car like this, but it has more room than most of its obvious rivals. This is because all 992.2 Coupes, the Carrera T included, no longer come with the vestigial rear seats as standard unless you tick a (no-cost) option box at ordering time. No such box was checked off when specifying our test car and so this then turns the back of the cabin into a carpet-lined
de facto boot rated at a surprisingly voluminous 373 litres (to go with the 135-litre cuboid cubby under the bonnet of the 911), although the major problem is precisely how you access that space. Especially with the fixed-back buckets - you can't tilt their backrests, only slide the entire chairs forward as far as they will go. Which means you must subsequently load any cases or bags into the 'boot' either through the narrow gap between the door pillar and the seat-back, or alternatively try to slot them in between the headrests of the front two chairs. Awkward.
Performance
The Carrera T uses the same 'basic' (another wholly inappropriate term for any 911) 3.0-litre biturbo flat-six as the Carrera, which means healthy yet also relatively modest outputs of 394hp and 450Nm. That now leaves it some way off the 480hp Carrera S and miles from the next model up the driver-focused lineage of the 992.2 family, the 541hp
Carrera GTS T-Hybrid. So if one half of the 911 family goes 'Carrera > Carrera S > Turbo', then the other runs 'Carrera T > Carrera GTS > GT3 >
GT3 RS, and therefore it's a much bigger 'gap' in your mind between T and GTS than it is Carrera and Carrera S. We'll leave the potential GT2, and other sundry specials like the Sport Classic, S/T and amazing
Dakar, out of these hierarchical considerations for now, as the 992.2 family still isn't quite yet fully fleshed out.
Nevertheless, for quoters of meaningless pub stats, the Carrera T is the slowest-accelerating 992.2 of them all, with a 4.5-second 0-62mph time. But the reason for that is a good one: as we've already said up top, this, aside from the GT3, is now the only manual you can get in the 911 family. And as the wonderfully subversive
992.1 Carrera S manual has no longer got a direct successor in 992.2 form (the S is PDK only), and the hybrid gear in the facelifted GTS precludes three pedals, and the GT3 itself is such an oversubscribed gem in the 911 world that you are highly unlikely to ever get hold of one, realistically the T is the
only way of getting an H-gate shifter in your iconic Porsche sports car these days.
You shouldn't truthfully lament its performance, either. At less than 1.5 tonnes, this is not a hefty car, so the power and torque on offer is more than capable of moving it along at super-swift speeds. Moreover, the gearing on the phenomenal six-speed transmission is long, but not as extraordinarily stretchy as it is on some other mega-performance
Porsches. Which means you can happily redline the T in the lower gears, listening to the flat-six yowl through the standard-fit Sports exhaust (but titanium tips are an extra £914) all the way up to 7,500rpm and revelling in an all-time great automotive soundtrack as you go. It's maybe not quite as spine-tingling as some of the normally aspirated six-pots from this same outfit, but it is very, very alluring nonetheless.
And if you don't redline it, then the torque is such that roll-on acceleration in the Carrera T is pretty devastating. You need to watch how much throttle you squeeze on from around 40-50mph in fifth and sixth gears, because if you're ever so slightly too lead-footed with your input then the local constabulary would probably like a stern word, were they to catch you in the absent-minded act.
Yet making the T lug about on its ample torque is not the reason you buy this particular 911 model. Instead, you'll want to stir that manual transmission about the gate, because the throw weighting, feel and accuracy is divine, and the feel of the wooden shifter in the palm of your hand is thoroughly delightful. Also, you'll have noticed the T has lost a ratio from its two manual predecessors - but the six-speed unit in this car is vastly superior in operation to the seven-speed item in the 992.1 Carrera T, which in itself was a refined iteration of the sometimes-clunky 'box in the 991.2 T. So it's not only the exultant joy that a manual transmission continues in the 911 family in 2025 in the first place that makes this 992.2 T so special, but the fact that this three-pedal, short-throw gearbox is absolutely superb to deal with in a way its forebears never quite were.
Ride & Handling
There's very little we need to say here, other than the fact the overall package of the Carrera T's dynamic make-up is - for a road car - bordering on the sublime. It gains certain items that you just can't fit to a plain Carrera, such as a 10mm-lower Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM) Sport chassis with two-stage adjustable dampers, while it also gains Rear Axle Steering (RAS) from the off for maximum agility. The Porsche Torque Vectoring (PTV) limited-slip diff on its rear axle is mechanically operated rather than electronically controlled, as it would be on all PDK-equipped 992.2s, while the 21-inch rear alloys allow for whopping 305-section Pirelli P Zero tyres on the two driven wheels, providing as much mechanical grip as is feasibly possible.
Let's get the minor negatives out of the way first. One, the Carrera T can be a little noisy at speed. It has thinner, lightweight glass in the back of the passenger cabin and a reduction of hidden sound-deadening materials to keep its mass trim, and coupled to the carpeted rear section minus the back seats then you can experience some cavitation in the rear of the 911 on rougher motorway surfaces when you're travelling at 70mph. And two, there are very odd occasions where the firmer set-up of the PASM Sport chassis plus low-profile tyres can make the T skip, jump and thud over large lumps and through significant compressions if the suspension is already near full load when you encounter them. It doesn't quite have the same glittering and incessantly wide operating bandwidth as the otherworldly damping on a 992.2 GT3, for example.
But then, it shouldn't do. Because this is 'only' a T, when all's said and done. And once you key into that premise, you realise this might very well be the best current 911 you can actually buy from Porsche. It's
that good to drive. The blend of ride comfort and rolling refinement, both of which are high already by sports-car standards and not utterly ruined by the more driver-orientated set-up of the Carrera T, with the sensational road-holding attributes of the eighth-gen
neun-elfer make for a road-going vehicle that's little short of perfect. All of the steering, the brakes, the body control and the front-end grip/turn-in are marvellous, while the inherent balance of its rear-wheel-drive chassis can be felt in the way the rear squirrels slightly under throttle on corner exit. Admittedly, two foot of rubber on the rear and the lowest power output of any current 911 means this isn't the most playful of trailing axles in Porsche world - in the dry, you need a lot of commitment to truly unstick it coming out of corners - but there's more than enough feel and feedback to let you know the T is pushing from the back, rather than pulling from the front.
Thus, it takes no time at all to build an instant and lasting rapport with the 911 Carrera T, yet you'll always reveal something new and interesting about its handling if you continue to drive it and push at its limits of grip and traction. And when you then ladle on top the unfettered glory of stirring the six-speed manual about the gate to elicit speed from the powertrain on your favourite B-road, rather than simply clacking at a pair of paddles on a PDK car, and you sample some of the greatest pedal spacing that allows for sumptuous and near-impossible to muff up heel-and-toe downshifts, you realise the T has finally come of age at the third time of (modern-era) asking. It's no exaggeration to say it feels like a mini-GT3 now. It's also, we think, inarguable to suggest it's better to drive in all circumstances than either of the Carrera S or Carrera GTS models sitting above it. Therefore, while a regular Carrera remains the king of the GT-impersonating hill for 911s - no variant is more comfortable nor quiet than it for long-distance duties - if you want the absolute best and most rewarding driving experience you can get from a 992.2 and you
don't already have your name down on the list for a GT3, then the Carrera T is undoubtedly where it's at.
Value
When the 370hp, seven-speed-manual 991.2 Porsche 911 Carrera T Coupe first appeared just eight years ago, it was priced at £85,576 basic. In the interim, across a full generation change to the 992 variant, and then this facelift to give us the '.2' take on the latest T, all you've gained is 24hp, no extra torque whatsoever, an additional 1mph on the wholly irrelevant top speed, and an identical 0-62mph time... all for a whopping £29,824 premium. Yup, the 992.2 Carrera T starts from £115,400. Wow.
A couple of problems here. First, in the present range, that places the T much closer in cost to the 480hp S (£120,500) than it does the regular Carrera (£103,700) on which it is based; strictly speaking, if you were going to exactly split the difference betwixt 911C and 911CS, then the T should have come in at £112,100. Second, inflation surely hasn't risen by 35 per cent since those dim and distant past days of 2017. And third, this is a Porsche. Which means our test car was not, in fact, £115,400 at all, but instead had nearly 13-grand's worth of options fitted to it for an all-in figure of £128,296.
Chief among those were some of the things we've already mentioned, like the carbon buckets, the titanium tailpipes, the eye-catching Cartagena warpaint, and those H-pattern-beaming puddle lights in the door mirrors. But another £2,033 went on the HD-Matrix LED headlights, while a further £1,269 was dropped on the (admittedly fantastic) Bose Surround Sound System. It's somewhat more vexing that items such as ParkAssist including Surround View and then Lane Change Assist are chunky £729 and £739 options respectively, on a car which is more than 115 large from the outset. And further oddities include £51 on 'preparation for roof transport system' (?) and £590 for the 'Exclusive Design Taillights' (which look the same as a regular 992.2's illumination, to our eyes, but there we go). But the long and short of all this is that there are plenty of options available which will soon push the 911 Carrera T ever deeper into six-figure territory, which is more than irksome on a car that was - not that long ago - easily sub-£90k in its most pared-back iteration. Harrumph.
Perhaps, as some form of mitigation, the running costs won't be as fearsome as you might imagine. Across 815.8 miles at its wheel (more than 18.5 hours' worth of driving), it turned in a highly creditable 31.5mpg overall economy. Sure, that was inflated by the majority of those miles being steady motorway runs at 70mph in sixth, where the T was even brushing with mid-30s consumption, and it was, um, considerably thirstier than this when we were working its powertrain and chassis out on our favourite roads, including the B4494 from Newbury to Wantage. But still - 31.5mpg. From a near-400hp turbo petrol sports car with no hybrid gear whatsoever. That's fairly impressive, right?
Verdict
We've always rated the Porsche 911 Carrera T highly - you only have to make with the link-clickings above to go back to our full reviews on both the 991.2 and 992.1 variants to see that. But with slightly obtrusive seven-speed transmissions, and with both of them existing in a time when other manual 911s with a driver-focused bent were available, they never quite broke through from the realm of 'another very, very good 911' to the hallowed kingdom of 'a truly great one'.
Yet contextual shifts and the much-improved six-speed manual in the 992.2 T have at last conferred upon it that remarkable status. It's not just that this is now the only manual 911 you can get new. It's not just that it remains one of the more affordable variants in the German car's line-up, even if it's bloody expensive when viewed in isolation. No, it's that this Carrera T Coupe - ignore the Cabriolet, it's a sideshow to the tin-topped car here - is one of the finest, most edifying and downright enjoyable fast road cars we've ever had the privilege of driving. Yes, a GT3 is better still, but that's unattainable to most mere mortals and so the end result is that, finally, the Carrera T becomes the star, first-choice pick of the 911's scintillating range. Some accolade, we're sure you'll agree.
