Styling
Look, before we get into the striking appearance of the Spirit 70, we can almost hear you diehard Porsche aficionados sharpening your pens (er... keyboards, more like?) after reading our intro above and telling us we've got it wrong about how many Heritage Design models there have been. You will no doubt cite the magnificent
911 S/T, for example, a vehicle celebrating 60 years of the Porsche 911 story. Or indeed the
concept car that previewed the eventual jewel-like
991.2 Speedster. But neither the S/T nor the 2018 Speedster Concept (which wore a big number 70 on its doors, rather like the machine you can see in the pictures here) were 'full' Heritage Design models; they simply had Heritage Design Packages fitted. So there.
Thus, the Spirit 70 is the legitimate third model in this unusual 911 canon, and Porsche said there will be four of them in total - so a 1980s and early '90s celebration must be in the pipeline, hopefully mimicking the old 'whaletail' 930 Turbo of that era of excess. Anyway, back to the Seventies and this singular 911 Cab. It is finished in the exclusive shade of Olive Neo, which switches between appearing green and a kind of dun brown colour depending on how much sunlight is directly falling on it. Laid over the top of this chameleonic paint are decals aplenty, including the racing 'lollipops' on the doors and that three-stripe motif which not only continues onto the soft-top roof itself, but also morphs into a huge '911' emblem at the front encompassing a 1970s Porsche crest rendered predominantly in gold. Presumably, this gigantic bonnet numeral is in case you've forgotten precisely what you're in and somehow think you've ended up driving a
718 of some sort.
Complementing the bestickered Olive Neo bodywork is a grey-gold shade Porsche calls Bronzite, which is featured on details in the front air-intakes area and on the surrounds for the centrally mounted Sports exhaust tailpipes at the rear, and then continued for the glorious 'Fuchs' design 20- and 21-inch mismatched alloys (with centre locks) across the axles. And finally, badgework: there's a couple of discreet 'Exclusive Manufaktur' emblems on the front wings of the Spirit 70; on the rear, the 911 legend is followed by flowing 'Spirit 70' script; and then, up on the engine cover, there's the offset-mounted Heritage Design round button, designed to hark back to the classic 356 and the item that most clearly identifies one of these decade-celebrating 911s (and for those of you about to say the S/T had a round badge in a similar position, that was one which marked 60 years of the 911, not the HD lineage).
Say what you like about the Spirit 70's idiosyncratic hue, it cannot be argued that this thing is bang on theme for the decade that gave us
Get Carter (the proper one with Michael Caine in it, not the godawful, risible remake featuring Sly Stallone). And we've driven plenty of special 911s over the years - ones with massive rear wings and RS badges, examples finished in searing bright colours, others that have fancy roofs or some kind of geeky limited-build exclusivity. Yet we can't remember a single modern-era (post-2000, essentially) 911 we've driven that garnered even half as much attention as the Spirit 70. And, thankfully, that attention was universally positive. So you can call the stickers childish or say very unkind things about the Olive Neo paint, but the general public seems to think this 911 Cab's design is a livery. For what it's worth, we were initially unconvinced, but by the end of our time with the Porsche we'd come around to the same way of thinking.
Interior
If you think the exterior is wild, wait until you clap eyes on the Spirit 70's interior. Think Pasha. Lots and lots of eye-swirling Pasha. But not in black-and-white, like the classic fabric finish in 1970s Porsches. No, it's black-and-olive-neo-green. And it is, as Fleetwood Mac once crooned,
everywhere. On the seat centres. Adorning the door cards. Making up that ledge-like strip running transversely across the dash. Crikey, it's even lining the glovebox when you open that up,
and it's on the mat in the base of the front boot too.
To be fair to it, this Pasha explosion does give the 911 Spirit 70 a suitably different air (forgive the pun) to any other Cabriolet in the current 992.2 range, so top marks there. And we, again, kind of liked the upholstery. We also liked the dials in the (now-all-digital; it
is a 992.2, after all, folks) instrument cluster, with white markers and green text; again, a link back to the 356, and the colour is repeated in the Sport Chrono dial sitting high up on the Porsche's dash. Beyond these flourishes, there are some 'Spirit 70' graphics in the various digital displays, some 'Spirit 70'-emblazoned door sills, and of course a gold plaque on the passenger-side fascia that informs you of which number in the 1,500-strong run of Spirit 70s you're sitting in. For the sake of fastidiousness, the press car is No.0104.
Overall, the colour scheme won't be for everyone, but given this is a 992.2 cabin (i.e., it's chuffing terrific in terms of build quality, material finishing and ergonomic correctness, and the technology is even impressively integrated and supremely easy to operate too) then it garners a big thumbs-up from us.
Practicality
Like any 992 Cabriolet, .1 or .2 regardless, the Spirit 70 seems at once both reasonably useful and then hopelessly impractical in equal measure. These soft-top 992.2s get their rear '+2' seats as standard, unlike the
facelifted Mk8 Coupes, but these are pretty much uninhabitable for anyone apart from those people who live behind the skirting boards of your house and who like to borrow things. The seats also have vertical backrests, so sitting in them isn't just a case of trying to squeeze your legs into a non-existent gap between the rear-most face of the front seats and the back bench's squab, but also accepting that even if you do cram yourself in there, you'll be sitting bolt upright in perpetuity as a result.
Thus, the rear seats once again become the
de facto boot of a 992, with Porsche quoting 163 litres of capacity back there. That's not terrible and at least in a Cabriolet like this, you have the option of dropping the roof to make loading cases into the second row of the 911 far easier than it would be in a Coupe model. But 163 litres is not much more than the 135 litres you get in that Pasha-lined 'frunk' (sorry for the Americanism), and we doubt the sort of well-heeled people who can afford a £188,000 convertible would want to sling their Rimowa cases onto the back chairs, where they'd be in plain view of all the hoi polloi when the 911 is travelling top-down. So when you ultimately boil it down, the Spirit 70 is basically a two-seater with precious little usable storage capacity to speak of.
Performance
Good grief, this T-Hybrid system results in an absolute monster of a Porsche 911 Cabriolet. Let's be clear - you really do not need any more performance than this on the roads. Gracious, you don't even need
this much. We know that Zuffenhausen has already announced the 992.2 Turbo S is on its way, with its outrageous peak output going well beyond the 700hp barrier as a result of its own, twin-turbocharged take on this very car's single, electronically assisted turbo T-Hybrid set-up, but the GTS specification (541hp, 610Nm) already feels capital-T Turbo quick. Despite the fact it is giving away 19hp and 140Nm (and quite a lot of weight, 50kg of it accounted for by the T-Hybrid 400-volt electrical system and associated componentry), its on-paper 0-62mph stat is the same 3.1 seconds as a
991.2 Turbo S, while it's only 3mph slower flat out at 194mph. That's comparing it to a four-wheel-drive Coupe, remember; the Spirit 70 is a rear-driven Cabriolet. In fact, scratch the 991 callback: subjectively, the GTS hybridised drivetrain in this car doesn't feel any slower on the roads than the non-S variant of the
992.1 Turbo. Astounding.
Admitting that there are some traction issues, especially in the wet, of flowing a gargantuan 610Nm through the trailing axle alone, it's not so much the step-off acceleration in the Spirit 70 which is eye-widening; no, it's the absolutely thunderous roll-on build-up of pace. If you're not careful, squeezing on the throttle only halfway with the car in Normal mode will see the swell of torque taking the speeds deep into illegal territory in the blink of an eye, and furthermore you deign to rinse out the 3.6-litre powertrain to the 7,500rpm redline at your (and your licence's) peril on the roads. Unless you're in first or second gear, you don't want to know what the 911 Spirit 70 will do at the top of third or fourth. Or, at least, we don't want the local constabulary to know what the 911 Spirit 70 will do at the top of third or fourth. It's obscenely quick. To the point that it really does reaffirm our assertion that the poor old
992.2 Carrera S feels a little surplus to requirements these days.
But we digress. The Spirit 70 is so flippin' fast because the mighty hybrid-enhanced engine is aided and abetted by a super-slick and faultless eight-speed PDK transmission, which in this case houses the e-motor that adds power and torque to the flat-six's own fuel-burning exertions. You simply step on the loud pedal in the Spirit 70 and all holy hell breaks loose. It's addictive, principally because the soundtrack accompanying this surfeit of raw pace is also a belter. Maybe not as tuneful as the 4.0-litre nat-asp gem that you'd find in the back of a contemporary
GT3, it's nevertheless more guttural and animalistic in the lower rev ranges than the 3.0-litre employed in the Carrera, Carrera T and Carrera S variants of the 992.2 range, and the T-Hybrid transforms into a yowling shriek as it approaches that lofty redline. Sound the cliché klaxon, but as you're in a Cabriolet then you can better hear the 3.6's sumptuous song with the roof down, and furthermore (somewhat appropriately, given the ethos of this car) it's a tune more redolent of Porsches of yore - before emissions regs and particulate filters started to dampen down the flat-six holler. Beautiful stuff.
Thankfully, the Spirit 70 is thoroughly docile when you're not wringing out every performance-enhancing drop of its T-Hybrid system, with good throttle response, impeccably calibrated brakes and jerk-free, swift shifts from the PDK as it shuffles up into seventh or eighth as quickly as it can to save fuel. That's not the T-Hybrid's
raison d'etre, though, despite the use of the h-word - the electrical assistance is to boost the 911's performance, not its parsimony. That said, across the course of 741 miles on test (with the majority of those spent cruising on the motorway), the Spirit 70 did give back an impressive 28.2mpg average, even managing to tickle beyond 30mpg when it was just running on the motorway. For something with 541hp and a big-capacity, turbocharged, petrol-powered six-cylinder engine, that's a remarkable return.
Ride & Handling
It has been clear since we drove our first 992 Cab back at its
international launch in Greece that this is the sharpest-driving soft-top 911 in history, by some distance. It almost totally eliminates the flobbedy feeling of a compromised shell (in terms of torsional rigidty), masks its weight quite beautifully (at 1.75 tonnes as tested with a driver and fluids onboard, this really is a Porker), and gives a driving sensation that - while not quite as engaging and fluid as that of a present-day 911 Coupe - is nevertheless way in advance of almost any top-end convertible you can think of from a rival manufacturer.
And the same is true of the Spirit 70. It's a wonderful thing to command, replete with feelsome and superbly weighted steering, a sense of balance and body control that gives the impression of being deft and agile, and the sort of grip and traction which belies the rear-wheel-drive status of this 911 Cab. In short, on the right roads, this thing is a riot, while for most of the rest of the time it puts on an epic display of rolling refinement and comfort to happily play the pseudo-GT when you want it to. Sure, there's a bit of tyre noise from the colossal rear road-rollers fitted to the Spirit 70, and the firm set-up of the 992.2's chassis means it can sometimes thump over larger imperfections in the road's surface, but in the main it is commendably comfortable to travel in. That counts even with the fast-folding roof down, as the Spirit 70 has the Cab's clever electrical mounting system for the rear wind deflector (which nestles behind the rear seats when it's down) plus the option of raising four windows to reduce in-cabin buffeting at speed. However, we found we preferred the 911 with its wind deflector and glasshouse completely lowered on the move, as the windscreen and car aerodynamics do enough to keep you snug inside - with the heated driver's seat and steering wheel on, natch.
The issue is, then, that the Spirit 70 is dynamically excellent. But then so's a RWD GTS Cabriolet. That retails for £147,900. Almost 40-grand cheaper. There is nothing that's different whatsoever about the Spirit 70, when it's on the move, from the very GTS source material from which it is riffing. Now, you could level that self-same accusation at the original Heritage Design car, the 2020 Targa 4S, because that was mechanically identical to its basis. But the preceding Sport Classic wasn't just fancy warpaint and looking back at the past with rose-tinted glasses. It was a 550hp Turbo that was rear-wheel-drive only and equipped with a seven-speed H-gate shifter plus three pedals in its footwell, a mechanical specification that you'd couldn't get anywhere else in the 992 line-up at the time (or since); thus giving serious merit to its exorbitantly inflated £214,000 price tag. At a mind-boggling £187,700 as tested, is the Spirit 70 really special enough, in its green-no-brown-no-what-the-hell-colour-is-it-actually livery, to merit such a cost?
Hard to say. And possibly also pointless to be extemporising about value considerations on six-figure luxury items like Porsche 911 soft-tops. As in, the people who can afford a 911 Carrera Cab at £113,700 basic (a stonking £74,000 saving on this car, incidentally) can almost certainly swallow the extra needed to get into the Spirit 70. Ho-hum.
Value
What your £39,800 excess is essentially buying you in the 911 Spirit 70 is the following: the Olive Neo paint; the stickers; the Fuchs wheels in Bronzite; the exterior badging and further Bronzite body detailing; stripes on the hood; Pasha with no end in the cabin; the green-tinged 'dials' of the instrument cluster and Sport Chrono clock; and then that plaque on the passenger-side dashboard. Oh, and of course exclusivity, and entry to the Heritage Design Club (if such a mythical organisation exists).
Is that enough? Could the Spirit 70 have had some sort of mechanical upgrade to differentiate it from the GTS Cabriolet? Possibly. Anyway, if it helps, the Spirit 70 does at least come with two bits of standard kit that aren't fitted to a GTS Cabriolet. Those items are its tinted HD-Matrix LED headlights in the smoothed-off nose of the 992.2, and also the 18-way electrically adjustable Adaptive Sports Seats Plus chairs in the front of the cabin. But still, not really enough to justify the £40,000 uptick on their own (or even with the alluring visuals of the 70 thrown in for consideration, eh?)...
Verdict
An objectively brilliant car that is possibly slightly undone by the fact it comes from a range of models that are all objectively brilliant, the 'regular' 911 Carrera GTS Cabriolet among them. Bravo to Porsche for allowing the Spirit 70 to exist in the first place, and bravo for executing the '70s-throwback look to nigh-on perfection. But unless you're really swayed by its rarity value or you've always had a penchant for the colour of cargo shorts, then the Spirit 70 isn't necessarily the best selection for you; a GTS Cab and some choice options would do just fine instead.
