Styling
Targas still look so good, especially when they're finished in Gentian Blue metallic (£1,704) and then complemented by keeping the 20-inch front, 21-inch rear alloys in silver, rather than festooning any black onto them. The very affable young man responsible for specifying press-car Porsches says he perhaps shouldn't have chosen to tint the rear screen on this particular Targa, and we only mention that not to shame him (as he's otherwise done an magnificent job on the configurator with this one), but because it relates to a practicality point that we'll raise later. However, the rest of the Targa, with that silver rollover hoop and rear-screen canopy, still looks utterly fabulous, resplendent now with the tidied-up 992.2 front ends with neater light clusters and lamp strips accordingly. Also, we prefer the appearance of the Targa to the
911 Cabriolet, even though the latter has the supposedly preferable 'clean shoulder line' when its hood and windows are all completely lowered.
Interior
An interior of Club leather in Truffle Brown (£1,464) goes beautifully with the blue exterior and gives the 911 Targa 4 GTS a classy air that befits its old-school overall appearance. That any 992.2 interior, Targa or otherwise, is one of the best passenger compartments in the world - in terms of design, fit and finish, haptics, ergonomics, integration of technology, and driving position - also helps things no end, so sitting inside the Targa feels special, and thoroughly befitting of a car costing (as tested) more than £176,000...
Practicality
As with any 992.2, practicality is a bit of a mixed bag. The 911 is one of the more usable high-end performance (or even super-...?) cars, that's not in doubt, and if you can make use of the 135-litre front boot and then the space afforded by those vestigial rear seats, you'll find it can swallow a surprising amount of clobber. The problem is how you access those rear seats, either for luggage or if you're a person. While a Cabriolet is hardly capacious behind its front seats, the angle of the big glass screen at the back of the Targa severely limits headroom in the second row of the 911 to make the rear pews useless for almost anyone apart from children below the age of ten.
There's also the issue of trying to cram larger, hard-body cases into the rear row if you're using it as a boot; on a Cabriolet, you just drop the hood and then lower the cases into the back seats with several miles of sky providing room above. In a Targa, you'd have to stop the electric roof mechanism midway through its eye-catching kerbside gymnastics and then put the cases in through various apertures. Otherwise, as with a 911 Coupe, you'd be trying to shove them either through the gap between the front seats' head restraints, or alternatively via the triangular opening which results between the tilted-forward front chairs and the B-pillar/rollover hoop area.
There are more practicality issues with the Targa. Because its big, heavy roof is so fancy in operation and needs so much space at the back of the car, as well as requiring powerful motors to raise and lower it, then it can't be done on the move at all - whereas as 911 Cab can drop and lift its top at speeds of up to 31mph. And that tinted rear glass we mentioned earlier? If you specify it and then find yourself wearing sunglasses while driving (quite a likely scenario, we'd suggest, if you're in a convertible), then looking in the rear-view mirror is almost like looking out at a night-time scene. It's so dark and hard to pick up cars behind you, even in broad daylight, that we'd certainly avoid specifying the tint on the Targa's roof glazing if it were our own car.
Performance
This T-Hybrid-toting Targa 4 GTS joined us on test immediately in the aftermath of the Heritage Design
Spirit 70 with the same power unit and the performance of the 541hp/610Nm 3.6-litre drivetrain is no less shocking in the even-heavier Targa than it was in the green-brown Cabriolet with the decals on it. Yes, astoundingly, despite the fact the Spirit 70 clocks in at a hefty 1,750kg with a driver and fluids onboard (EU, not DIN), the 992.2 Targa 4 GTS takes the unwanted record as the heaviest road-going 911 yet seen with a portly 1,820kg figure.
Not that it ever feels that way on the road. The Targa 4 can explode into furious rage just like the Spirit 70 - or any other T-Hybrid-equipped 911 - can, that sonorous 3.6 flat-six at the back making one of the finest soundtracks from Porsche in recent years; and that's really saying something. Any revs on the digital counter you choose, if you flatten the throttle in the Targa 4 GTS then be ready to head for the horizon in very,
very short order. It's a brutally, brilliantly quick car, which is (rather incredibly) only part-hinted at by the startling 3.1-second 0-62mph time. Helping the Targa overcome its weight disadvantages here is the Porsche Traction Management (PTM) all-wheel drive, which negates any of the rear-driven traction issues we found when deploying full power at low road speeds in the Spirit 70.
As well as the Targa 4 GTS goes, it also stops sweetly too, thanks to beautifully calibrated brakes. And it's even remarkably long-legged in terms of fuel consumption and driving range. With plenty of motorway miles during our week with the car on test (we racked up 966.8 miles in total with the Porsche), incredibly we managed to cover 417.1 miles on a single 63-litre tank of fuel in the Targa 4 GTS at 31.8mpg. Both the T-Hybrid set-up and the tall eighth gear in the PDK do their jobs, then, because across the entire 967 miles - and having repeatedly enjoyed the straight-line performance of the six-cylinder hybridised powertrain - it still gave back 29.5mpg overall at a relatively high 49mph average speed. For something that has the monumental power which means it is capable of 194mph and a near-three-second sprint to 62mph, that also weighs in excess of 1.8 tonnes, that's truly outlandish economy.
Ride & Handling
Due to the placement of the extra weight of the Targa, the centre of gravity of the car is higher due to the raised mounting of the hefty reinforced roof structure, while it also affects the front-to-rear distribution of the 911's mass. This means, if you concentrate super-hard when you're driving it, that you can discern the steering is ever so slightly lighter and less feelsome in the Targa than it is in either the Cabriolet or the Coupe models elsewhere in the range. This sensation of added 'nose lift' is only exacerbated when the Targa is low on fuel and the petrol load in its snout isn't counterbalancing things as much.
Then there's the reduced refinement of the Targa too. Even with a little pop-up deflector that emerges from the windscreen's header rail when you drop the Targa's roof, the 'catch' effect of the hollowed-out area beneath the rear glass funnels air back into the front of the cabin, which increases wind noise and buffeting at all speeds, especially on the motorway. And if you pop the side windows up, then in the 45-58mph zone there's a loud helicoptering noise which occurs in the Targa, which certainly doesn't manifest itself in a 911 Cab (even if that has its windows and wind deflector up). In the Targa, it's almost like the noise you'd make blowing over the top of a beer bottle at an angle, which makes sense given the smallness of the Targa's open aperture with the side windows raised.
In essence, then, if you distil down all we've said above, the Targa is clearly an inferior car to the Cabriolet. Thus, assuming you want an open-top 911, the Cab is the obvious selection, right? Because the Targa is heavier, it's marginally less practical, it's noisier and less comfortable on the move with its roof down at higher speeds, you can't raise and lower the aforementioned hood unless you're completely stationary, and the rear-glass structure marginally takes the gloss off the 992.2's otherwise exemplary handling. Initially designed way back when for US safety legislation that never came, it would be easy to say of Porsche's continued devotion to the 911 Targa... why? What's the point?
The point, whether you accept it or not, is that driving a Targa remains a singularly brilliant experience and unlike a convertible from any other manufacturer. Equipped with Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM) and a 10mm-lower Sport chassis, don't for a minute think this 911 is a soft touch in the corners. It might not be quite as pin-sharp as its tin-topped stablemates, but it still handles in the glittering and deeply rewarding fashion a true Porsche should. It's even supremely comfortable in terms of the way the damping smothers out most imperfections, and if you're getting a little more blustered about in the cabin with the roof down - so what? You're buying an open-top car to enjoy the elements in the first place, so the Targa's somewhat turbulent cabin isn't exactly unexpected nor a fatal flaw. In short, this a case of heart emphatically ruling head: the Cabriolet might be the better convertible 911 out of it and the Targa, but it's the Targa we yearn for and which we'd have without question. If those lottery numbers ever both coming in, that is.
Value
In the updated eighth-generation range of the 911, there are just two Targas to choose between. At the grossly inadequately phrased entry-level point, you have the £137,600 Targa 4S, which uses the new 480hp iteration of the 3.0-litre, non-hybrid flat-six used in the
Carrera S, and then there's this T-Hybrid Targa 4 GTS, which kicks off at a meaty £154,400.
Now that's exactly the same basic price as the 911 Cabriolet 4 GTS, so there's no price penalty in going for the Targa's fancy, show-stopping top. However, beyond the aforementioned Gentian Blue metallic paint and Truffle Brown Club leather - both of which are already four-figure options, remember - some of the added-equipment items available start pumping up the Targa's price to alarming levels. If we just stick to the extra stuff on RE74 FBX that was the wrong side of a grand apiece, the Targa came with Adaptive Sports Seats Plus (18-way electrically adjustable) for £2,428, Tinted HD-Matrix LED headlights for £2,562, a dashboard and door-trim leather package for £2,044, Surround View with Active Parking Support for £1,298, Porsche InnoDrive including adaptive cruise control for £2,367, and the brilliant (and absolutely banging) Burmester High-End Surround Sound System for £2,752. Throw in some sundry other items and suddenly you're staring down the barrel of a Targa 4 GTS which weighs in at £176,486. Just £11,214 less than the Spirit 70, which is a special and limited-edition thing for high-end collectors. That's bold, isn't it?
Verdict
The Porsche 911 Targa 4 GTS is only enhanced by the addition of the T-Hybrid running gear, and while it might be a nebulous kind of thing to cite with a monster six-figure car like this, its strength remains its unerring cool factor. It looks tremendous on the outside, it's quite unlike any other open-top car at this end of the market (the
Mazda MX-5 RF is probably its nearest roof-type analogue, really), and it still delivers one of the great modern-era driving experiences complete with a feelgood factor unmatched by any other 911 save for stuff from the GT department. Throw on top the absolute theatre of the Targa opening and closing its roof, and the deal is sealed. Honestly, it's in no way cheap or flawless, but its immense character and charm mean the Targa 4 GTS remains phenomenally desirable nonetheless - and our favourite open-top 911 of them all.
