The 911 Porsche Carrera GTS is a well thought of and respected automobile. The coupé version is now joined by the cabriolet version, giving a pretty decent range of choice to choose from.
At first site, the breadth of the Carrera range and options is starting to look as bewildering as some of its rivals, so it’s best to think of the range as giving a wide range of choice to hone down rather than anything else. So within this wide range of choice we now have two fully open-to-the-air options; the coupé and the cabriolet.
The cabriolet is a bit heavier than the coupé of course, but retains the same attractive side-on profile as the coupé and manages a slight CO2 improvement with emissions of 242g/km.
The cabriolet doesn’t compromise too much – weight aside – and a top speed of 188mph from the 484bhp, 6-cylinder 3.8 litre engine looms under the hood, waiting to be put into action.
The electric roof will open in just 13 seconds up to a speed of 35mph – perfect for that brief site in the distance of a small piece of blue sky as you hurtle carefree down the motorway.
On paper, it’s impossible not to compare the cabriolet to the coupé, and the general answer might seem to be that the coupé is the better driving vehicle, but the cabriolet naturally wins on rear seating space. To be honest, I don’t think it’s entirely fair to compare the two and with a 0-62mph attack of just 4.6 seconds, I doubt many drivers will be comparing anyway.
It’s also fair to say that if you don’t want the exciting challenge of a coupé, the cabriolet offers the same wind-in-your hair experience for a more relaxed ride – if a Porsche can ever be relaxed – and with an impressive engine that copes with the slower speeds very well, and the added perceived comfort, the Porsche Carrera GTS Cabriolet could almost be described as a family vehicle.
There’s not all that much difference price-wise between the PDK version and the manual version, with the manual sitting at £99,602 and the PDK at £102,419. The 6-speed manual gearbox cabriolet achieves 29.1mpg (combined figure – although of course, you need to take into account the urban cycle, which is a more sobering 20.6mpg) and the PDK semi-automatic version achieves 31.7mpg. For practicality reasons alone, the cabriolet soft-top Porsche gets my vote over the coupé version.
Images: porsche.com, theguardian.com
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