2019 Porsche 911 Carrera T Review

3,000 less than the C2S. That price tag is only part of what makes the Carrera T such a strong offering. 105,100 C2S are a powerful motivator. Equally powerful motivation is what comes standard on the Carrera T and how much of it is either unavailable on the base Carrera or unavailable on every 911 outside of the most hardcore RS models. That latter category is an interesting one. The Carrera T shares its lightweight rear windshield and quarter window glass and low-fat door panels with the 911 GT2 RS and GT3 RS. And like those cars (as well as the 911 GTS and standard GT3), there's less sound deadening, so the sound of the twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter flat-six is just a little more noticeable. Compared to the base Carrera, the T packs the Sport version of the brand鈥檚 Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM) as standard. My lightly equipped tester packs the optional seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, heated front seats, and rear-axle steering. The 911 is already a handsome car inside and out, but the Carrera T tweaks the design to stand out just a bit more.

The cabin is largely the same as the standard car鈥檚 despite a handful of special lightweight bits. Fabric door straps replace traditional handles - and look positively awesome. While my tester didn't carry the optional full bucket seats, I'm sure they look equally remarkable. Other than those modifications, this is the same 911 interior you'd find on a base Carrera or Carrera S. That said, it鈥檚 all solid and well-built. The 911 feels like it will last for 100 years or more. Two-door sports cars with firmed-up, lowered suspensions, and reduced sound-deadening hardly qualify as comfortable, but the Carrera T does earn some points for its excellent front seats. Even the manually adjusted chairs that come standard on the Carrera T are comfortable and supportive. There are few better ways to while away long drives, to the point that I question the need for the available 18-way adaptive seats. Unsurprisingly, the second row is next-to useless.

There's so little space for the head or legs, that I鈥檇 hesitate to even call the 911 a four-seater. The 911 also loses points for its tiny frunk. Like the standard Carrera, the T has just 5.1 cubic feet of cargo space, almost half of the 10.1 cubes available in the Mercedes-AMG GT. Thankfully, the cramped rear seat鈥檚 lack of legroom makes it the perfect place to store soft items if the frunk is full, and when those chairs are folded, there's an additional 9.2 cubic feet of cargo space. 700 heated front seats. But since it came standard with Bluetooth, xenon headlights, Apple CarPlay, a 4.6-inch digital instrument gauge, and two-zone automatic climate control, the short option sheet wasn't an issue. 102,000 car is kind of silly. Aside from maybe a head-up display or an air-suspension system, the 911 Carrera T offers a tremendous range of optional goodies. LED headlights (in both standard and smoked varieties), adaptive cruise control, 18-way seats, ventilated front seats, a heated steering wheel, and a fantastic Burmester audio system are all available for customers willing to pay.

8,000 to make it a far more palatable choice as a daily driver (although that's before getting into the ridiculous aesthetic options Porsche offers customers). My 911 Carrera T came standard with a reasonably sized seven-inch touchscreen. The system is responsive but unattractive, and features a black and gold color scheme with last-generation graphics. The menus are also something of a mess, which makes navigating the various functions difficult. Knobs and buttons you expect to do one thing, like change the radio station by frequency, instead cycle through presets鈥nless you're in the right part of the radio screen. The larger screen and software coming to the next-generation 911 (which will include a T variant) will mark a tremendous improvement over my tester's. That the Carrera T carried Apple CarPlay as standard, though, helped matters. The Carrera T features the same twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter flat-six as the base Carrera. And like that car, it produces 370 horsepower and 331 pound-feet of torque. Both the Carrera and Carrera T make peak horsepower at 6,500 rpm (1,000 rpm south of redline) and peak torque between 1,700 and 5,000 rpm.