Tested: Is the Porsche 911 GT3 Touring Truly Special or Just Overhyped?

• What's new: The Touring is a refreshed and slightly less aggressive take on the 992-generation Porsche 911 GT3.
• Why it matters: It introduces an optional Lightweight package that drops weight with a carbon roof, magnesium wheels and lightened door panels.
• Edmunds says: While the GT3 Touring and its 9,000-rpm engine are built to impress, accessing its best requires that you drive it with the mechanical sympathy of a 16-year-old in their first car.

How leichtbau is it, you ask? According to our scales, 3,248 pounds with a full tank of gas. If you're keeping score, that's 42 pounds more than the 3,206-pound non-Touring GT3 we tested a few months ago, and that car had a rear wing and a dual-clutch automatic transmission. The delta is due to the Touring sporting comfortable but surprisingly unsporty 18-way adjustable seats and conventional steel brakes. In contrast, the Weissach package-equipped car benefited from a similar lightweight treatment, plus lighter bucket seats and ceramic-composite brakes. 

Before we dive further into the numbers, you should know that the gorgeous wheels I'd gladly leave this car on bricks for, if they didn't have center-locking nuts tightened to Herculean levels of torque, came wrapped in ultra-sticky Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tires measuring 255/35R20 up front and 315/30R21 in the rear. Our tester moved through its six speeds via a manual shifter sent from God and contrasted its black leather interior with a lovely shade of Gentian Blue Metallic paint. 

As is customary, the braking tests came first. The Touring and its steel brakes took 102 feet to shed 60 mph on its best run, a decent result as far as sports cars go, but far off the nutty 91-foot result achieved by the Weissach package-equipped GT3 we tested a few months ago. In case you're curious which car tops our stopping leaderboard, it also hails from Stuttgart: a 718 Cayman GT4 RS, which needed just 89 feet for its 60-0 mph run. 

Yet while the Touring wasn't able to crack our leaderboard of Top 10 stoppers, it shot up to second place on the skidpad. By pulling an average of 1.23 g on our 200-foot course, it put up the second-highest result Edmunds has ever recorded, trailing only the aforementioned Weissach package-equipped GT3, which managed a slightly better 1.24 g result. In case you're curious, the worst result Edmunds has ever logged was a 0.56 g score achieved by a 2013 Mercedes-Benz G 550. 

Like its winged sibling, the Touring tackled the skidpad with a tremendous amount of stability, even as you dial back its traction and stability control software. As you'd expect from a modern 911, it's tuned so the front tires give way first with no real worry that the back would come around. It's the kind of car you can lean on ... briefly. While its Cup 2 R tires were great on the first pass of the skidpad, their performance degraded rather quickly. By the fifth pass, the Touring had come down to about 1.17 g. That's still a great result by most standards, but it wasn't quite as consistent as we'd hoped. 

Onto the fun stuff. On our acceleration straight, the Touring managed an honest 4.0-second time to 60 mph, finishing the quarter mile in 11.9 seconds at 120.4 mph. Factor in rollout as most manufacturers do, essentially starting the clock once the car has rolled forward a foot, and you get a 3.7-second time that matches Porsche's claims for the car. In true GT3 fashion, you can activate launch control, dump the clutch, and get the very best this car has to offer. And it'll happily do it run after run. Over its five passes, the Touring's time varied by only a tenth of a second. 

As you'd expect, the Weissach package-equipped car and its seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission did even better. On its best run, it put up a 3.4-second time to 60 mph, completing the quarter mile in 11.3 seconds at 124.5 mph. Factor in the infamous rollout, and the time drops to 3.1 seconds, beating Porsche's quoted time. 

So, the GT3 Touring is as quick as Porsche says it is, delivers consistent performance (outside of accessing the very peak of its grip levels), and makes its performance easy to access in the real world. What did you expect from a modern 911? With that out of the way, we can get into the meat and potatoes of why the numbers it put up on our track only tell half the story. 

See, the real-world acceleration difference between this GT3 Touring and say, a Carrera T coupe, both equipped with six-speed manuals, isn't as massive as you'd expect. The latter may be down on horsepower, 388 hp versus the GT3's 502 horses, but their respective torque outputs of 331 lb-ft and 348 lb-ft are practically identical. Factor in that the T is turbocharged, and you get a surprisingly similar amount of speed gain when you put your foot down. 

Instead, the GT3's magic lives north of 8,000 rpm. This Touring demands that you drive it with the mechanical sympathy of a 16-year-old in a clapped-out Honda Civic. If you don't blip the throttle while rolling at low speeds, you'll stall it thanks to its light flywheel. This isn't a half-throttle kind of car; it demands that your foot be stuck to the floor as it screams its way to its 9,000-rpm redline. If the dash isn't flashing and demanding that you upshift, you're doing something wrong. 

At our test track, its steering proved wonderfully communicative, striking an ideal balance between responsiveness and a natural feel as it picks up weight under load. Let's pour one out for the engineers at competing brands tasked with besting it. Then there's the six-speed manual paired with a shifter glorious enough to make grown men weep. Like the Touring's powertrain, it demands decisive operation. It doesn't mind being slammed into gears, but you must do it with a decent amount of force. Anything less will result in a clunky feeling and an unpleasant experience.

At low speeds around town, the Touring is a miserable object. Its suspension tackles highways with the grace of a jackhammer, and thanks to its leichtbau-ness, it's fairly loud while cruising and not to mention, pretty slow while trying to pick up speed at lower revs. This is a Touring in the fact that it lacks a fixed rear wing, opting instead for an electronically operated one like the rest of the 911 range. The rest is pure GT3. 

Be skeptical of anyone who calls it a race car for the road. It's not. It's temperamental at times and annoying to live with outside of a track or on a perfectly paved mountain road due to its stiff but uncharacteristically bouncy suspension. And while it may serve up its performance on a silver platter thanks to a great launch control system and stable and predictable handling, it still demands that you work to unlock the very best of its driving experience. 

So, is the TikTok algorithm spot on? Is the Porsche 911 GT3 the best answer we currently have to the sports car question? Well, yeah, but with a caveat. There's no need to envy a Touring cruising around town at low speeds or pulling into a coffee shop on a Sunday morning. Its owner might as well be in any other 911, or in one of the many Taycans they no doubt had to buy to get it. But see one out on a mountain road or on a track day, and you should feel jealous because whoever is behind the wheel is living a dream.