2018 Porsche 911 Review

That's a Porsche 911 GT3. [MUSIC PLAYING] We've chosen this car because it offers two of the best transmissions out there, a six-speed manual and a seven-speed automatic that Porsche calls PDK. This particular GT3 is equipped with the manual and something called the "touring package," which means it doesn't have the enormous look at me I'm driving a GT3 wing sticking out the back. What we're going to do is we're going compare the test results of this GT3 against the GT3 we tested a while back. That's when we put it against the Corvette ZR1. That one had the automatic and that big enormous wing. We have to give you one caveat, though. With GT3s, there's no price difference between manual and automatic. Other 911s are like traditional sports cars where you have to pay extra to get the automatic, and it's $3,200. But enough of that. Let's get testing. [MUSIC PLAYING] The easiest way to see the difference in acceleration between automatic and manual is straight-line acceleration. With an automatic 911, doing the launch control is really easy. You turn on sport mode, you hit the loud exhaust button for fun, you mash the brake pedal, you mash the gas pedal, the engine revs are going to shoot up, you release the brake and hold on. It's that easy. And it's quick, too. Replicating that performance with a manual is much more difficult there are more things that you control, and there are more decisions you have to make. You have to manage the clutch with your left foot you've to manage the gas pedal with your right foot. You have to decide what engine speed to launch at, what engine speed to shift at. And with your shifts, you have to be quick enough to not add unnecessary time your acceleration, but not so quick that you might damage your transmission. It's all about juggling smoothness and quickness and it even gets more nuanced with this particular 911 GT3 touring. I'm going to turn off stability control. There we go. And if I clutch in, engage first gear, and roll on the gas pedal, it's going to stop rubbing at 4,000 RPM. If I jump on the gas pedal, like really stab it, it goes to 5,000 RPM, and that's where we're going to launch at. When I release the clutch at that point, I'm going to slowly disengage it, try to minimize axle hop, and then have to control the gas pedal with my right foot so the tires don't spin too much and slow you down. And then everything follows after that. Sound complicated? It's not. Let's do it. [ENGINE REVS, TIRES SQUEAL] It's a little bumpy down here. [LAUGHING] [SIGHS] That feels good. That feels real good. This is a fast car. It's a real fast car. [MUSIC PLAYING] How much does a manual slow you down? In this case, it's about a half a second at both 60 miles an hour and the quarter mile. You may think that the time it takes to change gears would be the primary contributor to that difference, but you'd be wrong. The data suggests it's actually the automatic's launch control. Let's look at the acceleration curves. Time is on the x-axis, and speed is on the y-axis. The more quickly the line shoots up, the faster the car gets going. In the automatic, the launch control is simply better at managing power delivery to the tires. It's faster at reading the situation, and it can make decisions with a higher fidelity of control than you get with your feet. Each of the three shifts the manual GT3 makes during the acceleration run costs about a tenth of a second. But even before it's time to shift to second gear with the manual, the automatic GT3 has already established the majority of the lead it maintains through the rest of the run. You could, in theory, launch the manual GT3 better and close that gap. But that would be for just one run. The automatic's advantage isn't just the speed, but the consistency. It runs the same acceleration every single time. [MUSIC PLAYING] So what have we proven? Yes, manuals are slower than automatics. No duh. And now you know by how much. But that begs the question about the existence of this car. Well, what happens is when you have this car you get the luxury of not having to care about numbers. You're going to run into a wall with the automatic where you're going to figure out, I wish this was a little bit more interesting. I wish I could be more of a part of the experience. And that's what this gives you the ability to engage a bit more this car is about that purity of driving experience that people go on and on about. And as much as I hate to admit that that saying is true, it is. If you want the fastest car out there, go get an electric Tesla. But if you actually want to care about the act of driving, get yourself a manual. If we could just talk a minute about the sound of this thing, a 9,000 RPM flat six screaming as you approach the top of the power band. And to me, one of my favorite parts about driving a car like this is the up shift, when you find a clear bit of straightaway, and you can take the thing to red line or near to it, when you change gears up, when you re-engage the throttle after your shift, for some reason that sensation and that sound has always made me a very happy driver. [ENGINE REVS] Right there. That hiccup kind of sound when the throttle comes back in, when you start feeling the air, hearing the air run through the engine, it's just such a satisfying and beautiful-sounding thing. And this is when maybe we don't have to describe it. Maybe we can just settle on it being just fun. That's OK for me. I know I could be going faster. I don't care. I'm enjoying the experience of driving. We haven't even talked about this transmission. The six-speed manual is a special transmission for this car and this car alone when it comes to new 911s. The standard 911 gets a seven-speed. This one is a six-speed. Now you might say, Oh, probably a seven-speed couldn't withstand what's happening at 9,000 RPMs, because normal 911s don't read that high. This one does. But I like to imagine that this transmission is the result of Porsche understanding why a manual transmission is important, because they appear to have paid very close attention to the feel of the gates, how do you go from one to the next. There's a mechanical satisfaction about that movement, how it goes chink-chink like a bolt-action component of the shifter itself. And you know you've had appliances that just had buttons that felt good, or doors that just felt good. It's the same response here. It's the same kind of feeling here. And I just want to stop at saying it feels good. While we're on cool down, there's so much I can think of and talk about that doesn't hit my mind when we're driving fast. I still love the consistency of a good automatic, like the l-clutch units that Porsche uses, their PDK transmissions. You really have to admire the engineering work that goes into a transmission like that. The consistency, and the thrill, and the performance that they deliver. But when you have a good manual and you don't care about lap times or acceleration runs, this one just feels good. So let's leave it at that. 911 GT3 touring. The best 911 of this generation. And the one I'd most likely want to steal. I'll be sad to give this thing up. Thanks for watching. Be sure to subscribe and visit Edmunds.com to find your perfect car.