Porsche 911 Carrera 4 GTS Cabrio Review: Almost Annoyingly Good

The sprawling Porsche 911 range can act as a sort of sliding scale for enthusiast appeal. At one end, drawing in the sort of people who like to get together to discuss toe-in angle and valve timing, you have the S/T, with its naturally aspirated engine, manual gearbox and rear-wheel drive.

At the other end is this, the new Carrera 4 GTS Cabriolet. It’s got the safety net of all-wheel drive and a soft-top roof that seems more suited to Nice than the Nürburgring. It’s automatic, turbocharged, and is even a hybrid these days. Where the luggage compartments of 911s like the GT3 and S/T tend to be filled with helmets and Nomex overalls, this one’s far more likely to contain a bag full of golf sticks.

Of course, long gone are the days when cabriolets of any ilk were floppy, shuddering embarrassments next to their hardtop counterparts. These days, the difference in rigidity between coupe and convertible 911 is barely perceptible, which should stand the Cabrio in good stead for enthusiasts.

In fact, let’s not beat around the bush here: it’s a modern 911, and is therefore almost annoyingly good.

Every 992.2 GTS, whether rear- or all-wheel drive, coupe, Cabrio or Targa, gets an identical powerplant: a new 3.6-litre single-turbo flat-six making 478bhp, with a teeny tiny 1.9kWh battery pack slung out over the front axle powering a 54bhp electric motor. The word ‘hybrid’ really is doing some heavy lifting here, and everywhere apart from low-speed manoeuvring, you’ll barely even perceive the electric element doing its thing.

Peak power output is 534bhp, and torque maxes out at 450lb ft. The sole gearbox available is an eight-speed PDK. Unsurprisingly, at 1725kg unladen, the GTS 4 Cabriolet is one of the heaviest 911s around, but it’ll still manage 62mph in 3.1 seconds and a top speed of 194mph.

When we drove the rear-wheel drive GTS coupe on its launch last year, we came away notably impressed by how effectively it deploys its power, the hybrid system’s torque fill more than compensating for any extra lag brought on by a switch from a twin to single-turbo setup.

It’s naturally the same story here, with the added benefit of four-wheel drive giving you the confidence to deploy that power anywhere, including on cold, greasy British roads. You can provoke rear-end silliness from a standstill, and you will occasionally feel the GTS’s 1725kg of unladen heft make itself known through a bit of understeer, but it mostly just sticks, grips and goes.

The driven front wheels have no bearing on steering feel, either — the 911’s electric rack is still one of the very best in any modern car, offering little kicks and wriggles of feedback and weighted just so.

The gearbox? Yep, that’s excellent too. Shocker, we know. It shifts instantly and seamlessly, whether you’re leaving it alone or taking control yourself via the disappointingly small paddles.

The adaptive PASM suspension — standard on the GTS — keeps everything smooth and composed over bumps and nice and level in corners when you’re pressing on, and relaxed and comfy when you’re not.

If we’re going to pick a single hole in the car’s otherwise near-faultless dynamics, it’s the brakes. Stopping power and pedal feel are largely good, but there’s the slightest bit of dead travel right at the top of the pedal before that feel kicks in. This might be to do with the small amount of regenerative braking the electric motor does, and also potentially because our test car didn’t have the optional carbon ceramics. We can’t imagine too many 911 Cabriolets are going to regularly be driven hard enough for this to matter much, though.

While the visuals of a drop-top 911 might still be a bit challenging from some angles, we defy even the most hard-nosed, rigidity-obsessed track day heroes to not see at least some appeal in a Cabrio. You’ll have your own views on how you’d feel about driving around top-down in a Guards Red convertible Porsche, but with the heating cranked up and the admittedly unsightly wind deflector deployed, it’s quite easy to stop caring.

In fact, the ability to lose the roof just adds another layer of appeal to what’s already an astonishingly complete sports car. It has a big boot, decent back seats, is crushingly capable on just about any road, and you have the added bonus (slash occasional disadvantage) of being able to take in the sounds and smells of the countryside as you motor along.

The interior offers very little to complain about, either. It’s beautifully put together, sensibly laid out, and remarkably quiet with the roof up. It’s just a shame that with this mid-life facelift for the 992, Porsche has caved and ditched the 911’s traditional five-dial gauge setup for a digital instrument cluster.

The biggest problem with the GTS 4 Cabriolet is that it’s almost too good — so all-conqueringly competent in just about every area that it can sometimes feel a bit clinical, a bit too self-satisfied.

That shouldn’t detract from what a brilliant thing it is, though. Our 911 of choice would still be something with a fixed roof and preferably three pedals, because we’re the sort of tragic cases who think people are impressed by a perfectly executed heel-and-toe downshift.

If, however, a Cabriolet appeals — and despite what some corners of car enthusiasm would have you believe, there’s no reason it shouldn’t — then you can happily opt for the Carrera 4 GTS, safe in the knowledge that despite the compromises its spec would suggest, it’s no poor relation to the more serious members of the 911 family.