Porsche’s hard-core S/T is the finest road-going 911, but not for everyone

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The new 911 S/T, which is now the most expensive new Porsche you can buy before slathering on any options, is designed to be the ultimate road-going 911. It’s limited to a production run of only 1,963 cars, to give a 60th-anniversary nod to the debut of the original 911 in 1963.

For your $325,900 (plus considerable taxes), it has less but gives you more of what matters. It does not have a turbocharger for its four-litre flat-six engine, adapted from the GT3 RS, and it does not have the lightning-fast PDK automatic transmission of most of its siblings. It doesn’t even have the seven gears of Porsche’s usual manual gearbox, but just six, with their ratios 8-per-cent shorter than the six in the GT3 and GT3 Touring.

The whole car weighs 38 kilograms less than the manual GT3, which is probably its closest 911 comparison, though the GT3 is almost half the price. The magnesium wheels are more than 10 kilograms lighter, while most of the outside shell, including the roof, hood, doors and front fender, are made from lightweight carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP). There’s no rear-wheel steering in order to save weight, and the clutch with its single mass flywheel is less than half the weight. Even the carpets are lighter, and the window glass is thinner.

The steering wheel is uncluttered with dials, and there’s no selection for drive modes: everything, from the engine to the chassis to the aerodynamics, is tuned for the most dynamic drive possible – on regular roads. That’s the irony of this car. The GT3 RS is intended to be the ultimate 911 on a race track, but the S/T, with its screaming engine that sounds like a bag of hammers at idle, is designed to be the ultimate 911 for the road. And on the road, there are speed limits that will lock away your licence just as the S/T starts to stretch its legs.

Let’s set that little nicety aside for the moment. On the twisting and undulating highways of the Northern California mountains, I found myself driving in third and fourth gear just to hear that engine shrieking behind. It’s easy to keep the revs high, owing to the lightweight flywheel that has just one-third of the spinning inertia of the GT3. Rowing through those gears is also a joy, with a shifter that’s a full centimetre shorter than the GT3′s already stubby lever.

Porsche assigned one of its best engineers to spend more than a year tweaking the suspension for rougher pavement and the guy came through, with a chassis unperturbed by bumps and ridges and the odd shallow hole. This is no off-road 911 Dakar, of course, but it’s far more forgiving than its racetrack-spoiled siblings. The components are the same as you’ll find in the GT3, including that car’s double-wishbone front suspension, but the software is tuned quite differently.

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Porsche is known for driver’s feedback and the S/T told me everything I needed to know about the road beneath its 20- and 21-inch wheels. There’s a button on the dash to adjust the suspension but it’s not there just to stiffen the damping: instead, it “will somewhat adjust the logic in how body roll is controlled by virtue of the dampers and chassis system,” said the Porsche spokesperson. This means it will actively adapt the chassis for the various lateral and longitudinal forces of a fast drive on a winding road. To be honest, I didn’t notice much difference, but perhaps I was just too law-abiding to push the car as hard as it would have liked. The California cops did give me a warning last month, after all.

Others have driven this car and proclaimed it as exceptional; Porsche’s own Walter Rohrl calls it “the best road car I have ever driven.” It’s not for everyone, though – far from it. It’s loud and the standard – and unheated – carbon bucket seats keep you properly poised upright, which will probably upset any passenger after a while. (Four-way adjustable sport-plus seats are available at no extra cost.) The short-shifting transmission is glorious on a mountain road, but I’d hate to be stuck in traffic on the Don Valley Parkway or the Lions’ Gate Bridge.

The 911 S/T is no daily driver, but if you own one, you’ll probably want to drive it every day.

Tech specs

2024 Porsche 911 S/T

• Base price/as tested: $325,900 / $429,468 (includes $39,043 luxury tax and $18,000 watch), plus HST.
• Engine: four-litre flat-six; 518 horsepower, 343 lb-ft of torque
• Transmission/Drive: Six-speed manual / Rear-wheel drive
• Fuel consumption (litres per 100 kilometres): 18.1 city, 15.7 highway.
• Alternatives: Audi R8, Mercedes-AMG GT Coupe, McLaren 570S, Aston Martin Vantage

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Looks

The S/T follows the classic 911 lines and doesn’t clutter them with a wing or raised spoiler at the back. There is a mechanical spoiler, however, that raises at 125 kilometres an hour and lowers at 105. Any Canadian police officer who knows about cars will take that as an instant sign of speeding, but you just have to explain that you raised the spoiler manually with the button on the dash. Of course you did. The small Gurney flap on the edge of the spoiler is apparently effective at lower speeds.

The test car was equipped with the $23,220 “Heritage Design Package,” which allowed for the number on the side (your choice of any two digits) and gold badges and painted wheels and the Shore Blue Metallic paint, among other features. With this car, you might as well do it properly.

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Interior

The cabin is driver-focused, of course, and there are no cramped, second-row seats. The test car was a German unit that included the CFRP roll cage, which is not available in North America. It also had gorgeous “classic cognac” leather throughout, from the Heritage package.

Buying an S/T allows you to spend an extra $18,000 on an exclusive titanium-cased watch, of which there will also only be 1,963 examples. Now there’s an idea to give your partner for Christmas.

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Performance

The glory of this car is that it’s intended to be as pure and raw and visceral as possible, which means it’s loud and fast and responsive to your every slight touch. That doesn’t mean it’ll swerve off the road if you cough, but its nose will dig in around any corner you steer into (the rack ratio is slightly looser than the GT3, with differently tuned electronic assistance) and the rear will only slip if you really push it, and then in the most predictable way. The ceramic-composite brakes are retuned to provide a more linear bite. This all means there are no surprises at all with the S/T’s drive, even up in the sweet spot above 6,000 rpm.

I didn’t miss the electronic drive modes. Why would anyone ever want to drive this car in anything except full-on Sport?

Technology

There’s a back-up camera and there’s cruise control. Probably more, but I was too busy driving to notice them.

Cargo

The frunk holds 132 litres of stuff, but do you really want to carry anything after the engineers spent so much effort shaving grams from the S/T’s weight?

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The verdict

If you’re an enthusiast, the S/T is undoubtedly the finest road-going 911 you can buy. That doesn’t mean it’s the best one. The much-less-costly GT3 will give you 95 per cent of the naturally aspirated experience, while any of the other 911s will be more comfortable and perhaps even faster. The rare S/T, however, will surely hold its value far longer, and will pay back your investment every time you rev that engine.

The writer was a guest of the automaker. Content was not subject to approval.

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