Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet Range
Depending on your viewpoint, Porsches 911 Cabriolet is either a fun way to enjoy a classic design or a heretical butchering of a classic shape. Until recently, Id have placed myself firmly in the latter camp, arguing that to chop the top off a Porsche 911 was tantamount to treason. Then, after an extended spell with a turbocharged 911 drop top, I grudgingly began to see the logic. Porsche hope the latest 911 Cabriolet will possess an even greater capacity to convert.
Its their least compromised effort to date.
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Porsche has worked a little harder to differentiate the 997 Cabriolets basic shape and finishing from the Boxster. This proved to be a key reason for slow 996 Cabriolet sales. Why spend almost twice the price on a 911 Cabriolet if most people thought it was a Boxster anyway? This touches upon one of the reasons why Id never warmed to the Porsche 911 Cabriolet. Many were bought for posing purposes, a criminal waste of a car with such huge reserves of talent.
Driving the 996 Turbo Cabriolet, however, proved that the car was still virtually as good as the coupe in terms of ride and handling. The hood imposed very few sacrifices and was a boon when the sun was out and you just wanted to savour the sound of that magnificent engine.
"Losing the roof neednt mean losing the handling capabilities"
The 997 Cabriolets hood system is a good deal slicker than the old 996 soft top, featuring as it does an improved folding mechanism. A button can open or close the roof in twenty seconds, the hood now folding into the roof compartment with the heated glass rear window facing upwards for added protection. One of the best parts about the hood is that it can be raised or lowered at speeds up to 31mph which means that should the traffic lights change while youre half way through raising or lowering, you wont need to wait with a queue of laughing/swearing drivers behind you. Improved guide ducts above the doors direct rainwater into a specially developed channel in the windscreen pillar and an improved wind deflector reduces buffeting in the cabin while cruising.
In order to ensure torsional rigidity, soft-top conversions need a degree of additional reinforcement and this often adds to the weight to such a degree that performance is blunted. No such issues with the latest 911 Cabriolet. It tips the scales at a mere 85kg more than its hard top sibling. Even accounting for all the strengthening and electric motors for the roof, thats less than the weight of an average chap.
Under that sleek bodywork comes a bigger, punchier engine. Its still a flat six and its still hung out at the back but Carrera and Carrera 4 buyers will get a 321bhp 3.6-litre powerplant while Carrera S and Carrera 4S customers will be treated to a 350bhp 3.8-litre unit.
Its a naming convention that mirrors the Boxster, Cayman and Cayenne ranges and is easy to comprehend. The range-topping Turbo model offers 480bhp from its turbocharged 3.6-litre unit. All the cars feature a drag coefficient of just 0.
29, ranking them at the top of their respective market segments. One feature unique to the Cabriolet is the rear spoiler that extends an additional 20 millimetres further than the Coupes appendage. Porsches aerodynamicists discovered that the Cabriolets marginally different shape caused changes in the way it cleaved the air and made small adjustments to the front and rear downforce levels. Thats the sort of expertise youre buying when you hand over between £65,860 for the Carrera and £76,880 for the Carrera 4S Cabriolets.
The Turbo sales past the £100,000 mark. 911 purists will be glad to see a return to the 993-style round headlamps, the so-called runny-egg smeared on lamps of the 996 being consigned to history. The wheelarches are pumped up to accept the Carreras 18-inch wheels and the 19-inch wheels of the Carrera S giving this 911 a voluptuous coke-bottle profile. The wheelbase of the car remains unchanged at 2350mm but its slightly shorter and a few centimetres wider.
The easiest way to tell the two Carrera models apart is that the Carrera has a pair of oval tailpipes whereas the S model sports a quad set of exhausts. That and the badge on the back. Bar perhaps that intoxicatingly breathy engine note, Porsche steering and brakes do more than anything else to differentiate the marque in terms of sheer excellence. Down the years, 911s have always had a linear steering rack that delighted in the amount of feedback it supplied to the driver.
The 997 departs from this system and adopts a variable ratio set-up that gets quicker the further the wheel is turned. Getting rid of the old 17-inch wheels also allows Porsche to fit bigger and better brakes to the 997. The S gets brakes similar to those fitted to the 996 Turbo and the truly well heeled can even opt for ceramic discs. The straight-line performance of the 997 Cabriolet is only a smidgeon off that of the Coupe.
The top speeds of the Carrera and Carrera S Cabriolets are exactly the same as the Coupe variants at 177 and 182mph respectively. The Carrera will accelerate to 60mph in 5.2 seconds while the same benchmark will detain the Carrera S for just 4.9 seconds.
Theres very little penalty in terms of performance or fuel economy when you opt for the Carrera 4 or 4S four-wheel drive models. The Turbo will hit 62mph in four seconds and deliver 192mph before running out of steam. The Porsche 911 Cabriolet deserves better than to be used as a bauble thats trundled up and down city centre streets of a weekend. With a staggering depth of engineering and huge reserves of talent, these cars lose little to their hard top siblings.
Losing the roof will, in some instances, make this more of a 911.
FACTS AT A GLANCE
CAR: Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet range
PRICES: £65,860-£106,180 - on the road
INSURANCE GROUP: 20 CO2 [g/km] / EMISSIONS: 270-285g/km
PERFORMANCE: [Carrera S] 0-60mph 4.9s / Max Speed 182mph
FUEL CONSUMPTION: [Carrera] (combined) /25.4mpg
STANDARD SAFETY FEATURES: Twin airbags, ABS, PSM
WILL IT FIT IN YOUR GARAGE?: Length/Width/Height, 4427/1808/1315mm
