Porsche 911 Carrera S 2025 review: Harder, better and faster – but is it the best 911?
A niche too far?
It seems a silly, perhaps facetious and indeed blindingly obvious thing to say, but the Porsche 911 is a Very Fast Car these days. The capital letters there are important: in its most basic spec — and yes we know that’s a daft word for a car that costs from over a hundred grand — it’ll run 0-62mph in 4.1 seconds and do 183mph flat out. These are not inconsequential numbers.
From there, you simply progress from a car that is incredibly quick to versions that are rapid enough to fry your brain. And all of them have a clear, defined purpose. The base Carrera is the most value-oriented, comfortable one. The Carrera T is the driver’s choice for everyday use — the only way you can now get a brand-new, manual 911 this side of the GT3. And that model in turn is a wonderful, winged warrior where “the road meets the track”, offering a seminal driving experience like no other. Finally, the 911 Turbos are about combining ultimate performance with everyday comfort.
All of which leaves the new 911 Carrera S in a rather strange situation. Objectively, having driven the updated “992.2” variant you see here — those numbers simply being Porsche code for “eighth-generation 911, now facelifted” — the only verdict you can reasonably come to is that this is a terrific sports coupé. It does pretty much every dynamic discipline brilliantly and nothing glaringly wrong at all. It is, in a word, sensational.
Don’t stop reading there, though, because there’s an important “but”: why would you buy it? How does it fit into the 911 hierarchy, and what’s its clear, defined USP?
If we’re honest, we’re not entirely sure. The S always used to be a significantly faster Carrera and, to an extent, that’s still true. Where the entry-level 911 produces 389bhp, this one has a new peak output of 473bhp (a 30bhp shot in the arm in comparison to its predecessor, incidentally).
So while the Carrera accelerates from standstill to 62mph in 3.9sec, the Carrera S manages 0-62mph in 3.5 seconds. If you add the Sport Chrono Package with its launch-control function, you can trim that by another two-tenths.
This may be important in a game of Top Trumps but the difference between a car that can hit 62mph from rest in just under four seconds and one that can do it six-tenths quicker is pretty much indiscernible to most humans.
There is no doubting the 992.2 Carrera S is extraordinarily fast. Its lag-free, 3-litre biturbo engine, ultra-slick PDK paddleshift gearbox and standard-fit sports exhaust system serve up fabulous and supremely muscular performance, all overlaid with an appealing flat-six Porsche soundtrack. Yet we’d defy anyone to get into a regular Carrera and say it felt slow in comparison. You’re talking incremental degrees of separation, here.
Making the Carrera S’s job harder is the existence of the latest 911 GTS. Those three letters signify a model of Porsche aimed at the most demanding of drivers, so not only is the GTS considerably more powerful than the Carrera S, with a peak output of 534bhp, but it’s also the one with the sparkly new T-Hybrid drivetrain — the first petrol-electric 911 in history.
At £120,500 car before options, the Carrera S is priced more or less equidistant between the base Carrera and the GTS, but based on powertrain technology it perhaps should be nearer the Carrera and more distant from the GTS in the pricelist.
Obviously, power hike aside there are number of reasons why you might be tempted by the Carrera S over the Carrera. We’ve already mentioned the sports exhaust system for louder noises (which you can add to the regular Carrera, for a fee), but it also gains the electronically-controlled rear limited-slip differential — known as Porsche Torque Vectoring Plus (PTV Plus), and designed to help deliver power to each rear wheel more effectively while cornering. That’s a system you can’t fit to the regular Carrera, no matter how much cash you throw at your local Porsche dealer.
The S also has the uprated brakes from the GTS, with red callipers gripping huge 408mm front, 380mm rear discs, so it has more stopping power than a basic Carrera. It can also be uprated to Porsche Ceramic Composite Brakes (PCCB) for upwards of £9,000, whereas there are no official brake upgrades for the Carrera. The same goes for Rear Axle Steering (RAS), an option on the S but not available on the Carrera. I hope you’re keeping up with all the acronyms, by the way, as there are more to come.
There are further spec discrepancies. Both Carrera and Carrera S come with two-stage adjustable Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM) variable dampers, which allows drivers to change the character of the suspension depending on conditions, but only the S can have the more focused PASM Sport chassis as it needs to be specified along with the Rear Axle Steering.
The car also rolls on 20in front, 21in rear alloy wheels from the off, whereas the Carrera is fitted with 19in/20in items accordingly (although they can be uprated).
Based on all that, then, the new Carrera S could actually be described as a “GTS lite”. Its 473bhp is a dead match for the pre-facelift 911 GTS, while Porsche says it is the “most dynamic 911 S ever”. And much of the chassis hardware it deploys is shared with the latest GTS, not the Carrera. Indeed, you could even argue that the Carrera S could have been called just GTS, and the 534bhp version the GTS T-Hybrid. If it had, we might have understood the 992.2 Carrera S that little bit easier and not spent nearly half this review talking about it.
Inside and out, little is different between the S and the base model, but that’s no bad thing because the 911 still looks fabulous on the outside, even though its overall shape has been with us for in excess of six decades now, and the 992.2 is hardly any different aesthetically from the 992.1, save for tweaks to the lights and bumpers. Aside from the wheels, the only visual signifier of the 473bhp 911 is the “Carrera S” badge on its rump.
The passenger compartment, meanwhile, is a triumphal blend of ergonomic correctness, splendid build quality and a solid level of tech, provided by the crisp, quick-responding infotainment system on a 10.9in screen, aided by the 12.6in digital instrument cluster.
Proper, physical climate controls help the 911’s usability case no end, as does the finest steering wheel in the industry — it’s the right shape, just the right diameter and possessed of padding that makes the rim neither too thick nor too thin. However, like any 911 coupé in the range, if you want the vestigial rear seats in the cabin, you need to remember to tick an option box for them at ordering time, otherwise you’ll only get the front two chairs.
Alternatively, you could go for the only other body style available for the Carrera S model, the Cabriolet soft-top, which comes with a 2+2 seating arrangement from the off but which will liberate your wallet of another £10,000 for the privilege of open-air motoring.
When it comes to the driving experience of the Carrera S, gripes are genuinely few and far between. The 911 has been honed over decades of Porsche’s engineering experience to something little short of genius level in the 2020s, and the new S is no exception. It’s a thrill to drive it, either sensibly and at lower speeds or cruising along a German Autobahn at a steady 70mph, and then the excitement levels only ramp up from there if you decide to take the car by the scruff of the neck.
Fantastic steering feel and weight, impeccable body and wheel control, superb balance from front to back, masses of traction (even in the wet) courtesy of the rearwards mounting point of the heaviest part of its drivetrain, and a playful rear axle all add up to the 911 Carrera S being yet another sports car from Stuttgart to which little else can hold a candle.
Get the S boiling away, which doesn’t take much effort thanks to the potent new drivetrain, and its speed across ground and enjoyment factor on a challenging road is quite breathtaking. You don’t even need to rev it out to the redline to get the most from it, as stoking a 911 Carrera S along on its monster midrange revs will give you more than enough velocity to be getting on with. It’s a dynamic jewel.
About our only complaint is with the firm ride quality. As mentioned above, there’s an option for the PASM called PASM Sport, which sits the Carrera S 10mm closer to the road and ups the spring rates for the suspension by something like 30 to 40 per cent. This promises to sharpen the Carrera S’s driving manners to something even closer to pseudo-GT3 levels, and it does, but at the expense of quite a lot of comfort.
You can only switch the dampers — in either chassis specification — through two modes called Normal and Sport. And a PASM Sport-equipped Carrera S running in Normal setting has a grittier and more unforgiving ride manner than a regular Carrera S that’s switched to Sport. You’ll pick up far more of the road’s surface imperfections through the base of your seat. You hear them, too, with a greater degree of muffled thumping coming through from the suspension turrets and bigger wheels.
We prefer the suppler and more genial way the standard S covers ground. There are already plenty of hardcore 911s in the family to satisfy the keenest of Porsche driving enthusiasts. Accepting that a Carrera S must handle well in the corners (and it emphatically does), we don’t think the PASM Sport chassis brings enough roadholding gain to the party to offset the cost of the commensurate decreases in rolling comfort and refinement.
Another point which further muddies the water for the Carrera S is that it is now PDK-only. A great gearbox, no doubt, even if the cold-feeling metal paddles on the 911’s steering wheel could do with being about 20 per cent bigger for the maximum in tactile delights, but the S used to be available with a seven-speed manual gearbox. This omission further dims the light of the Carrera S in the post-facelift era.
Look, we get it — there’s a significant power gap between the Carrera models at the base of the 911 chain and the 534bhp Carrera GTS T-Hybrid sitting in the middle of the field. And the 473bhp Carrera S fills that “void” neatly, as well as landing almost precisely midway between the two levels when it comes to the basic list price.
We’re also delighted the 911 S continues into the mid-2020s and beyond, and we have no qualms whatsoever with the way this thing drives, because it’s magnificent. And as you can see in our spec panels, we’ve given the Carrera S a very high overall rating as a result.
Accordingly, if you do decide to plump for the 992.2 Carrera S, we are positive that you’ll feel like you made entirely the correct decision once you’re living with it.
For us, though? As we see it, 911 fans who want something superb to drive but who can’t afford or avail themselves of the sublime GT3 should look at either the hybrid-enhanced GTS or the manual-gearbox-toting Carrera T. Those who want the most cosseting, GT-like experience from the 911, on the other hand, should stick with the basic Carrera.
Now it has been shorn of its manual gearbox option, the Carrera S suffers somewhat from not having a clear enough model identity. It is yet another searingly fast 2025-era 911 in a sea of the things. It doesn’t stand out enough, and that — for a car that drives as amazingly well as this — is quite some conclusion.
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