Porsche 911 Carrera 2025 Review

The regular 2025 Porsche 911 Carrera is priced from $279,400 plus on-road costs (ORCs), bringing with it an eight-speed PDK auto. The Cabriolet equivalent $302,700 plus ORCs.

Those prices are up a few grand on its predecessor, although there was a wisp of relief when the luxury car tax threshold edged up this financial year.

The 911 Carrera T – a back-to-basics lightweight version with a six-speed manual – is $306,800 plus ORCs. The T is also now available as a Cabriolet for the first time, priced from $330,100 plus ORCs.

Each is powered by the familiar 3.0-litre horizontally opposed six-cylinder, which has come in for a minor update.

There’s another 7kW for 290kW in total while torque is unchanged at 450Nm.

The Carrera rides on 19-inch front wheels and 20-inch rears, the back wheels naturally a lot wider than those up front.

The Carrera T steps those up an inch – 20-inch fronts and 21-inch rears – along with tyres that are slightly wider.

It’s all part of the performance focus that includes various hardware updates for the T.

The Carrera T gets the Sports Chrono pack standard, not only adding an analogue clock and timer on top of the dash but also equipping it with launch control, the Porsche Track Precision app and a tyre temperature display (it’s a $4370 option on the Carrera).

While both get adjustable dampers, the Carrera T has suspension that rides 10mm lower.

The T also picks up rear axle steering and torque vectoring, neither of which are available on the Carrera (but you can get it on the more expensive and powerful Carrera S.

Standard equipment for each includes smart key entry, matrix LED headlights, dual-zone ventilation, heated front seats, surround-view camera, wireless phone charging and a Bose sound system.

The central infotainment screen measures 10.9 inches across its diagonal and incorporates wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

The instrument cluster has ditched the analogue tacho and is now fully digital, allowing additional customisation but doing without some of the coolness of that circular centrepiece.

The Carrera gets leather trim but the T does away with it to instead get Sport-Tex material.

It also picks up the GT sports steering wheel standard, bringing with it heating (it’s a $570 option on the Carrera) as well as aluminium pedals and myriad trim changes.

There’s the occasional thing missing on the T versus the regular Carrera; the Carrera gets adaptive cruise control, for example, whereas the Carrera T gets standard cruise.

And the ‘Sports Seats Plus’ of the Carrera T mean getting four-way electric seats versus 14-way on the Carrera.

For those choosing the Carrera T, one of the coolest features is the manual gearbox sticker in the rear side windows. And, of course, there’s liberal Carrera T branding, from the scuff plates to the stickers on each door.

The drive, the drive and the drive… Yep, it’s that simple.

It may be an entry to the Porsche 911 range but the new Carrera feels anything but entry-level in the way it drives.

Sure, there’s only 7kW more than before but somehow that 290kW/450Nm feels mighty impressive once you unleash it. There’s terrific pull in the middle rev range and once you open it up it revs beautifully and with the sort of enthusiasm that makes for serious pace.

It doesn’t have the bark of the new 911 GTS, but there’s enough aural excitement to keep things bubbling along.

The PDK auto is slick in its shifts. Smart, too, quickly plucking the right ratio. It also works smoothly with the engine’s stop-start system.

The 911 Carrera is also brilliant through bends. Porsche doesn’t muck around with adjusting the steering settings: get it feeling near-perfect and make that the default. It works.

So, too, does the rear-engine layout that endows a 911 with so much of its character.

It’s a car that calls for driver involvement to get the best out of it – get some weight over the front to get it turning – but it feeds so much back in return.

It’s deceptively quick when you want it to be, but docile and easy going when trundling around.

And while it’s not as sharp as the new GTS in its reactions, it’s beautifully poised and forgiving.

We also had a quick drive of the Carrera T around Victoria’s Phillip Island race circuit.

There’s something refreshingly nostalgic about shifting gears yourself. The gate is decisive and precise with a great mechanical feel.

It’s not as quick as the auto – in part because you don’t have the same spread of ratios – but there’s something cool about making all the decisions yourself.

The rev-matching downshifts work beautifully, too. You can choose to disable it and instead do old school heal-and-toe (it’s easy with the long accelerator pedal of a 911) but when the computer does such a good job it’s easy to make that the default.

The Carrera T is 30kg lighter courtesy of weight-saving measures that include less insulation and lighter glass. But with only six ratios and a human doing the shifting, it’s slower than the Carrera with its eight-speed PDK auto.

Or, at least, it’s slower off the line, the claimed 4.5-second sprint time up to 0.6 seconds slower than the Carrera (it sprints to 100km/h in 4.1 seconds, or 3.9 seconds with the Sports Chrono kit).

Elsewhere, the 911 reinforces its position as an everyday sports car. There’s a handy 135 litres of storage under the bonnet and more behind the front seats for when you’re running it as a two-seater.

While this latest 992.2 generation hasn’t changed in terms of space, there’s loads of headroom and ample adjustability to the driving position that makes it a terrific daily driver.

Prices of Porsche 911s have been steadily increasing for years and the Carrera and Carrera T felt some of that unwanted love, albeit only just.

Still, with prices now north of $300K once you get it on the road it’s encroaching on scary territory.

The options, too, can quickly add up (yes, you’ll want to tick some boxes!). The $4370 Sports Chrono pack for the Carrera is an obvious one (it’s standard on the T), as is the Sports Exhaust ($5470).

Go playing with the colour of the seatbelts, adjust the finishes or throw in some Porsche crests and it keeps adding up.

But, hey, at least 911s typically retain their value nicely, so you should at least get a decent chunk of it back once you’ve had your fun.

Now, let’s talk power.

The big engineering effort for the 992.2 has gone into the 911 Carrera GTS, which gets a new T-Hybrid system that seriously steps up the performance.

By comparison, the regular Carrera and Carrera T are only a smidge more powerful than the previous one. Good luck picking the additional 7kW, although, equally, you could argue it’s plenty.

And while the 911 is a deceptively practical sports car, we’d also love more in-cabin storage. Finding somewhere to hide a phone isn’t as easy as it could be and the centre covered binnacle is shallow, limiting its usefulness.

Yes, we’re nitpicking, mainly because it’s a car that does so much right.

While we’re at it, there’s a cruisiness to the Carrera that works nicely for everyday driving, but some additional spice when in attack mode – like when we unleashed it on a track – would also be nice.

It misses out on Sport Plus mode, for example; there’s only Wet, Normal and Sport.

In a word, yes.

It’s easy to blink at the hefty price tag when shopping for a Porsche 911 Carrera.

But it’s equally impossible to ignore how great a job it does on the road (or track).

It’s such an accomplished and well-rounded sports car that it must float somewhere near the top of any shortlist for people spending this sort of money.

2025 Porsche 911 Carrera at a glance:
Price: $279,400 (plus on-road costs)
Available: Now
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder twin-turbo petrol
Output: 290kW/450Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed dual-clutch automatic
Fuel: 10.6L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 241g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety rating: Not tested

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