See Every Angle of the 2020 Porsche 911 Cabriolet
Few things are as rejuvenating as the eighth-generation Porsche 911 convertible.
For a car that's designed to expose its passengers to the elements, the 2020 Porsche 911 Carrera S cabriolet sure swallows you deep inside its cabin. No one will hook an elbow over the door of this high-waisted droptop. Look at the photos. A tall driver's head pokes over the beltline as if he's a Lego figure at the wheel of a Playmobil Porsche. In combination with the $3470 18-way power-adjustable sport seats that envelop like bathwater, the tall body sides create the sensation that you're driving a soaking tub. Don't get us wrong. Between the billet-like solidity of the chassis and the sheer magnitude of its capabilities, there is a lot to like here. On a mountain road, the 911 is a cast-iron bathtub hurled down a bobsled run. We'd pay to ride in that.
This new open-air 992 series (the eighth-generation 911) is a full second quicker than the 991 model that it replaces. The top raises and lowers in 12 seconds at speeds up to 31 mph. Acceleration? That's quicker, too, with Porsche suggesting a 0.4-second improvement that should place a Sport Chrono-equipped all-wheel-drive Carrera 4S at 60 mph in 3.1 seconds.
As in the last 911 cabriolet, the top sandwiches magnesium panels between the canvas for a streamlined profile, hardtop security, and coupe-like wind-noise levels with the roof up. When the roof is retracted, a deployable mesh wind deflector unfolds over the rear seats and subdues the turbulence that swirls around front-seat occupants. In other markets, owners can drop the canvas from a distance via the key fob, but lawyers recognize such a feature would invariably be implicated in a messy lawsuit involving a prize-winning rhododendron if Porsche were to allow it into the United States, so the company won't.
It's that initial suppleness that makes the sport suspension compatible with the new cabriolet. Even with its additional structural bracing, the convertible lacks the body rigidity of the latest 911 coupe, and a hard-hitting suspension tune would knock loose unseemly rattles, creaks, and squeaks as the miles accumulate. That's no longer a concern for Porsche.
All of this is a very long way of saying the sport-suspension-equipped cabriolet rides and handles beautifully. Even with its short travel, the suspension sopped up Greece's battered back roads with an easy nonchalance and climbed into seaside mountains with exacting body control. In a world gone mad with overly harsh suspensions and rubber-band-like tires, Porsche remains the role model the rest of the industry should be looking to.
Our rear-wheel-drive test car augmented the standard electrically assisted variable-ratio steering rack, brake-based torque-vectoring, and electronically controlled limited-slip differential with $3170 active anti-roll bars, $8970 carbon-ceramic brakes, $2090 rear-wheel steering, and the $5460 Sport package that bundles an active sport exhaust, black tailpipes, the Sport Chrono package, and the sport suspension.
Thus configured into the sportiest roofless 911—for the moment, at least—the cabriolet handily outran the general feeling of bigness you get in towns and parking lots and left us with a deep appreciation for its massive grip.
Updated with new plumbing on both sides of the combustion chambers, the twin-turbo flat-six shrugs off the extra 160 pounds spread through the new car. That said, squeezing 443 horsepower from a modest 3.0 liters means a whiff of turbo lag is inevitable in the right—er, wrong—situations.
Porsche points out that the torque curve is more linear than in the outgoing Carrera S, which is a clever way of saying that the torque peak now arrives 600 rpm later. Granted, that peak is 22 lb-ft taller, plateauing at 390 lb-ft between 2300 and 5000 rpm.
The PDK dual-clutch automatic transmission, now with eight forward gears, continues to be the perfect partner, strategizing and executing shifts with terse Germanic efficiency. A seven-speed manual will join the range eventually, but not until Porsche clears it through Europe's increasingly onerous homologation process.
When they appear on dealer lots this summer, the Carrera S and Carrera 4S cabriolets will sticker at $127,350 and $134,650, respectively. That's a largely theoretical price, of course, as you're unlikely to make out with a 911 wearing anything less than five figures in optional equipment. The S we drove outside of Athens claimed nearly $50,000 in options, pushing it beyond the 540-hp 911 Turbo's starting price.
Adaptive dampers (Porsche Active Suspension Management, or PASM) come standard and, for the first time in the Cabriolet's 37-year history, a sport suspension is available. This $1020 option includes stiffer springs, dampers, and anti-roll bars, and drops the body 0.4 inch to hunker over the standard 20-inch front and 21-inch rear Pirelli P Zero PZ4 tires.
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