For Porsche (DRPRY), being flexible is sehr gutes Geschäft, or very good business.
The German luxury and sports brand is known for the iconic 911 sports car, but of course in recent years sales successes like the Macan and Cayenne SUVs and the fully electric Taycan showed a different path was possible. In fact, a couple of years back, it decided that 80% of its cars would be EVs by the end of the decade — and ushered plans for new EVs like the Macan EV and replacements for the 718 Boxster and Cayman, which would also be EVs.
How things change. While the general EV market isn’t growing as much as experts thought, many luxury brands like Mercedes and Audi have seen EV sales plummet.
Porsche too saw Taycan EV sales slip in 2024. The company attributed this drop to supply chain issues and customers waiting for the updated Taycan. The wait is over: The new Taycan is here. And so is the new 911 Carrera T, the stripped-down 911 — meaning it’s more lightweight than the regular 911 and includes some of the more performance-oriented options only available on higher trim levels.
The 2025 911 Carrera T and Taycan GTS will arrive in dealerships next year, with the Carrera T starting at $135,995 and the Taycan GTS at $149,895.
For Porsche, debuting both cars at the same time makes sense. That’s because it is what their drivers want: more gas-powered sports cars and performance-oriented EVs.
There’s a market for both.
“When it comes to [a Porsche], it’s meant to be a driver’s car. It’s meant to be engaging, it’s meant to be practical … and there’s no reason why an electric car can’t do that,” said Porsche North America’s product specialist Frank Wiesmann to Yahoo Finance when discussing the Taycan.
By the same token, Weismann noted Porshe is “still very passionate about very analog cars,” meaning the 911 with its manual transmission and a howling gas engine.
After all these years, it doesn’t get more analog than the 911. The new 911 Carrera T comes with lightweight glass and less sound-deadening material to give the car a more raw feel, but it now includes rear-wheel steering as a standard option, sits lower, and has better brakes, among other sporty options.
But the biggest change may be that the Carrera T is manual transmission only.
“The US is pretty much the biggest market for us when it comes to people that are looking for a transmission like that,” Wiesmann said. “So if you’re really wanting to be one with the car, row your own gears and have that engaging element that many purist drivers still find very important. They want to shift themselves. That’s just an additional layer of involvement with the car.”