How a 48-hour test reveals that my Porsche 911 Carrera GTS is a Diet Coke GT3

The lighter, Ice Grey car pictured here is evo’s long-term 911 Carrera GTS: rear-wheel drive, manual gearbox, optional lightweight pack (carbon-shell bucket seats, no rear seats, reduced sound deadening, rear-wheel steering). The darker Agate Grey car is a 911 Carrera 4 GTS: all-wheel drive, dual-clutch PDK transmission (though you can spec it with a manual ’box), four-way electric-adjust seats.

Aside from the extra driven axle, these two are specced quite differently. This C4 is in relatively luxurious guise: electric sunroof, demure interior trim and a slightly higher ride height, compared to ‘our’ cafe-racer GTS with its buckets and carpet trim over the space the +2 pews would normally occupy. Just how much difference does all that make? A back-to-back test over 48 hours is revealing. And surprising.

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Settling into the C4’s cabin, there’s more leather, more soft-touch surfaces. That plusher feeling is reflected in the way it drives, too. Ride quality is much smoother and comfier than our uncompromisingly firm long-termer. The Fast Fleet C2 has the PASM Sport suspension that’s fitted as standard to GTS models and drops the ride height by 10mm versus standard. This particular C4 is fitted with the regular PASM set-up instead, which is a no-cost option. With exactly the same wheels, tyres and brakes, meaning unsprung mass is presumably the same, extra pair of driveshafts up front notwithstanding, this C4’s ride quality is far more pliant.

I wonder if that’s also a function of the standard, more plumply cushioned seats, too, transmitting less of the road surface directly to my body than the carbon shells in our car do.

Another difference is that our car features rear-wheel steering, which is relatively subtle in its operation but nonetheless has a minor role to play in the suspension’s action as well as the car’s agility at low speeds and stability at high speeds. This C4 doesn’t have rear-steer but does have Power Steering Plus, which reduces the steering’s weight at low speeds and adds heft at higher speeds. In general, the C4’s steering is a little weightier than our C2’s, smoother and oilier in its motion where our car is lighter, dartier in feel. Maybe it’s the effect of the driven front wheels in the C4, too.

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The eight-speed PDK transmission’s shorter ratios in the C4 contribute to pulverising acceleration. All the more if you press the little button in the centre of the drive mode switch, which sets engine and transmission to a give-it-everything map for 20 seconds. Handy for overtaking or a quick shot of shock-and-awe. This really is a very fast car. With AWD and PDK, the C4 can get to 62mph in 3.3 seconds to our C2’s 4.1; not that I’ve ever wished our car felt faster. The longer ratios in the seven-speed manual gearbox accentuate just how mighty the 473bhp GTS engine feels at its top end, if you let it rev all the way out in one gear. Which you can also do in manual mode in a PDK car, of course, but you somehow feel all the more connected to the drivetrain if you’re selecting its gear via a lever you move yourself.

The C4 doesn’t pivot into oversteer in quite the same way as our 2WD car, which gives you the option of being neat and tidy or allowing the car to move around a little more mid-corner and on exit. Equally, however, the C4’s variable front-to-rear torque split has a rear-biased feeling much of the time, and its balance is far from inert. In the conditions of this test – newly salted roads with zero degrees showing on the temperature gauge – its surefootedness means you cover ground quickly and easily with a lower mental workload than in our C2, which requires you to work a bit harder.

The C4 features an electronically controlled rear differential rather than the mechanical limited-slip diff in the C2 GTS, which perhaps contributes partly to the extra degree of communication our long-termer possesses at the limit, but the C4 is still a nimble, agile machine.

When you simply want to get somewhere, in any weather, on any set of roads, the C4 is a multi-tool for the job. In long-distance comfort, it’s a vast step up from our long-termer. (It still chucks out a fair bit of tyre noise – a trait of most current 911s – but far less than our C2.)

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Aside from demonstrating the 992-generation 911’s bandwidth, these two ostensibly near-identical cars show just what a difference spec can make to the character of a model. (Incidentally, the 2WD Carrera GTS starts at £122k, the C4 GTS at £128k. These optioned-up test cars weigh in at £139,333 and £123,024 respectively.) Our long-termer feels raw and involving, a bit like a Diet Coke GT3, the C4 a plush, all-weather missile with the manners of a grand tourer.

The first time I drove a Porsche 992 it was a 2WD Carrera S, and although it was a seriously impressive car, I came away slightly disappointed. To me it felt more remote than the previous 991 Carrera S; more like a luxury coupe than an involving sports car. The dark grey car tested here reminds me very much of that first 992 experience – brilliant, but not a car I fell in love with. There’s something in the alchemy of this C2 GTS’s spec that makes it the most involving 992 I’ve driven short of a GT3. Both these cars are superb but I’d take our Fast Fleet Carrera just the way it is.

This story was first featured in evo issue 322.