Porsche 911 Targa GTS
Sports car is predictably great to drive and looks cool, too
WE love the Porsche 911 GTS – it’s a superb compromise between the usability of the entry-level car and the driving thrills of the harder, more focused GT3. But how does the Targa version fare?
A clever folding mechanism drops the middle section of the roof down – and with that beautiful curved glass rear screen in place the Targa certainly looks classier than a 911 Convertible. It’s just a shame you can’t operate it on the move; the complex roof system only folds when the car is stationary, and takes nearly 20 seconds to complete its transformation.
But the price you pay for the fun in the sun is that the Targa is the heaviest GTS model. At 1,605kg it’s significantly chunkier than the svelte 1,470kg of the hard-top model. Combined with the PDK gearbox and four-wheel drive, that means our test car is the least focused 911 GTS in the range.
Of course it’s still a 911 – and that means an incredible chassis and all the blistering performance you’d expect. The GTS uses the same 3.0-litre turbo as the normal Targa, but here it has 444bhp and 550Nm of torque. With launch control, it’ll do 0-62mph in 3.7 seconds – and on the road it feels mighty. That frankly astounding time is thanks to the PDK’S launch control; the manual car completes the same sprint in 4.1 seconds. The flat-six is superb in-gear while still responding well when you head up to the rev limiter, and is much more audible here with the Targa roof down.
It’s not the most exciting-sounding engine, especially next to the new naturally aspirated GT3 model, but it’s hard not to enjoy the pops and bangs coming from the sports exhaust – and the howl at the top end is far from unpleasant.
The seven-speed PDK gearbox is one of the best transmissions available, shifting smoothly in auto but delivering incredibly quick changes when you want them. We found the shifts so responsive using the paddles that it was easy to drive everywhere in manual mode. Most other autos suffer from too much delay when pressing the paddle to make this pleasant in town.
Take it easy and the 911 Targa 4 GTS will munch miles with the best of them. With the roof up the Porsche is almost as quiet as the Coupé – but our car’s huge 20-inch wheels kicked up quite a bit of tyre roar, and there’s no option for smaller rims.
Four-wheel drive means this Targa has incredible grip, especially on baking hot tarmac. Driving fast is second nature in the 911 GTS, and the natural-feeling brakes give you confidence to slow down quickly, too. Porsche Torque Vectoring Plus sends power where it’s needed, giving you huge drive out of the bend. It has such a clever all-wheel-drive system that at times it feels like a rear-wheel-drive car, just with a bit more security at the front end.
Porsche’s tried-and-tested Adaptive Suspension Management (PASM) is standard – so there are Comfort, Sport and Sport Plus modes, as well as an individual setting. The 911 Targa GTS is soft enough to be used every day in Comfort, but tighten up the dampers to their hardest setting and you can feel every bump and ridge in the surface. Of course, that also means it’s even sharper through bends.
The Targa is at its best on an open, sweeping road with the sun beating down. The cabin is spacious up front, with plenty of headroom and shoulder space. Lower the roof and buffeting is kept to a minimum, too. It’s beautifully built, with loads of soft leather and a responsive touchscreen infotainment system. The button-heavy layout feels a bit dated, however, and the two tiny seats in the back are only really useful for a couple of soft bags.
You can feel the Targa’s weight, though, and as impressive as it is, we wonder whether the GTS model is a good fit in the range. Costing more than £100,000 it’s expensive, too, with the non-gts version offering much better value for money. So perhaps it would be better to save some cash and stick with the (still brilliant) standard Targa.