Serious airtime

The needs and wishes of keen drivers and keen tanners rarely overlap, but overseen by Andreas Preuninger – affectionally known as ‘Mr GT3’ – this 911 Speedster has every bit as much credibility as Porsche’s motorsport-infused products.

Up top is a slender part-electric, mostly manual roof that only flips up or down at a standstill. The chassis beneath is a cocktail of old 991-gen 911 Cabrio and GT3 bits, with the latter’s screaming 4.0-litre flat-six slotted over the back axle. Here, it’s tuned to be even sharper, even harder-cored. So while a new, cleaner exhaust system lowers the volume a bit, the engine gets individual throttle bodies and even higher pressure direct injection, freeing another 10bhp (for a 503bhp total) and making the throttle yet more responsive than before. Something we’d barely reckoned possible.

The Auto Blip function of the manual ’box is now so finely honed, even Preuninger never turns it off for DIY heel-and-toeing. Though, rest assured, you still can turn it off. Unlike the GT3, there’s no PDK paddleshifter on the options list, with every one of the 1,948 Speedsters a manual. “Fun is more important than the figures,” Preuninger tells us, so there have been no Nürburgring lap targets, either. This is a feelgood car first and foremost.

Having spent his last couple of decades modifying soft-top 911s at home, Preuninger has always wanted to make a car like this, and the Speedster popped into his head at the same time as the mighty 911 R. The two cars are non-identical twins, arriving three years apart because development budgets wouldn’t cover both at the same time. Good: this engine maxed out at a measly 8,500rpm back in 2016, but Porsche has since extracted the full 9,000rpm from it. My God, the noise.

Find a stretch of road quick and empty enough to wring every last rev out and it’s a high you’ll want to spend the rest of your life chasing. That final, wailing stretch to the red line is every bit as day-enriching and life-affirming as squirming through a load of Italian hairpins in a mid-engined Ferrari. The Speedster handles too, mind; the same suspension, four-wheel steering and carbon-ceramic braking systems as the GT3 live beneath, with small tweaks to account for the slightly heftier weight and different structure here.

Perhaps, driven back-to-back with its roofed relation, you’d find some slight sogginess. I sincerely doubt it, though. The instant throttle response, the transparent steering, the sheer alacrity of its turn-in... the Speedster is a car completely free of slack, bristling with feedback and bombarding just about every one of your nerve endings relentlessly and tirelessly. Not least because, free of a Cabrio’s fancy wind deflection techniques, it’s quite blustery inside.

At £211k, it’s almost twice the GT3’s base price, but your money is buying a lot of engineering and weight is up by only 52kg. A-pillars have been lowered to accommodate the Speedster’s newly slender windscreen, while the involving roof operation gives you a fine opportunity to manhandle the rear deck. It’s the largest single piece of carbon in the VW empire, and spookily light to hold.

Oh, and that lower-emission exhaust system manages to lose 10kg thanks to exquisite new soldering. Effort Porsche’s engineers wouldn’t have gone to for the Speedster’s slim production run, all but confirming this glorious engine lives on in future GT-badged 911s. Told you this was a feelgood car.

“IT BOMBARDS JUST ABOUT EVERY ONE OF YOUR NERVE ENDINGS”