Did I miss out NOT buying the 992 Carrera S

 

Does what it says on the tin?

When the Porsche 992 was launched the first entry model came as the Carrera S. The Carrera S model has always been a step up in performance and usually some included extras to justify the extra cost applied. As you may know if you are a 911 fan there are many variations of the car which focus towards different levels of performance. They all however flow around the same body shape and often take on slightly different parts to create a different car.

What differences are obvious between both versions

The main difference that is can been seen are the different staggered wheel sizes. The Carrera 2 comes with 19/20 inch staggered wheels while the Carrera S comes with 20/21 in the same style. The brakes also come in red over black with slightly higher rated stopping power at the rear.

The exhaust system also comes standard with twin tail pipes but the hidden feature in there also includes a quad pipe system over the Carrera 2 single pipe single tip designs.

That's where any obvious visual differences stop (except the S badge) and the inner changes add to the package. There is the same 3 litre twin turbo engine in both cars but the Carrera S gives an extra 65PS in power and the same PDK setup giving 0.5seconds quicker to 62mph.

At the time it was not openly known that would be the lowest model available in a manual would be the Carrera S. But that turned out to be the case, so if you don't want a PDK 911 you will need to jump up to the Carrera S model. However when changing to a manual 7 speed gearbox you will find there is no saving in the cost.

So when I decided to hold out and wait to order a new 992 Carrera 2 thinking I didn't want to pay the extra cost for an S model I started to have second thoughts.

Did I make a mistake not ordering the Carrera S?

When asking myself that question I need to look at what I wanted from the car and does it achieve that task. The answer to that question is yes it does, therefore no I don't feel I did make a mistake. When looking at the performance of both cars I don't think the Carrera 2 is underpowered and I have yet to feel that way about it when driving. Unless you want a different wheel design (at an extra cost) you aren't going to see a big visual difference between the standard wheel design offered.

When you look at the £11,000 cost difference between the two models and see what you are getting, unless you are going to go track racing, you are likely better placed buying further options for a Carrera 2.

You can find a detailed video going through the comparable points and my thoughts by clicking here https://youtu.be/db2oO3Rbha0

This video covers the things I looked at when comparing the specifications on both cars and what I could see I was getting extra for the money.

In this video I also point out the PTV Plus which Porsche has created a brief video here to explain it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WWin5yGdx0