The 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S 992 Is the Newest Ultra 911

This is the new 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S and it is the ultimate Porsche 911. Now the 911 Turbo has always been the ultimate 911 but this is the newest model based on the new generation 992 Porsche 911 and it is more ultimate than ever before. And today I'm going to take you on a tour of this car and show you what I mean. First a little overview. Now the Porsche 911 is generally agreed to be one of the greatest sports cars of all time. It's been on the market for decades, everybody knows that. For years the 911 Turbo has been the range-topping 911 model, the flagship 911 you got when you Now in recent years the GT cars have surged in popularity, the GT2, the GT3, the RS models. But if you want the best 911 without a harsh sports car track-focused rough ride, the 911 Turbo still reigns supreme. And this car, the Turbo S, is the king of the 911 lineup. This is the 2021 model based on the new 992 generation 911. Now I've already reviewed the regular 992 911 but this is a whole different animal. It uses a turbocharged flat-six that makes 640 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque. Porsche says it'll do 0-60 in 2.7 seconds, on its way to a top speed of 205 miles per hour. Of course it costs a fortune, really. The base price for the new 911 Turbo S is around Or if you want to step up to the convertible model, the Cabriolet, like this one, that figure climbs to around $218,000 and that's before options. Of course there will soon be a base-level Turbo model but then you get less power and you're still looking at a starting price probably around $165,000 to $170,000. And today I'm going to show you what the 911 Turbo S delivers for that insane money. First, I'm going to take you on a thorough tour of the new 911 Turbo S and I'm going to show you all of its interesting quirks and features. Then I'm going to get it out on the road and drive it and then I'm going to give it a Doug score. All right, I'm going to start the quirks and features of the new 911 Turbo with getting in and that means starting with the door handle which is currently flush up against the door right now and that's because the car is locked. If you want to pop out the door handle so you can pull it and open the door, you have to walk up to the car with your key in your pocket and then stick your hand into this little cavity and the door handle will pop out. Take another look at that, you just stick your hand in, it pops out and then from there once it's out you just pull the door handle and you can open the door. Now the other way to get the door handle to pop out is just take the key and press the unlock button and then the door handles will pop out signifying that the car is unlocked and then you can reach in and open up the door. Now the next interesting item is locking the car. When the door handles are popped out like I said the car is unlocked but you can press the lock button on the key fob that will lock the doors and then the door handles will go back into their normal flush with the door position. But you also have another option if you want to lock the car and that is if you have the key in your pocket you can just tap on the door handle and then the car will automatically lock and the door handles will automatically retreat back to their door home. And next up we move inside the car. I want to start the interior quirks and features with the roof because this isn't just a 911 Turbo S but rather a Turbo S Cabriolet meaning it has a convertible roof. Now to put the roof up there's a button in the center console that has a picture of a 911 with the roof on. You pull that button and then the roof comes into place and as you can see it happens rather quickly. This is a fast operating power top. I guess the theory is they don't want you to get wet at all if you happen to be driving along with the roof down and a sudden rainstorm appears. And it's the same situation if you want to put the roof down. Go back to the center console you have a button depicting a 911 with the roof down. You pull on that and then the roof begins its going down process. Again it's a very quick a very easy operation and you can do this while rolling which means that you don't have to come to a complete stop like in older convertibles. But there are a few other notable quirks of the roof and I want to start with the wind deflector. Go back into the center console and you can see right below the power top buttons there's a button with a little shape on it showing arrows pointing up or down. That button controls the wind deflector. You press it and you can see that the wind deflector automatically extends in the back to make sure that any wind that comes at you while you're driving the car with the roof down is deflected and passed over the roof so your hair doesn't get all messed up while you're driving with the top down. It's pretty standard for most convertibles to have a wind deflector although usually it's not power operated like this one. And the other interesting thing is when you put the wind deflector up it pretty much takes up the entire rear seat compartment. So that means if you have rear passengers and you want to put the roof down you will probably mess up your hair since you won't be able to put the wind deflector in place with rear passengers seated back there. But to me maybe the most interesting quirk of the whole top situation is the windows. Now here are your power window switches and obviously you can use them to put the windows up or down. That's pretty standard but there are more windows than just the front ones. Check this out if you push this little button and it lights up your window switches are now controlling the rear windows. There are these tiny little rear quarter windows that you can also put up or down. And believe it or not those windows will actually come in handy. For instance if you want to put up all the windows to eliminate as much wind as possible with the roof down you'll want to put up those little back windows for even less wind. Or if you want an open air feel in this interior without putting the roof down you can put down the front windows and the back windows and have kind of an open feel but keep the roof in place so you have those controls to adjust those little afterthought back windows. And by the way one more little rear window item you can't put them up if the front windows are down. Porsche doesn't want you driving around looking like an idiot with your little back windows up but your front windows down so they make sure you have to have the front windows up if you want to put the back windows up. But anyway back to the center console for more interior quirks and features. In the very middle you have a cup holder. You can see it's this rather large central cup holder but it doesn't have to be. Check this out. You push this little tab at the front of the cup holder and you can lift it right out. And Porsche gives you like a cup holder alternative. This little storage compartment can be put in there instead of the cup holder. If you would rather have storage rather than cup holder you can just decide and switch them out. So you have a removable cup holder in the center. And since one cup holder for two seats would probably cause a problem there is a second one. It's cleverly hidden on the passenger side of the dashboard in this little panel. Just push it and it extends out and you can see that's the passenger side cup holder but when you don't want it in place just push it back in and then it's hidden from view. And next up another rather unusual item in the center console of this car is the gear lever which has gotten a lot of interest ever since the new 911 debuted a few months ago. You can see it's small and weirdly shaped and people think it looks like a shaver. The operation is actually pretty intuitive. You pull it back for drive, you push it forward for reverse, and if you want neutral it's somewhere in the middle. So it's a fairly standard thing. It just looks rather weird and small and stubby. Of course next to the gear lever you can see you have two buttons there P and M. P obviously puts the car in park when you're parked and then M puts the transmission in manual mode if you want to shift gears yourself using the paddle shifters. Now interestingly this strange gear lever design is carried over to a few other controls in this center area. For example the center control stack has these five buttons on them that also share the gear lever design. You have the axle lifter on the left, the hazard lights in the middle, all these buttons sort of have a similar theme to the rather unusual gear lever. And it's the same story with the climate controls. Back to the center console next to the gear lever you have these three different climate control switches that also mimic the look of the gear lever. They change your temperature on your driver's side, on your passenger side, and your fan speed, and you move those in the same way that you move the gear lever. Now speaking of the climate controls, another noteworthy item in here is that surrounding the gear lever shaped climate control switches you have kind of a button panel. You can see when the car is off there's nothing there but when you turn it on these buttons light up and then they allow you to choose between various different climate control functions. And when you press each climate control button on the panel it kind of lights up and confirms that you've pressed it so you know like when your defroster is on and that sort of thing. It's kind of a neat look. And next up a rather weird item in this interior. At the top of the dashboard in the middle you have the And this is surely one of the strangest clocks in the car industry because the time is displayed on this tiny little readout in the center and the hand that's going around is the second hand. So you have a giant second hand but a very small actual display of the time which of course is what you're really interested in. Now the reason for this is that this is actually the sport chrono your lap timer but when you're not using it as a lap timer it doubles as a clock and so that's how they turned it into a clock with a tiny display of the time but a rather pronounced display of what second it currently is. Very helpful. And next up we move on to the infotainment system. I've reviewed this system in the new 911 Carrera S and in the new Cayenne Turbo but I do want to hit a few highlights here. For instance you can adjust the interior ambient light color. You can choose between seven different options. My personal favorite is Atlantis. Yes that's the color I want my interior to be. A lot of cars let you choose ambient light color though. More interesting here is that you can choose the amount of ambient light in various different places. You can choose four different spots precisely how much ambient light shows through to perfectly configure the mood of your Turbo S interior. With that said there is a big drawback to the climate controls in the infotainment system and that is the fact that I think they've just integrated too many controls into the screen. For example you can't change where the air is coming out without going into the screen and pressing these little icons in here. So that means you can't actually adjust the climate control airflow direction without going into the screen and going through menus instead of just a simple control like basically every other car. And it's the same thing with the air conditioning. You have to press this icon in the screen to confirm you want AC on and not just the fan or recirculating air. Again you have to go into a menu. Not ideal. Those things should be on simple buttons that you can press easily. And next up we move on to the gauge cluster where there is a lot to like. In the very center you have the tachometer and then you have two screens. One on either side of the tach. I really love when the car is off the tach just looks like it's floating there in place when the screens aren't on. That is a really cool look. But even when the car and the screens are on the tach has this really cool look to it. Kind of an old school vintage look in the middle of all of this modern technology. I love it. Now as for the screens in the gauge cluster they offer various different information. The screen on the right is the most configurable and you can use this little wheel on the steering wheel to scroll through its various displays. And you can see it'll show your tire pressure, your trip data, eventually it shows the map in the full screen, and all sorts of other different relevant vehicle information integrated into this right screen. But your screen configurability doesn't stop there. Press this little button on the steering wheel and then you switch screens basically. Now this little wheel controls the left screen and you can see it's showing various different items in here. Although there's less configurability because the speedometer is always fixed in place. But still pretty good configurability for these gauge cluster screens and I love seeing that old school tachometer right in the middle. And by the way like I mentioned I've covered this infotainment system before in other vehicles but I want to say it's a really good one generally speaking. Very fast, very responsive to your touch, and relatively intuitive as well. You can also see on the navigation screen very very responsive just as much as you'd expect from any smartphone. Tesla really had this ultra responsive center screen market cornered up to just a few years ago but now all the automakers are coming fast. But anyway I want to go back to the steering wheel there are more controls worth highlighting. One is this little wheel sticking off the center of the wheel that says drive mode. Obviously you can use this to adjust your drive mode through various different settings. Comfort, sport, sport plus, individual, wet. You can choose with your little steering wheel dial. The steering wheel dial also has another function. The middle is a button. Press it and it activates something called the sport response which lasts for 20 seconds. You can see it in the gauge cluster actually counts down. When you're in this mode you have a short burst of power perfect for a racetrack pass or a highway merge to go extra fast for a short time. And another interesting steering wheel button worth noting over on the left you have this diamond button. You also see that exact same button in the center control stack another diamond in there. So what is that? Porsche calls it the shortcut key and it's programmable. Basically you can program it to be something that you use often that doesn't have an easy button. So for instance if you want that to pull up the radio or a common navigation destination you can do that and then it's sitting right there at your thumb. Configurable buttons a really good idea and I hope more automakers expand this. It's nice to see two of them in this Porsche. And next up we move on to the back seats. Getting into the back seats is rather easy. If you have the convertible model with the roof down all you do is pull on this little loop here and push the seat forward which I will do and then you can climb into the back because you have all of the headroom in the world. It makes life easy. Although once you're back here there's not really that much space. You can see I can't even clip the passenger seat into place. The 911 back seats remain some of the very smallest back seats in the entire car industry. So then you're probably wondering well why even offer back seats? The answer is not as some stupid urban legend says to trick the insurance companies into thinking that you have a practical family car. No insurance company is going to think that a $220,000 640 horsepower Porsche suddenly becomes low risk to insure because it happens to have back seats. They're not that stupid. Instead the back seats are here for practical purposes so that you can use them in a pinch. Some people put kids back here or even adults for a short trip and they make the car just that much more practical. I just wouldn't want to be stuck back here for long. As for the back seats themselves there's really nothing interesting back here because there's nothing back here at all. Probably the most interesting back seat item is that you can get rid of them. If you pull up on this little tab you can actually fold down the back seats in the 911 which may seem odd because they don't fold to a cargo area but it does create a relatively flat floor back here where you can stick larger items if you want to keep something from sliding around and keep it in place. And one other interesting item directly behind the back seats you can see these little cutouts in this red trim piece. Those cutouts are for the explosive roll bars. If this car detects that it's about to roll over an explosive charge will shoot up these incredibly strong roll bars through this little cutout piece of the trim and those roll bars are sturdy enough to support the car if it rolls over which in theory will provide head protection to the occupants. So that's why those little cutouts are there on this car and a lot of other convertibles. And next up we move outside the new 911 where there are a few interesting items worth discussing starting with the width. You can see the back of this car is very wide. It's a little wider than its predecessor for an even more pronounced kind of aggressive look. Width is good for a sporty car. A wider track generally means better grip, better handling, better weight distribution but you can't go too wide because then it'll start to be cumbersome. This is the balance Porsche has decided to strike for the new model. By the way one interesting detail for the car geeks among us the turn signal back here is orange. Take a look at this it's lighting up in orange. Now that may not seem unusual but all Porsche turn signals have been red for years and years and that will still be true on the new 911 Turbo. This is a German spec car and in Europe turn signals have to be orange but the U.S. hasn't made that regulation so turn signals can be red and I guess Porsche thinks that looks better so U.S. market turn signals are red. And next up another notable new 911 item you can no longer access your engine. You can't see it, you can't do anything with it, it's not possible but you can get close. There's a little switch here in the driver's door jam area and you can see it as a car with kind of the back open. You pull that switch and it gets you to here and then as you can see if you look in here you have access to a few caps for fluid. You have oil and you have coolant in here and you can put stuff in if your car needs it but no direct access to the engine and this is as close to a hood as you will get in the new 911. Porsche actually calls this the service flap and it's the same part that opens when you go to put the roof up or down. I guess the reason that it doesn't open facing back is that all of the turbo models have a fixed rear wing so that part had to kind of stay in place and that meant this is all that you get if you want to check out the powertrain in your 911. At least it says there 3.8 turbo s to try to remind you that yes the engine is lurking under there somewhere. And finally we move on to the front trunk in this car. To open the front trunk you pull on this little switch in the driver's door jam near the switch for the rear service flap and that puts the front trunk into this position. Then you come up here and there is a little latch that you pull somewhere there we go open it up and then you have access to the front trunk. Nothing particularly interesting in here I've shown you front trunks in a million Porsche models they're all about the same. You have a fairly sizable front trunk with decent cargo space but otherwise no weirdnesses in here. And so those are the quirks and features of the new 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S Cabriolet. Now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives. Alright driving the 911 Turbo S. Now I've been driving this car around for a little while and I gotta say this is gotta be one of the great sports cars of all time. If you look at it objectively it just really is. It handles unreal. I mean really really sharp, incredibly good, incredibly stable, incredibly poised, tremendously tight steering responds instantly just fantastic. The acceleration is mind-blowing. Mind-blowing. I mean eyes in the back of your head like I can't believe this is happening kind of mind-blowing. Then you also have the fact that it's not uncomfortable you know the GT cars are cool but they're kind of a disaster and most people don't want that and the guys who have them are like yeah I'm better than you because I can sit on a hard seat or you're just bizarre for wanting to put up with it you can have the same performance in terms of street usability in one of these and get a much more comfortable car. And then there's the technology we have many screens throughout this car we have a ton of the latest tech um blind spot monitoring and lane keep assist and obviously forward collision warning and braking and adaptive cruise control and this thing's got everything. So why wouldn't someone want to get one? Well if you're in the market you have this money what are the reasons why you wouldn't want one? And believe it or not I actually think there are a couple of pretty legitimate ones. One is the brand name and the appearance. Ultimately to most people this just looks like a 911 which is largely what it is just a modified improved enhanced version of a 911. And at $220,000 before options you're playing against the AMG GTR you're playing Ferrari Portofino you're getting into McLaren territory even the Huracans they start in that kind of range. The other big reason not to get this car is you're going to just get killed on uh resale value. The GT3, the GT2, the GT2 RS as much as those cars are challenging to drive and and uncomfortable and over the top with their crazy wings they don't lose much value and the 911 turbo Porsche builds a lot of them they do lose value and they lose value pretty substantially. But if you're looking for probably the best daily driver sports car it's really hard to argue against this you get some of the best handling the best performance of any vehicle it's not as flashy as a Ferrari or McLaren which has its downsides at this price point that you're only getting a Porsche but the upside is you don't have to worry about it when you park it as much you don't have to think all the time is someone damaging is it attracting too much attention does it send the wrong message to clients to employees but really this car it's just so good in so many ways it drives so well it feels so good it handles well it's just excellent it's a really really excellent car and in terms of an all-around car the 911 turbo has always been the best and the newest one feels like it still is. And so that's the 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S Cabriolet. Now I'm not as big of a fan of all the Porsche GT models as a lot of other car enthusiasts. I'm getting tired of the larger and larger ever-growing wings and the look at me styling details and the really rough harsh driving experience. To me this is still the ultimate Porsche 911. Just be prepared to pay for it. A lot. And now it's time to give the new 911 Turbo S a Doug's score. Starting with the weekend categories and styling the new 911 Turbo looks great but still 911-y and it gets a 7 out of 10. Acceleration 0 to 60 is under 3 seconds so it gets a 10 out of 10. Handling is very sharp but not quite on the level of the top exotic supercars and it gets an 8 out of 10. Fun factor is great but also not just on the level of the best exotics it's just too good without as much of a sense of occasion and it gets an 8 out of 10. Cool factor is high but same deal to most people this is still a 911. It does well but it earns a 7 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 40 out of 50. Next up are the daily categories and features it's well equipped better than most cars like this and it gets a 7 out of 10. Comfort is also better than average and it gets a 5 out of 10. Quality is tremendously high both in terms of materials and reliability and it gets an 8 out of 10. Practicality is better than average for a car at this performance level given the back seats and usability and it gets a 3 out of 10. Value is only about average it's a great car but a really expensive one and it'll lose value fast it gets a 6 out of 10 for a total daily score of 29 out of 50. Added up in the dug score is 69 out of 100 which places it here against exotic supercars. The 911 turbo is the odd man out here it gets a better daily score than any of these cars Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, Audi R8 but it gets a worse weekend score proving that this is really the daily usable supercar and for people who want that it's perfect.