This Porsche 911 GTS T-Hybrid would be a 5-star car - if it wasn’t such a rip-off

Why are the good people at Porsche charging Australians $100,000 more for this 911 GTS T-Hybrid than it is Brits and Americans?

Stephen Corby

This Porsche 911 GTS T-Hybrid is just about perfect in every way - except for price. Picture: Supplied

3 min read

12:12PMApril 16, 2025.

Updated 5:33PMApril 16, 2025

The Weekend Australian Magazine

Truly, it’s difficult to describe my discombobulation right now, but try to imagine suddenly discovering that you no longer want something you’ve always deeply desired. Like waking up to find that you no longer long to be a mortgage-free Boomer, and that you now find champagne, chocolate and sex unappealing, even when taken simultaneously.

This is how I feel about the fact that I’ve just driven a Porsche 911 GTS – the car that has long fevered my dreams – and I don’t want one. Worse still, one of the reasons is that it’s too rapid.

This new GTS is touted merely as a “facelift” but it’s important to remember that if a Porsche engineer gave you a facelift it would involve not just skin-tugging but removing your head, replacing your skull with carbon fibre and turbocharging your tongue.

While this new 911 doesn’t look hugely different, its famous 3.0-litre straight-six engine has been reimagined with “T-Hybrid” technology, bored out to 3.6 litres and fitted with an entirely new electric turbocharger, which uses an electric motor to replace turbo lag with constant huffing power (it spins at an impressive 125,000rpm).

It delivers on its design brief – being a better, faster and more efficient 911 – in every way, but …

.. I think someone in the Customer Gouging Department is taking advantage of Australians’ generosity.

Porsche purists blanched at the idea of this hybrid 911, fearing it would have a boring, silent EV mode and that you might need to plug it in, but neither of those horrors eventuated. Instead, the T-Hybrid’s electric motor simply provides more torque (up to 150Nm of it at very low speeds) to hurl you off the line and to “torque fill” the tiny gaps in grunt you used to find between gear changes. And the glorious, metallic melange of noises it makes never cease.

The most obvious result is a significant drop in its 0 to 100km/h sprint, from 3.4 seconds to 3 seconds flat. (It also now makes a whopping 398kW and 610Nm). To demonstrate this, we were allowed to drag race each other down the straight at Phillip Island in the old and new GTS. When I switched to the old one, I watched my colleague (in the new model) destroying me off the line. We were then allowed to race around the circuit in both cars and again, the new GTS felt ferociously faster. And yet, alarmingly and counterintuitively, it also felt less fun.

I have recently come to the conclusion that what makes most EVs so dull, to a motoring enthusiast, is the lack of gear changes. Even in automatic mode in a traditional petrol car, you get the sensation of rising revs, of constant peaks and tiny troughs; it’s an experience that has undulation, topography. Sydney would be a car with gears, Melbourne would be an EV.

And the thing about the T-Hybrid technology is that its torque-filling trickery is so effective it feels almost EV-like in its violent acceleration. It is pure linear lunacy, in terms of speed, and yet I found I was enjoying my admittedly slightly slower laps in the old GTS more. (Porsche also had one six-speed manual Carrera T there for us to drive, and I loved my time in that more than all the other, faster variants combined.)

The steering, brakes, handling, driver involvement, seating position … all are supremely excellent

This car accelerates 0- to 100km/h in 3 seconds flat.

It’s important to point out that this new GTS is still a staggeringly good car, it’s just that it feels closer than ever to the extreme, track-ready RS variants of the 911, whereas a GTS badge was previously the marvellous middle ground between punishing speed and Porsche perfection. The steering, brakes, handling, driver involvement, seating position … all are supremely excellent, so it’s possible, of course, that I have just lost my mind.

I have also, it seems, lost touch, as I’d presumed a 911 like this would be hovering below the $300,000 mark (I also thought you could still buy a new base 911 for around $220K, but I’m way off there, too: the cheapest one is $277,800, and the six-speed manual Carrera T I now lust after starts at $306,800).

And here we come to the second silly reason I don’t want one – at $380,100 (the one I drove, with options, was a more realistic $431,070), I think the price of this car is doolally. That’s LamborarriMcLaren money, and while Porsche taunts its rivals by pointing out that its legendary vehicle is “the socially acceptable” supercar, and that “you’re always well dressed in a 911”, I think someone in the Customer Gouging Department is taking advantage of Australians’ generosity/absurd wealth. Particularly because you can have the new 911 GTS in America for $US164,900 (around $274,000) or £132,600 in the UK (about $283,000).

Porsche says the new hybrid tech future-proofs the 911 because it lowers its carbon dioxide emissions, and I’m trying to be glad about that. Obviously I want to give this uplifted 911 five stars because, regardless of my personal failings in finding its acceleration too seamlessly savage, it delivers on its design brief – being a better, faster and more efficient 911 – in every way. But I’m going to have to lop one off for value. It’s been a discombobulating day.