2025 Porsche 911 Carrera GTS Cabriolet Is For The Pure Of Heart

The 992.2 Porsche 911 Carrera GTS Cabriolet has two major things about it that most "purists" are going to hate. First of all, it's got a hybrid powertrain, and if reactions to the Honda Prelude are any indication, that means it's the devil incarnate to people who like real driving machines. The second thing it has going against it is the fact that it's a convertible. That means, in your goofy minds, it has the structural rigidity of a piece of undercooked spaghetti and handles like a pig falling down a flight of stairs.

Here's the thing, though. While the 911 GTS Cabriolet might not pass muster in the eyes of "purists," it certainly appeals to the pure of heart — people like me who enjoy driving for the sheer experience. If anything, the GTS Cab's turbocharged flat-six hybrid motor and ability to let you drive with the roof down make it even greater than it would be otherwise. Is the new powertrain a few pounds heavier and is the chassis ever so slightly less rigid? Maybe, but who the hell cares? Are you a racecar driver? Are you driving at ten-tenths? Are you a lunatic? I don't think so, and neither does the 911 Carrera GTS Cabriolet. It's a car that rewards spirited on-road driving, because that's where you're spending 99% of your time, and the fact you can drop the top means you can hear the turbo whistle all the better.

Full Disclosure: Porsche lent me a fully gassed-up 911 Carrera GTS Cabriolet to do with as I pleased for a week, and man, did I take advantage of it.

The centerpiece of the 911 Carrera GTS is its brilliant motor. When Porsche announced that the GTS was going hybrid, people freaked the eff out. Hell, even I was ever-so-slightly wary of it, but after spending a week with the powerplant stuffed over the GTS' rear wheels, I've gotta say, it's freaking brilliant. What we're working with is a brand-new single-turbo 3.6-liter flat-six, which is then teamed up to a high-voltage electrical system, an electric motor and Porsche's amazing PDK dual-clutch transmission. There's no manual available, which will also hurt purists' feelings, but the electric motor is coupled directly to the crankshaft and puts out a stout 54 horsepower and 110 pound-feet of torque all by itself. The T-Hybrid system draws power from a 1.9-kWh battery pack mounted under the hood, where the old 12-volt battery used to be (that's now a thinner unit under the rear parcel shelf).

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All in all, the Carrera GTS puts out a very strong 532 hp and 449 lb-ft of torque, improvements of 59 hp and 29 lb-ft of torque over the non-hybrid 992.1 GTS. That means this beast, despite being a rear-wheel-drive car, can get from 0 to 60 mph in just 2.5 seconds, according to Car and Driver. If you keep your foot in it, it'll pass the quarter-mile in 10.6 seconds at 131 mph, all while you happily bounce off the 7,500-rpm redline (which you can now rotate to 12 o'clock thanks to the new digital gauge cluster). I don't know how Porsche does this, and we shouldn't ask questions of the devil. The hybrid system is deliriously complicated to anyone who isn't an engineer (or deeply German), so I won't even try to understand how it works. All that's important to know is that what it's doing was nearly imperceptible to me behind the wheel. It's the most naturally aspirated–feeling turbocharged car I've ever driven. Really, the only way you'd know what's going on is from the very pronounced turbo noises and the fact that the engine cuts out when you drop below 5 mph — and if that's not your thing, just turn off stop-start. Then, there's really no way to know.

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Being a Porsche means the engine is only half of what makes the 911 such a wonderful experience behind the wheel. The other half is the way it drives, the way I felt a deep, personal connection with the car and the road, cliché as it might sound. There's just something about the way this car skates through corners. To say it's on rails is disingenuous. Sure, there's plenty of mechanical grip from the well-tuned chassis and meaty Goodyear Eagle F1 Super Sport summer tires out back, but this is a rear-wheel-drive car with an engine on the rear axle and not much weight up front, so it's without a doubt tail happy.

That being said, it never felt like I was out of control or on the brink of something catastrophic. On a quick, twisty road, entering a flow state was delightfully easy. Time melts away behind the wheel of the 911 GTS. Minutes turned into hours on my favorite bits of road near Bear Mountain in New York. At one point, my partner called to ask where I was, and I told her I was too locked-in to come home. She understood.

The thing about the 911 GTS that sets it apart from other cars with this sort of blistering speed and performance is the fact that you're able to drive it every day without any issue. Between the brilliantly designed front-axle lift system that remembers where you've engaged it in the past and the 18-way Adaptive Sport Seats Plus, driving around town or hauling down the highway on a long, boring journey is a breeze. I mean that literally, since you'd better have the top down.

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Even the suspension isn't too harsh. Sure, it's a bit stiffer and lower than what you'd find in a Carrera S, so rough roads are a bit more noticeable, but it's hardly unbearable. After all, this is a 911 GTS. It's meant to have a bit of an edge. Of course, Porsche offers the softer anti-roll bars of the Carrera S as a no-cost option if that's what you're into, but unless you are old and annoying, the harder setup will be fine.

Your passengers might not feel the same way, though. While there's plenty of room in the front two seats, things are a bit rough out back. I stuffed my brother and sister in the rear seats, and while they didn't complain about headroom, there was a distinct lack of space for their limbs that they didn't particularly enjoy. I found the area to be far better suited for my three cats that I also put back there at one point.

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At the very least, you can bring some stuff with you by loading up the GTS's 4.8-cubic-foot frunk. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it's more than enough for daily driver duty, and my slight luddite of a brother had no issue hooking his phone up to the 911's 10.9-inch infotainment screen that housed the various cameras, settings, navigation and entertainment options. Porsche has done a lot to make sure this screen doesn't take up much real estate on the dashboard, much to the pleasure of its more pursuit buyers, I'm sure.

If there was but one massive drawback to the 2025 Porsche 911 Carrera GTS Cabriolet, it would be the fact that it's, well, incredibly expensive. At this point, all 911s are, so that's not exactly shocking, but when you add up all of the optional extras, prices climb quite quickly. Off the bat, a regular 911 now starts at $134,650 including destination. If you wanted a 2025 GTS Cab, that started at $180,195 — the price is now up to $191,950 for a rear-drive GTS droptop.

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Once you add in optional extras, my test car had like a red roof, extended leather, the incredibly necessary front lift system, more-adjustable seats and the Premium package, among a few other odds and ends, you hit an MSRP of $204,030 on a 2026 model year car. That's a hell of a lot of money, especially for something that isn't even close to a top-end 911 in the lineup, but the GTS Cabriolet is a hell of a lot of car.

Sure, there are probably better new car values out there, but when you're paying for a vibe, is money really an object? I mean, for you and me it is, but for the type of person who can afford a new 911, a few extra grand over $200,000 isn't going to scare them off.

The more that I think about it, the more curious the 911 Carrera GTS Cabriolet becomes. The GTS has always meant to be a more hard-edged version of the 911 for folks who don't need something as extreme as a GT3, but for most people (read: dummies), a convertible ruins that. I wouldn't be shocked if Porsche doesn't sell very many of these for that exact reason, and that's too bad, because it might actually be the best all-around car in the entire 911 lineup.

Andy Kalmowitz / Jalopnik

What purists believe it might lose in terms of enthusiast cred for having the wrong type of engine and the wrong type of roof, the 911 Carrera GTS Cabriolet more than makes up for by being a car aimed directly at me, an enthusiast who is pure of heart. It's for people who can see past all of the Reddit virtue signaling about what it means to be a driver's car and cuts right down to what driving is all about: having fun behind the wheel. There are few cars I've driven in 2025 — or any year for that matter — that provided more fun and more enjoyment, whether I was doing 10 mph or 100 mph, than this hybrid convertible.