2025 Porsche 911 Carrera S May Have Lost The Manual, But Its Driving Excellence Remains

Every car enthusiast has heard it a million times: the Porsche 911 is an incredible car. I’m not going to sit here and declare otherwise. The latest 992 generation is a freakishly fast, refined, well-built, capable, and enchanting sports car. The recently introduced 992.2 Carrera S packs supercar levels of performance with a 0-to-60-mph time as quick as 3.1 seconds and the same 191-mph top speed as last year, but it also packs supercar prices. The coupe’s base price is $148,395 including $1,995 destination, and the cheapest Carrera S convertible will cost you $161,595. That’s about a $17,000 jump over the 2024 Carrera S, and it’s a $26,000 jump over the base 2025 992.2 Carrera. You get more standard features and 30 additional horsepower compared to the 2024 car, but that’s still a massive sum of money.

As I sit in my studio apartment writing this review, of a car worth more than twice my annual salary, I know I’m not the average 911 Carrera S buyer. In fact, the average new 911 buyer’s annual salary is $849,000, so I know I’m very, very far detached from the average 911 buyer. Because of this, I’m not going to harp on price (much) past this point. 911s are expensive and getting more expensive every year, but prospective buyers can at least rest easy knowing that Porsche 911s experience the slowest depreciation of any new car on sale. Put the financials aside and look at the latest 911 objectively, and the 992.2 Carrera S is a further evolution of the already brilliant, quintessential sports car.

Full disclosure: The lovely folks at Porsche put me up in an oceanside resort in Encinitas California for a few nights and graciously allowed little old me to sample two flavors of the newest 911 variant, the Carrera S coupe and convertible. I ate lots of yummy food and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of my time.

Porsche first showed the 2025 911 in base Carrera and hybrid Carrera GTS forms, and now the Carrera S has rejoined the lineup with the same facelift. As with the other 992.2 models, it now includes previously optional features as standard like a sport exhaust system, a leather interior package, matrix design LED headlights, lane keeping and traffic sign assist, ambient lighting, power folding mirrors, and a heated steering wheel. If you were to spec a 2024 Carrera S with all those options, the 2025’s price is… still $5,590 higher, actually. Beyond the now-standard features, the 2025 Carrera S also gets a fully digital instrument cluster, tweaked exterior styling, and a standard steering wheel–mounted drive mode dial.

The Carrera S loses its manual transmission option for 2025, but its twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter flat-6 now makes 473 horsepower, up by 30 hp, and spreads the same 390 pound-feet of torque as last year across a wider power band. It gains the larger brakes from the last year’s 911 GTS, and they are more than up to the task of stopping the additional 42 pounds of the now 3,424-pound 911 coupe. The only way to get a manual transmission in your 911 is by going for either the $7,700-cheaper Carrera T, or the ballistic 911 GT3.

Driving the new Carrera S is a blast, despite its lack of a manual transmission. Both my coupe and convertible press cars were equipped with the $2,400 Sport Chrono Pack that drops the 0-to-60 time down to from 3.3 seconds to 3.1 seconds in the coupe, and from 3.5 seconds to 3.3 seconds in the convertible. Both cars are hilariously quick, and the standard 8-speed PDK automatic that facilitates those blistering times is still one of the finest dual-clutch transmissions ever made. There’s prodigious power in every situation, but if you’re looking to execute a hole-shot in traffic or want to spook your passenger with power, press the red Sport Response button on the steering wheel-mounted drive mode dial and the car immediately selects the optimal gear, ups the revs, and maximum power is instantly available.

Both my coupe and convertible press cars were also equipped with Porsche’s $2,090 rear-axle steering, which makes it feel like the 911’s already small 96.5-inch wheelbase is further shrunk, offering ample agility and a tiny turning circle. The steering wheel does a great job of communicating the extent of the torture that the front tires are experiencing at any given moment, making it easy to build confidence when exploring the Carrera S’ mind bending levels of adhesion. Just make sure you or your passenger haven’t eaten recently, as the intense grip easily induces nausea.

Though it’s largely the same as before, the upgraded twin-turbo flat-6 in the new Carrera S is still one impressive lump of magnificence. The way that it positively erupts above 5,500 rpm and continues to rip all the way to the 7,500-rpm redline is supremely impressive and provides much of the same satisfaction as wringing out a naturally aspirated engine.

Beyond the Carrera S’ naturally aspirated–esque power delivery, it sounds naturally aspirated, too. There must be a paradigm shift that occurs in the Carrera S’ engine bay above 5,500 rpm. It manifests itself as a magnificently sonorous siren song and reaches a crescendo that goads your right foot into staying down and your right hand off the upshift paddle until you see the new digital tachometer needle enter the red. Below 5,000 rpm the engine is relatively unobtrusive, but breach that 5,000 mark and you’ll never want the revs to drop back down. It’s addicting.

The Carrera S cabriolet is 185 pounds heavier than the coupe, with a base curb weight of 3,609 pounds. That weight gain gets you a spectacularly integrated cloth roof that’s actually cloth covering hard panels. The top’s construction lends itself to minimal additional noise intrusion over the hardtop, a very sleek shape, and the nicest headliner I’ve ever encountered on a ragtop.

Dropping the top is easily done at speeds up to 31 mph via a console-mounted switch, and there’s a standard electrically deployable wind blocker that is slick to use and does a great job of mitigating hair-tangling wind from infiltrating the cabin. Once the roof is down, you notice three things: there’s virtually no structural wiggles, the top of the windshield is far enough forward that you get a great open-top view of the mountain roads you’re weaving through, and, hold on, is that a blow-off valve I suddenly hear? It sure is — unmitigated access to the intoxicating siren song produced by the rear-mounted flat-6 is such a treat.

When I hustled the convertible hard, I found it slightly easier to find understeer on corner entry, and the force of the launch is slightly downgraded from the tunnel vision–inducing G-forces of the coupe. Beyond the convertible’s $13,200 price jump over the coupe to a base price of $161,595, it barely gives up ground to the coupe 99 percent of the time.

The most controversial aspects inside the 992.2 911’s interior are the new start button (gasp) and the new fully digital gauge cluster (gasp again). Instead of the old key-like twist switch, you now press a button on the left side of the steering wheel to start the car, and it’s not hard to get used to. And yes, the 911’s characteristic center-mounted tachometer is no longer a physical dial, but the OLED driver’s display has resolution high enough that you can hardly tell that you’re not looking at a real tach until you switch to the handy full map display. It’s not the most configurable display ever, but you can set it up to display all the important stuff like your max G-forces, several different temperature monitoring metrics, current tire pressures, and more.

The infotainment is typical Porsche with logical menu structures and a clean look, and the dashboard has my favorite design feature: a perfectly placed shelf to stabilize my hand on when I’m trying to make on-screen selections while in motion. The system does everything well, and mercifully there are physical controls for the ever-important fan speed and temperature controls.

As with the base Carrera, the 911’s folding rear seats are now available as a no-cost option, with the car coming standard as a two-seater. The interior feels typically Porsche solid, but my sole gripe is that the wireless phone charger that’s hidden inside the center armrest overheats devices like that’s its job.

The Carrera S is the 911’s most popular trim and thus an important model for Porsche, with about 35 percent of all 992.1 911s sold being Carrera S models. While it is an absolutely brilliant car to drive, the standard Carrera is brilliant too, and its base price is $26,300 cheaper. I doubt the average 992 buyer who earns over $800,000 a year minds a measly $26,000 price premium, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it. The Carrera S is faster and more powerful, but unless you’re a serious driver taking your 911 on demanding high-speed canyon drives or to the track a few times a month, you aren’t likely to be disappointed with the standard Carrera, especially if you add the performance options that the Carrera S has.

While the 2025 Porsche 911 Carrera S may not be as flashy as something like a McLaren Artura, Maserati MC20, or Aston Martin Vantage, it continues to be an absolutely epic sports car, and a compelling choice when buying with your brain. The Carrera S remains a versatile, comfortable, daily driveable sports car that goes like stink. If the money isn’t an issue — and if you’re shopping for 911s, it probably isn’t — you won’t be disappointed.