Porsche 911 GT3 S/C rated: a convertible, yet still an epic driver's car

The weight distribution is changed a little, of course. And however stiff the shell of a cabriolet, it's not a coupé. But Porsche's clear implication is that the S/C is just as good to drive as the GT3, and Preuninger thinks that if you were blindfolded (he doesn't recommend it), you would be pushed to tell the difference.

But Porsche’s clear implication is that the S/C is just as good to drive as the GT3, and Preuninger thinks that if you were blindfolded (he doesn’t recommend it), you would be pushed to tell the difference. "It's not a convertible with some GT parts," he says. "It's a GT car with another bodyshell."

The mechanical hardware, then, is the same as the coupé's. It has the same 4.0-litre flat-six engine, naturally aspirated, revving to 9000rpm and generating 503bhp at 8500rpm and peak torque of 332lb ft at 6250rpm. It's dry-sumped, with titanium conrods, individual throttle bodies and more. 

It drives the rear wheels through a six-speed manual gearbox, there being no PDK option because that would make it around 30kg heavier and because "it's a driver's car, so one has to have as many points of interaction with the car as possible". Almost two-thirds of GT3 Touring buyers opt for a manual, so they think that will be fine.

The suspension is unchanged from the GT3 Touring too – not just tweaked to make it feel as much like that car as possible but actually the same. "We considered this would be a big role in development," says Preuninger, "but we didn't have to do anything." Softening it off, which was their initial thought, took too much precision away, so they went back to the base settings: "It's not a miracle, because it's not heavier than a standard GT3 Touring. We always came back to the baseline." 

The S/C costs £206,245 on the road, which, by the time you work out what the options would cost on a coupé, leaves it as a similar value proposition to the coupé. And it's not strictly limited in production number: it will just comprise part of the GT3 line-up, at least until the car is forced off sale by the fact it won't meet the Euro 7 emissions rules due to apply from November next year.

What is for now exclusive to the S/C is a Street Style Package, involving some rather elaborate decorative touches for £24,110. So what's the S/C like? Lovely, perhaps inevitably.

The lightweight sports seats do seat you quite upright, which makes for a pretty focused driving position, before a round steering wheel and a set of digital instruments that puts the rev counter front and centre (you can customise it so that 9000rpm is at 12 o'clock if you like). You need to twist a key-like lever rather than press a button to start it, which I also like (it's more intuitive if you stall on a circuit was the GT thinking). The pedals are positive and the gearshift is short of throw. 

Because of the engine's quick response, it's possible to be a little clumsy with shifting, but such is the linearity of it that it's easy and satisfying to get it right. That the engine and gearbox combo is already a large part of what’s so enjoyable about a GT3, having no roof on the matter amplifies the appeal. Forest areas or tunnels where sounds reverberate become real joys. And there’s a wind deflector that reduces buffeting to just about nothing.

The rest of the GT3 dynamic experience is all but there too. The steering is keen, the body is tightly contained (there's two stage-damping; the softer, Sport, is best on the road), agility is high and that keyed-in feel, where you know exactly what the car is going to do, is absolutely present.

With a gap of several months since I last drove a coupé, and in unfamiliar territory, I wondered if it was cognitive distortion telling me that the S/C didn't feel quite the same as a coupé.

But on reflection I do think you can discern a difference, that while it's no less agile overall, some weight balance has shifted rearward, and that there's less uncompromising solidity and fingertip-tactile steering precision than in a coupé (with a roll-cage, particularly). In a road car, though, that's not necessarily a bad thing: any shoulder-height body movement communicates to you that things are happening.