Opinion: does the Porsche 911 actually need four-wheel drive?

Five thousand, five hundred and eighty pounds. What would you do with that? 

If you were, for instance, speccing a brand-new Porsche 911, you could spend that on saving 25kg with the Lightweight Pack. Or perhaps having it painted in a bespoke colour with some change left over to make the seatbelts match.

You could spend it on something no-one could see. Not unless they looked very hard at the back of your 911, and noticed a little ‘4’ badge on its bum.

Yep, £5,580 is what is costs to turn a Carrera, Carrera S, or GTS into a Carrera 4, a 4S, or a 4 GTS. 

Porsche’s been putting four-wheel drive into 911s since 1989. It’s got more sophisticated over the years, with adaptive torque control which ebbs and flows the drive between the axles that can best deploy it. Since 1995, all 911 Turbos have been 4WD. But for purity’s sake there’s never been an AWD GT3 or GT2.

Meanwhile, tyre and traction control technology has constantly been improving. 911s are no longer the ‘widowmakers’ they once were, infamous for looping off the road if you even thought about having a throttle lift mid-corner. In fact, I’d argue that on a slimy, frigid British B-road in February, a 992 Carrera is more trustworthy and friendlier than, say, a Jaguar F-Type or a Mercedes-AMG GT.

But does it need AWD? In the last few weeks I’ve driven two versions of the new 911 GTS. One sent all of its 473 horsepower to the two rear wheels. The other shared about half of that power with the fronts. 

On paper, the 4 was a lot faster: good for 0-62mph in 3.3 seconds, to the 2’s 4.1. But mostly, that was down to the manual transmission in the 2. Equip it with PDK and there’s only a tenth between them. Both are bonkers quick. 

And the more I drove the 4, the more I wondered how much of the time my imaginary £5,580 was earning its keep. Among the dashboard screens there’s a little readout showing what proportion of torque is going to which axle. Clog the 4 from a village trundle to A-road speed and at first, drive surges forward, but almost as quickly as the pixels can react, the car’s satisfied the back tyres have actually got this covered, and the 4 GTS settles back down to being almost entirely RWD. Meanwhile, there’s never any tugging through the steering. You could completely forget it’s got AWD.

Or could you? What the 2 does is ‘shimmy’. It has ever-such-a-slight tell-tale wiggle when it’s booted. It never fully spools up and spits all of its power away as wasteful wheelspin, but there’s just a momentary ‘oo-er’ moment as that engine-laden back axle fights all the power onto the road. 

I like that fleeting moment. The car’s giving you a clear message through the seat of your pants that it still deserves some respect. Don’t be so binary, EV-boy. It’s not scary. But it makes the car feel alive.

But I’m aware that the sort of people dropping over £110,000 on a luxury sports car aren’t always in the mood for ‘feeling alive’. They’re quite glad 911 ownership no longer means walking through their front door and declaring “honey, I’m home. I know, can you believe it?”

So, think of all-wheel drive on a 911 the same was as you do the Burmester hi-fi or aluminium fuel filler cap. Nice to have, but not absolutely, life-or-death necessary.