Porsche 911 Carrera S 2025 review – a 473bhp BMW M4 CS fighter

It’s almost as if, as well as the flights, accommodation, food and photography, Porsche organised the weather on the launch of the new 911 Carrera S. The morning was crisp and dry, sun soaking the roads that wind their way through Germany’s Black Forest region. The S swept through the switchback hairpins with fantastic composure, shooting between them at full noise with next to no management required. It felt good but almost too good, lapping up rude levels of commitment. 

And then it all turned grey. Clouds rolled in from nowhere and the rain came down hard, drops bouncing off the Guards Red bodywork like ping pong balls and saturating the road with a sheen of surface water. But in weather where you'd normally be tip-toeing in a rear drive car with this much power, the Carrera S remains on your side and comes alive. Its capability still leaves you in awe, but it demands your attention to drive quickly, kicking and writhing beneath you under power and leaving you to modulate the flow of 473bhp to the rear. You suddenly feel like an integral part of the action, and the 911’s impressive bandwidth becomes crystal clear. It just seems to adapt to the conditions, never phased. 

But we already knew this about the 992.2, having driven it in base Carrera form. It’s not a car that draws you in through raw excitement but it’s consistent and confidence-inspiring, with more depth than a BMW M4. This new Carrera S takes things up a notch, both in terms of price – at £120,500 it’s around £17k more than the base car – and power. Its 3-litre twin-turbo flat-six is 84bhp healthier than the Carrera’s, bridging the gap to the 3.6-litre, 534bhp hybrid GTS. Torque is bumped up from 332lb ft to 391, and the resulting numbers aren’t far off those you’d expect from a full-blown supercar: 62mph comes up in 3.3sec and it runs on to 191mph. As with the Carrera, an eight-speed PDK is the only choice of gearbox, with the Carrera T being the only mainstream 911 offered with a stick. 

Those numbers are believable in practice. The motor sweeps around to 7500rpm with real urgency and the S’s 305-width rear Pirellis find fantastic forward drive. As in the base Carrera, the delivery is linear with a satisfying top-end crescendo and flat-six howl from the switchable sports exhaust, but there’s tangibly more energy to the way it accelerates. Shifts from the PDK box hit home swiftly, too, although we occasionally caught it out with the odd clunky upshift. Do you need the extra power over a Carrera? On the road, not really. It just means you hover on the throttle in places where you’d be flat out in the standard car, and it’s a bit more exciting when the chance comes to fully open it up. The fundamental character isn’t much different, and the S hasn’t turned into a heavy-handed, M4-style powerhouse. 

As well as the extra power, the S gets a more generous list of standard equipment to justify the price hike. Among the included kit are larger, staggered 20- and 21-inch wheels, a Porsche Torque Vectoring Plus diff and the aforementioned sports exhaust, with rear-axle steering, power steering plus, ceramic brakes and a stiffer, 10mm lower PASM Sport suspension setup offered as options. Compared to the outgoing Carrera S, the steering, front axle kinematics and damper tuning have been adjusted, and the S’s uprated brakes (with huge 408mm front discs) are borrowed from the old GTS, which it matches for power. They stop well and don’t wilt after repeated hard braking, but the pedal is a little soft on initial travel. 

11

On these well-surfaced but still technical German roads the S doesn’t have the finely-honed tactility of a GTS, but it’s still a satisfyingly polished sports car. It tracks your inputs precisely and breeds confidence through its controls – particularly the steering, which isn’t alive with feedback but relays a clear sense of load through the car. It means you can commit into corners, lean on the tyres and even edge past their limit with real confidence. At 1540kg the S isn’t especially light for a 911, and every glance in the mirrors reminds you of the 992’s bulging hips. But it still feels wieldy somehow, perhaps because it’s so easy to place on the road, and because rivals like the M4 and AMG GT have muscled up so much. Only through mid-corner undulations at speed do you feel the mass start to work the suspension hard – Sport for the dampers helps here, controlling the body more precisely.

On the lowered PASM Sport suspension, that sensation is enhanced further. There’s more of an edge to the ride but it’s not jarring on these roads (gnarly UK tarmac might be a different story), and the payoff is more poise and control, the S settling quickly and flowing precisely through fast corners. Eventually you do find the limit, and some classic 911 traits, but you need to go looking for them. The rear is so hooked up that the nose can unload and edge wide under power, but you can unstick it with aggressive steering and throttle inputs – more easily than you can in a Carrera. Even when breaking traction there’s a sense of huge forward propulsion and the rear quickly nips back into line once grip is regained. An M4 is more wild and happier to indulge when you want to play, but there’s something to be said for the 911’s more subtle and nuanced approach.

When you back off the S plays the everyday role as well as a Carrera, if not better, thanks to the extra torque and flexibility of the engine. It starts pulling from as little as 2000rpm and settles into a calm stride on the motorway, and remains rock steady at autobahn speeds. The cabin is easy to get along with too, with an excellent driving position and intuitive tech. It’s missing some character from older models, though, with the outgoing car’s analogue rev counter being replaced by a fully digital panel and an apologetic gear selector switch in place of the pistol grip lever from 991s and modern GT models. 

11

Perhaps the biggest test for the Carrera S comes from elsewhere in the range. Yes, it's faster and better equipped than a Carrera, but extra power isn’t what the base car needs to come alive. A bit more edge, feedback and involvement is what takes it from a competent sports car to a truly absorbing one, and that’s what the lighter, manual Carrera T delivers – for £5k less than the S. As it stands, it’s hard to fault the S as an everyday sports car, but it’s equally difficult to ignore the fact that the base Carrera does a similar job for a lot less. 

Price and rivals

The Carrera S comes within a whisker of the M4 CS, which starts at £122,685. The M4 is a more brutal, extroverted car than the 911 – more powerful too, with a thumping 543bhp straight-six. It couldn’t be more different in character, with a sophisticated xDrive four-wheel drive system that offers a wide window of adjustability, and a pure rear-drive mode. 

Beyond that, there aren’t many directly comparable rivals in terms of price. The Lotus Emira, for instance, starts from £92,500 in manual V6 form, while the Mercedes-AMG GT – traditionally a direct 911 rival – sits either side of the Carrera S in four-cylinder GT43 (£111,535) and V8 GT55 (£148,300) forms. Aston Martin’s Vantage, meanwhile, has moved up a class, now costing from £165,000.