Don’t judge the player …

Bam! Caught speeding after ten minutes in the open-top, naturally aspirated 911 GT3 S/C. And I thought we’d made more progress on the subject of bullying by now. It’ll cost a few euros. But there are no penalty points for this. I’m something of an expert on that now. After all, connoisseurship is a key aspect of this story.

The GT3 has always been the rock star of the 911 family. It took on braking points and kerbs like Guns N’ Roses took on entire stadiums in the 1990s. It has therefore always been dedicated to that artistic, sensitive sort of person who is generally described as particularly attuned to temperature, and who only really gets into their stride with tyres when they’re exceptionally true to the feel. As you can tell, this is a serious matter. The Michelin Cup2 tyres are cold, barely above 30 degrees. “Take me down to Paradise City!”

It’s late, in a town somewhere in Germany. Its name is irrelevant. A junction with no traffic. The traffic lights are red. Two signs urge drivers to give way, as if anyone would still be claiming right of way at this time of night. Behind me, a four-litre boxer engine purrs – it’s capable of revving up to 9,000 rpm, though I don’t let it go that high. Not yet. Are these the natural aspirated engine’s final hours at Porsche? The night of the decision? Or is Porsche CEO Michael Leiter’s vision enough to make us dream once more of the sports car of the future? And what’s all this got to do with me? The answers: now. Perhaps. So stay tuned. 

Above me lies the stuff of dreams – or, judging by various hardcore forums, nightmares. A convertible top stretched over the body of a Porsche GT3 on magnesium ribs, above it a starless night. Beneath my index finger lies a button that has never before existed in a GT3. If I don’t pull this button, the car remains what a GT3 has been since 1999: a cocoon of concentration, a racing car with number plates. If I do pull it, it becomes something else. Exactly what that is has been the subject of debate amongst a whole community since the spring.

I’m pulling it.

It’s just a small step for a person, to put it in a way that could be printed in the history books about sports cars. For the community that rallies round the GT3 acronym as others do round a creed, it is a very significant move indeed. When Porsche unveiled the 911 GT3 S/C in the spring of 2026, the tone that set the tone in forums and specialist magazines was the sort one might expect from a church congregation when the new vicar turns up with an electric guitar. An open-top GT3, some reviews claimed, made little sense by definition. Such a convertible was softer, certainly heavier; one even remarked: “…neither fish nor fowl”. The colleague was presumably a vegetarian. And a cargo bike rider.

Back to serious driving: few instances of the rev counter hitting the red zone, plenty of idling between second and third gear, and a few niggles with the tram tracks. It can’t be long before the boxer engine in the rear blares a few 9,000s into the night sky because it’s bored. You could call that discipline. Or the meta-level of the sustainability debate; certainly no setting off fireworks here. On the other hand, given how long this exploratory phase in the open-top GT3 has been going on, it’s starting to feel like a medical check-up.

Red light. I close the soft top. I open the soft top. I close the soft top again. I listen to the boxer engine purring. In my head, I’m telling my grandchildren the whole story of the manual gearbox, doing two laps of the Nordschleife. Lap record. Obviously. You’ve always been surrounded by that pervasive sense of impatience in the GT3. You have to learn to put up with it.

At last! Green. Now let’s get out of the city.

The GT3 S/C and I take to the wide, fast open road. And it really puts us through our paces straight away. Ruts, bumps and an outside temperature of just 13 degrees. The suspension absorbs each impact, holding up well. The Michelins need a few firm presses of the brake pedal before they acclimatise to the heat radiating from the ceramic discs. Did the rear end just drift outwards coming out of the bend? The PSM takes a quick look and lets it carry on. Sport mode, after all.

Then round the left-hander again. The front axle pushes the GT3’s nose into the bend; at the apex, a bump lifts it out slightly – a hard guitar riff between the ruts and the kerb – whilst the rear axle remains stable. Straight into the next right-hander. It’s a big night, one that’s about so much more than just driving, but also about: driving at its very best. What, yes, what more could you want? A roof, perhaps? No idea.

Nothing here is further from the truth than the outrage over the open-top GT3. Behind the front wheel, small and black, is the lettering at the heart of the whole controversy. The motoring press interprets S/C as ‘Sport Cabrio’, which sounds reasonable. Anyone old enough will recognise the 911 SC, built from 1978 to 1983, popularly known as the Super Carrera. It was the 911 of an era when Porsche wanted to phase out the 911. The water-cooled 928 was ready to take its place, and in Zuffenhausen it is still said today that, in 1981, CEO Peter Schutz extended the 911’s lifespan on the product plan in his head of development’s office. With a pen. Without further ado. Intended to be the last of its kind, the SC ended up serving as a bridge model, and within the range comprising the SC and Turbo, it was the affordable 911. Today, those same two letters – separated by a slash – start at 269,000 euros, around 60,000 more than a GT3 Coupé.

You can see what it’s all about better under streetlights than in the sunshine. The black windscreen frame sits against the red paintwork like a pair of spectacles, the magnesium wheels with central locking shimmer bronze, and the streetlights cast their glow on the flanks of the Michelin Cup tyres. The bonnet, wings and doors, made of carbon fibre, are taken from the 911 S/T; the ceramic brakes are standard, and at the front, for the first time in an open-top 911, a double wishbone suspension is fitted. The chassis is based on the GT3 with the Touring package. 1,497 kilograms, around 30 more than the Speedster. Porsche sourced the soft top from the Carrera Cabriolet without much fuss. Revised cylinder heads, camshafts from the RS, 9,000 revolutions, 510 PS. There’s no dual-clutch gearbox. Anyone buying the S/C will have to use the clutch and change gear themselves. Six closely spaced gears and the certainty that a GT3 Coupé with PDK reaches 100 half a second faster. But that’s not what this is about.

And one more thing, a sort of side note: the S/C isn’t a limited edition, and in the world of GT models, that’s almost a provocation. The 2019 Speedster was produced in a run of 1,948 – a nod to the year the first Porsche was born – whilst the 2023 S/T was produced in a run of 1,963 – a nod to the year the first 911 was born. For these cars, limited production was both a storytelling device and a promise of return on investment. Those who got one were the chosen few. Those who didn’t get one paid above the list price on the secondary market. Just how quickly such a situation can change was demonstrated by the 2016 911 R: 991 units, speculative prices far above the list price – until Porsche followed it up with the GT3 Touring, a very similar formula but with no production limit. And indeed, just over 1,000 units were produced, making the 991-series GT3 Touring almost as rare as the 911 R. Prices for the R began to fall. A British review dryly noted that the S/C is hardly suitable as an investment. So, 269,000 euros for a car whose value is unlikely to increase whilst sitting in the garage? We’ll have to wait and see.

So ‘unlimited’ does not mean ‘boundless’. The S/C will only be built for as long as this 911 is in production, and a convertible with a manual gearbox, no rear seats, and significantly more expensive than the coupé? It won’t be a high-volume model. It’s quite possible that, in the end, there’ll be fewer S/Cs on the road than Speedsters or S/Ts, with no badge on the centre console at all. Rarity born of restraint – that, too, is a form of limitation in the history of coveted sports cars. At least in the long term. Then there are the emissions standards. Nobody knows whether this four-litre model will be followed by another naturally aspirated engine. If the S/C were to remain the first and last open-top GT3 with a naturally aspirated engine and manual gearbox, it would mark the end of an era – and the market has a long memory when it comes to such endings. When Porsche unveiled the Carrera RS 2.7 in 1972, the sales department doubted whether even the 500 units required for homologation could be sold. Today, it ranks among the most sought-after 911s of all time.

Ah yes, the photo. The sharpest shot of the night isn’t ours. It’ll arrive in the post in a few weeks, complete with reference number, time stamp and the soft top down. Judge the driver. The fines department will take care of that.