Category: Exotic Sports 
Price Range: £61,744 to £128,307
Powerkit's added pace; incredible traction; powerful brakes.
Powerkit's extra cost pitches the Carrera S head-to-head with sublime Audi R8 and comes off worse.
Appealing, if costly; stop-gap until the new direct injection engine range arrives.
Evolution is deeply engrained in the Porsche engineer's psyche. No stronger evidence to support that the Darwinian theory is alive and well in Stuttgart, is the very existence of a Powerkit engine upgrade for the current Carrera S.
Available from the tail end of last year, the Powerkit upgrades have been developed for the existing flat-six 3.8-litre engine at the very same time engineers burned the midnight oil to develop the next generation range of direct injection motors.
So why bother with the Powerkit at all? Engineers knew with some intelligent tweaking there was still some life left in the old engine - and a bit more power.
The tweaks are comprehensive for a modest-sounding 26bhp. Both cylinder heads were modified, exhaust manifold widened, ECU reprogrammed and a sports exhaust added.
Performance is improved: the 0-62mph sprint is cut by two tenths of a second to 4.6 seconds while top speed rises by 4mph to 186mph.
The extra cost is considerable, adding £8,241 to the overall price. The Powerkit can be added to the Coupe, Targa and Convertible models in both six-speed manual and five-speed automatic.
More importantly, the upgrades can be fitted to used cars. That means existing 911 owners can upgrade their cars to be as quick as the forthcoming, more powerful direct injection models.
Price range: £61,620 - £131,070.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Porsche 911
wrote on 05 07 2006