Category: Exotic Sports 
Price Range: £61,744 to £128,307
Sensational poise and precision, aural delight, staggering performance and sensible price.
Low front splitter, expensive options, overt looks too much for some.
The most athletic, sharpest, lightweight 911 is undoubtedly the best - and it now comes with fewer compromises.
The GT3 is obviously a specialist 911, designed to go fast with few compromises - yet it works phenomenally well on the road.
Unsurprisingly the ride is firm, but it's not the compromise you may expect. Leave the Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM) on its standard setting and the GT3 smooths out road imperfections remarkably well, all the while not detaching the driver from what's going on. Press the button with a damper icon on it and the GT3 stiffens up like a track machine, although it's far too taut for the road and transmits every little bump throughout the entire car.
It's the GT3's feel and feedback that really stand out. A standard 911's steering is beautifully weighted and full of information, but the clarity of the content, the consistency of weighting, speed, accuracy and the confidence of the GT3's Alcantara rimmed wheel brings is just sensational. Suspension and aerodynamic revisions make the GT3's nose feel more planted too, allowing you to turn it into corners ever faster with the knowledge that it'll go exactly where you want it to go.
The stability and traction systems, as well as the sticky Michelin tyres, help in the corners but the GT3's limits are very high and clearly signposted.
The 3.8-litre engine is a high-revving masterpiece. It reaches its 8,500rpm limit with impunity, while making noise enough to wake the souls of racing drivers long lost to this world. Press the Sport button and the response and sound is even greater.
Hugely linear, the engine will pull easily in any gear from low revs, the increased capacity bringing greater low-speed flexibility around town. That's to the benefit of the GT3's user-friendliness, but it doesn't detract from its hard-charging appeal. It offers 0-62mph in 4.1 seconds, but its accelerative force makes that figure seem conservative. And the way it was pulling at over 180mph on an unrestricted autobahn suggests Porsche might be being a touch coy about its quoted top speed of 193mph.
The engine is mated to the sort of mechanical feeling manual gearbox that makes every shift a joy, while the sound it makes while working away behind you is something that'll have you dropping the cogs for the hell of it.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Porsche 911
wrote on 05 07 2006