Porsche 911 GT3 UK (2006) CAR review

What's the GT3 for, and hasn't it been around for ages?

We first drove the car in our dark pre-website days but thought we'd revisit it now that the first few have rolled off the boat onto UK soil. As for what it's for, it's simply for making you smile more than any other 911 on sale. This is as good as 911s get, well modern ones anyway, combining trackday ability with the sort of comfort and refinement levels needed to make it a usable everyday car.

How come the GT3 has a 3.6 flat six and the cheaper Carrera S gets a 3.8?

Before you start getting disappointed, take a look at the figures: without any form of forced induction the GT3 produces a massive 409bhp – nearly as much as the old 996 Turbo – and the bigger Carrera S just 355bhp. In fact there’s more to it than an extra 200cc. The two engines are substantially different, the GT3’s being able to trace its ancestry to the power unit that took Porsche’s GT1 racer to victory at Le Mans in 1998. It revs to 8400rpm, sounds absolutely magical and, though it doesn’t have the gut-bruising punch of the Turbo in the mid-range, is still fearsomely fast thanks to six closely-stacked ratios. Zero to 62mph takes 4.3sec, a good half second less than the S needs, 100mph 8.7sec and the GT3 eventually cracks 192mph.