Is the CHEAPEST 2025 Porsche 911 Carrera the BEST 911? (992.2 Review)

The sun is shining, it's the start of March, spring is coming, now is the time to buy a sports car. And what better sports car to have a look at today than the brand new 992 Gen 2 911. This one is the base model, so let's have a look if the cheapest 911 you can buy new today is potentially the best one. Of course, being a 911, Porsche went with the if it ain't broke don't fix it kind of design language. As in, it kind of looks like the old one, and the one before that, and the one before that, and the one before that. But, it's a timeless recipe, it works doesn't it. The shape, it looks fast standing still, it's a bit of a cliché I know, but it really does, it looks wicked. But there are a few little changes, like this little crease on the front and rear bumpers. Kind of gives it a more chunky stance in a way. Full width light bar across the back here, it looks great. I actually, for the first time ever I think, this 992 generation kind of looks better with the spoiler down. Hang on, let me flip it up for you, so you can have a look yourself, what do you think? Up or down, which is better? There's a slightly new headlight design, with new LED signature, which actually looks really nice actually. And it does make it stand out from the previous generation, that is a noticeable change. Crucially, you're going to want to know how this one drives compared to the others in the line up, so let's jump in and find out. Now I did mention this is the cheapest new 911 you can buy, and it is. This car is under £100,000, the big crucial number. Well, it is, but only just, with no options whatsoever. It actually costs £99,800, but as soon as you put any sort of option on it whatsoever, which you do need to do, because this is a Porsche, and kind of, it may come with nothing at all, without an option. As soon as you start clicking a few buttons, you're around, well, let's put it this way, this car has got glass sunroof, side window trims painted in gloss black, sport chrono package, sports exhaust system, power steering plus, optional 20 and 21 inch Carrera Classic wheels, Porsche crest on the headrest, sport seats, rear seats, I don't know why that's an option now, I think you can take them out for free, Bose surround sound system, privacy glass, heated GT steering wheel, and surround view parking assistant. So, this car is actually £118,000, so 18 grand's worth of options, those are the options, I would call them kind of standard options, if you like, kind of, you have to have those things if you're ever going to sell your car ever again. Those are like the bare, basic, essential options you need to tick. But, £118,000 isn't a lot for probably the best sports car you can buy, I mean, let's look at the rivals, the Audi R8, that's dead, doesn't exist anymore, the, could you have said the Jaguar F-Type, once upon a time maybe, that's dead, Mercedes AMG GT, well, you can buy one of those for this price point, but you end up with a measly two litre, four cylinder, rubbish, why would you do that, Mercedes? So, then, to get the engine that you actually want in that, you're talking £160,000 for one of those now, Aston Martin Vantage, again, once upon a time was a rival, now they start at £135,000, it's way too much, so, although, yes, a hundred odd grand, early hundreds, is a lot of money, you kind of get a lot of value in this car. So, now, I'm off the beach, we can take it for a proper little drive, see what it's really like, oh, it's sandy here, that's good fun, this is, I should point out, and you might have been able to work out there, I was sliding around a little bit at low speeds, this is the two wheel drive version, you can, of course, buy your 911 with four wheel drive, I don't know why you would, two wheel drive's way more fun, and also, you don't get into trouble with two wheel drive, the traction control systems these days are so advanced, that, you know, you can have your little bit of fun, you don't have to necessarily be much of a good driver, the traction control just looks after you, I like this car a lot, it sounds good as well, as I said, the options on this car do include the sports exhaust system, I can't work out a way to turn the bloody start-stop thing off, though, which is kind of annoying, because, let's face it, most of the time you're driving, you are in traffic, so stop, start, stop, start, and the engine keeps cutting out, and it just sounds like you've stalled it, the thing I love most about 911, in any guise, is that it just feels so familiar, everything is where you want it to be, it drives how you expect it to drive, it's comfortable, it's refined, the quality is top-notch, honestly, top-notch quality, the seating position, bang on, the way you can see out of it, superb, so engine and power, we have a three litre turbocharged flat six in this car, they've actually taken the turbos of the previous generation GTS, which are a little bit bigger, a little bit more efficient, and therefore, you get a little bit more power, this car now up to 400 horsepower, which, you know, in the world of electric cars, with mundane, boring, huge, great big SUVs, giving you near on 1000 horsepower, doesn't sound like a lot, but this weighs 1500 kilos, so it's a light car, it's small, it's nimble, it's just so much more joyous than having, you know, 8-900 horsepower in an electric thing, who cares? 0-60 in this car, 3.9 seconds, again, do you need anything quicker? I don't think so, honestly, it's a very rare occasion where you might get a bit of countryside road, where you can open it up a little bit and have some fun, but I don't know what your life is like, but my life gets in the way of that, you know, I'm working during the week, at night it's dark, I've got a family, I can't just go out in the middle of the night and start driving places, and at weekends I'm busy, so being able to get out and go for a drive and enjoy country roads in a sports car is kind of, for me at least, sadly, a thing of the past, but it doesn't mean you can't enjoy driving a 911 every day, because it has that every day or every day feel good factor, every time you climb into this in the morning to do your morning commute, it feels special, it feels so much more special than jumping into, I don't know, an SUV or a hatchback with some power, like, I don't know what it is, it may be because this sort of car is getting really rare now, and when you think about it, two-door coupes, there's not many of them around, is there? So to open the door, sink into the seat, low down driving position, it feels like an event, even if you're just doing a five-mile commute to work. There's a few changes on the inside of this car which some people may not like, it's got a digital dash now, as opposed to the analogue rev counter and then digital either side, I actually like it because everything, you can see everything, if you have driven an older 911 or an older 992, these chunky bits on the steering wheel kind of got in the way of the outer dials, so you had to kind of peer around them, but now, being digital, they've kind of squeezed everything a little bit, and also there's loads of different displays you can choose from now, I think it's a good thing. The one thing I don't like, a change that I don't like, is that we've now got a starter button instead of the, well, in older Porsches, you had, like, what, it looked like it was a key sticking out of the dash, but it was, it was built into it, but now you've just got a button. I don't know why they've done that, it feels a bit cheap. You've also got, your drive mode select has now got the response mode, the sport response mode is now in red for sportiness, but yeah, I quite like it, it's all right, it feels a bit, I don't know, it feels a bit Audi somehow, I don't know why, maybe it's just because it's red, do I associate red with Audi, the RS, red RS, I don't know, maybe I'm talking nonsense, probably. So, let's talk about the model range now in these 992 Gen 2 cars. This, as I say, is the base model, so the Carrera, one step above that you have the Carrera T, which if you want a manual 911 that isn't a GT3, that's your only option, you can't get this car with a manual gearbox, and actually in the T the manual box looks really nice because the gear knob's like wooden, which looks really cool, it looks retro. Above that you've got the Carrera S, which has a fair bit more power, a few little tweaks, a different diff, I think you get some stuff as standard, like sports exhaust system, and you get around 80 horsepower more, which is a noticeable amount more, but it starts I think at 130,000, which is a noticeable jump, again that's before you've optioned anything, but it may have those little bits that you want kind of as standard, so potential consideration. Then above that you've got the GTS, if you haven't watched my video on the new 992 Gen 2 GTS, go and have a look at that, because that was a superb car, that had the all-new hybrid system, T-Hybrid, and that was brilliant, that car, that was really really good, but again, once you've added a few options onto one of those, you're about 160 grand, and that's it for now, they haven't yet launched the Turbo and the Turbo S in the Gen 2 cars, I would imagine they're going to put the hybrid tech into those, wind up the boost, and suddenly you've got, you know, 700 horsepower or something stupid. I don't know if that's overkill, you know, it's a bit silly I know, to sort of have this conversation of do you need more power, but do you really need more power than this? At no point today, driving this today and yesterday, I've not felt like it's underpowered by any stretch, you know, like I said most of the time you're driving in traffic, but when you're not, and you can give it a little bit of a blast, at no point do you think, oh I wish this had more power, like here, this bit's nice, engine sounds good doesn't it? Yes, spirited driving, really good bit of road that, so it looks good, it sounds good, drives great, and it's the cheapest 911 you can buy today. Why wouldn't you go and buy one? Well, I suppose the only reason you wouldn't buy this car is if you would take the used one, because for this money you could buy a two-year-old GTS, which I think is an overall better car, and overall would hold its money better, and someone else has also lost appreciation for you, the initial bit of it, so that may be a better buy in the real world with your real money, but if you need to buy new, and some people some people love new cars, like they have to have new, then if you need to buy new, just buy this one.