Porsche to keep selling manual 911s for “as long as we are legally allowed to”
Though there are fewer manual Porsche 911s on sale now than a decade ago, the brand isn’t walking away from three-pedal options.
The advancement in efficiency and speed of automatic transmissions has seen manuals become a rare commodity in recent decades, but some brands are committed to keeping three-pedal vehicles in showrooms.
Porsche has long celebrated the manual transmission, offering it in a handful of base 911 variants (such as the Carrera T), as well as the GT3, which in Australia can be ordered with a manual or automatic transmission for the same price.
Over in the US, Porsche last week added the new 911 Carrera S to its lineup of three-pedal models, launching the new ‘MT Package’ for the sports car, providing buyers with even more choice.
Speaking to Road and Track, Porsche North America CEO Timo Resch said the brand is seeing demand for manuals to support its continual offering to the public well into the 2030s.
“You can be assured that we will try to offer manual transmissions as long as we are legally allowed to, and as long as there's customer demand,” Resch said.
“And we see customer demand for the option, manual transmission also lasting well into the next decade.”
According to Resch, it was Porsche’s customers who led to the introduction of the Carrera S with MT Package, having asked for a model between the track-focused GT3 and the base-level Carrera T.
“[...] obviously our customers have a close relationship with their Porsche centers,” Resch said.
“And if they tell them, I would like to have a manual which kind of sits in between a GT3 and a T, we try to collect all of that feedback. And based on the history of, there was a Carrera S in the previous generation that had a manual transmission, we were like, ‘let's build a case.’”
In the US, more than half of all 911 GT3s sold are manuals, while 80 per cent of GT3 Tourings are the three-pedal, suggesting drivers are looking for engagement with the car over the outright speed offered by the dual-clutch automatic transmission.
There’s no official plans to mate the manual transmission with Porsche’s new T-Hybrid system yet, with the executive adding the two technologies are currently incompatible.
“So, the [hybrid] technology setup that we have in place right now, and a manual transmission, like you see in the Carrera S as the MT package, they are not compatible,” Resch said.
“But at the same time, it's great to have an engineering team in Weissach that never stops thinking, and has a lot of great ideas. So I wouldn't be surprised if at some point they come up with a solution, but it probably will not be a combination that you see here of a manual transmission.”
Earlier this year, Michael Rösler, head of the Porsche 911 product line, told the UK’s Evo magazine the US is helping to keep manuals in the brand’s showrooms.
“We look at the market closely and in Europe last time [in the 992.1], we saw two, maybe three per cent ordered a manual in the Carrera line,” Rösler said.
Jordan Mulach
“That gets us to some problems with our suppliers because they need to supply a certain number of parts. The US is a completely different story. The past GTS had about 50 per cent of customers ordering a manual.
“For Porsche, in the US and Britain, manuals are a very interesting market. We watch it closely, it’s why we did the Carrera T manual - it was one of my early decisions to do the Carrera T.
“We wanted to make it sharper, we looked at the cable setup from the GT3, to lower it a bit. I think the precision with the three gates makes a difference.”
