2024 Porsche 911 S/T Review: Driving the 911 of Your Dreams

It’s the 911 I never knew I really wanted, until I drove it.

a silver sports car parked on a road with trees and hills in the background

Published January 19, 2024

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I can still remember the first time I drove a Porsche 911.

It was a black 964 cabriolet with a “For Sale” sign on it, parked in the driveway along the road half a mile or so from my house. I was seventeen years old. Fueled by teenage chutzpah, I managed to talk the owner into letting me take it out for a test drive, then proceeded to drive the back way to my high school in an attempt to impress girls watching the boys’ Saturday soccer game.

I struck out with the ladies that day — which, to be fair, was par for the course — but I did wind up falling in love. No longer buzzing with the hope of using the Porsche to strike up a flirty conversation, I spent the drive back instead concentrating on the car: feeling the road through the steering wheel, the pedals, the seat; slicing through corners without care or body roll, just low-slung ease; winding through the transmission and feeling that hoarse flat-six push me forward with a glee my parents’ Civic EX couldn’t hope to match. I distinctly remember thinking, I want to spend my life looking at the road from between those headlights.

That was my first 911, but it wasn’t the last. Over the last 20 years, I’ve been lucky enough to drive more examples of der Neun elf than I can remember — from 200,000-mile 993s to better-than-new Singer Vehicle Design and Gunther Werks restorations, from basic Carreras to ballistic missile Turbo S Lightweights. Every one of them has been a car I’d love to own; it just depends on how big the state lotto jackpot winds up being.

I’m dragging you down memory lane here because the 2024 Porsche 911 S/T — built in honor of the 60th anniversary of the 911 lineage — isn’t one of those cars that can be judged in a vacuum. It is, in concept and execution alike, a special car — one made not to set lap records or acceleration sprints, but for the sheer love of the game, so to speak. It’s a 911 for 911 lovers like me … or more precisely, 911 lovers who probably have a garage full of them already but don’t mind forking over 300 grand for another one.

So, not quite like me.

2024 Porsche 911 S/T: What We Think

Sure, the new 911 S/T is the culmination of 60 years of history, but it’s so much more; it’s also meant to be the most engaging, most delight-inducing version you can buy for the street, a symbol of what the 911 should be in its purest form.

Objectively, it’s incredible to drive — even if the lesser 911 models are so good already, it’s hard to make an argument for the S/T’s massive price increase over the rest of the family. Subjectively, any arguments against it crash and dissipate against the breakwater of passion. If you’re not a 911 person, you won’t appreciate just how special this car is. If you are one, you’ll love it.

To learn more about our testing methodology and how we evaluate products, head here.

The 911 S/T is an absolute dream to drive

2024 porsche 911 st in silver — high rear side

Porsche’s bigwigs have been surprisingly, un-Germanic-ly vocal in espousing their praise for the 911 S/T. Just take a look at the following testimonials:

Andreas Preuninger, GT model line director: The 911 S/T is “one of the greatest 911s of all time, if not the greatest … the most entertaining.”
Walter Rohrl, Porsche brand ambassador: “The best road car I have ever driven. It meets my expectations of a perfect sports car down to the smallest detail. Actually, the car should be called the Porsche 911 Walter Röhrl.“
Dr. Ferdinand Porsche: [no comment, remains deceased]

Having stumbled across all those quotes before even laying eyes on the car in person, I admit to walking in with with high expectations — especially in the wake of having ripped around some excellent roads in not one but two examples of the closely related 992-generation 911 GT3 in the last few months. How much better could this thing really be?

Notably better, it turns out.

Many of the tweaks that create a 911 S/T boil down to lightweighting. Carbon fiber reinforced plastic body panels, magnesium wheels, less sound insulation and lightweight glass are all part of the package here. This isn’t just to carve off much-hated poundage (the changes, admittedly, only shave 167 pounds off the car versus the similar 911 GT3 Touring), but also to bring more of the experience to the driver’s senses. The S/T is more open about its purity and mechanical nature than other 992-gen 911s; it’s noisier inside, but it’s “curated” noise — you hear the synchronous interaction of the mechanical parts, not so much road or tire or wind noise. If that doesn’t sound appealing, this car isn’t for you.

The other big twist here is the 4.0-liter boxer-six, pulled largely intact from the track-attack 911 GT3 RS and affixed to a standard six-speed manual gearbox instead of a seven-speed dual-clutch. And you will need to work that gearbox to make the most of this car. The full team of 518 horses doesn’t arrive until 8,500 rpm and the complete punch of 342 lb-ft of torque doesn’t show up until 6,300.

Yet the 911 S/T never feels anywhere close to slow, even when dawdling about at around-town speeds. Some of that is due to its light-by-2024-standards curb weight of just 3,056 pounds, but much of it is due to the speed and ease with which this wundermotor revs. The flywheel is so light, you have to slam home your upshifts and blip your downshifts like no other new car on sale; it takes finesse and time to get used to it. (Porsche does offer an exceptional auto-blip function for the gearbox, and in all honesty, I left it on much of the time.) It doesn’t feel any quicker than the GT3, but the ease with which it revs makes it feel more fun as you rip through the cogs.

The adaptive PASM dampers are tuned uniquely tighten things up slightly versus the GT3 — it feels just a bit more grounded, you feel a dash more bumps — but it doesn’t change how capable the car feels. And to be frank, both damper modes feel great. On GT cars, Porsche tunes the sportier suspension setting for the track alone, they say, but here it’s meant to be more of a ”choose which way you like it” affair — a little stiffer or a little more relaxed, but capable either way.

The interior adds to the experience — not with flash, but with substance, although how much it changes things will depend on how you attack the substantial options list. Stick with the basic insides, and you’ll find a classic Porsche setup — black on black on black, with the barest pops of color. Check the Heritage Design Package box — a mere $20,670, but hey, you can’t take it with your — and you get expanses of brown semi-aniline leather in retro-inspired patterns on the seats and doors.

Still, even the standard guts have a few pieces of flair. Peer around, and you’ll spot special badges — a gold “911 S/T” badge on the passenger’s dash, a similar one in the center of the tachometer. Like the drive, the design rewards paying attention to detail.

The S/T has to be in the running for the best current-looking 911

Visually, 911s run the gamut from mild to wild — at least, as mild as a rear-engined sports car with the aerodynamics of a raindrop can be. The design can be dressed up or down as the need arises; a 911 Carrera coupe in Jet Black can slide almost unnoticed through city traffic, while a 911 GT3 RS in Speed Yellow can be seen from the ISS.

The 911 S/T, however, strikes what might be the ideal balance — at least, depending on spec. The body is based on the 911 GT3 Touring — which, in turn, is based on the regular 911 GT3, just with less wing and a body-colored front valence. The S/T’s biggest visual differentiator is the raked doors that make room for the air vents behind the front wheels; it’s a feature pulled from the GT3 RS, but while it goes almost unnoticed there due to the distraction of that model’s wings and aero madness, it’s much more apparent here.

After seeing the S/T in a few different different colors, I’d personally recommend popping for a color that brings a bit of panache. Sure, cognoscenti will recognize it no matter what (and every 911 looks good in silver), but a car as unique as this one deserves a paint that pops. I’m not sure the full Heritage Design Package with Decals exterior that makes it look like a 1960s racer is necessary, but at the very least, I’d pop for a nice rich Paint To Sample shade.

And, of course, there are special badges.

_{Clearly, Porsche has never heard that one quote from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.}

If you can’t get one, though … the 911 GT3 Touring is nearly as good

As usually happens with Porsche’s limited-edition 911s, the S/T is both rare and expensive. The starting price comes in at a shocking $293,350 and only climbs from there as you explore the options list. And with only 1,963 examples ever to land in owners’ hands, the odds of that price ever going down on the used market are basically zip.

Luckily, there’s a backup plan: the aforementioned 911 GT3 Touring.

2023 porsche 911 gt3 touring — It takes a sharp eye to tell the GT3 Touring seen from the S/T, especially if the GT3 Touring you drove happened to be the same color.

The Touring looks almost identical inside and out; its engine is still magic, revving to 9,000 rpm and spitting out 502 horses at 8,400; it comes with a six-speed stick; and it plugs you into the driving experience like those spinal cord USBs in The Matrix. It is one of the greatest sports cars money can buy — and it costs more than $100,000 less than the S/T.

The GT3 Touring is less magical than the S/T in the way that the second-best meal you’ve ever eaten is inferior to the best meal you’ve ever had: you’d never complain about the runner-up, you’re just glad you had it. It’s so involving, so responsive, so intoxicating and so well-rounded, you might just consider it the 911 of your dreams … at least, so long as you never drive the 911 S/T.