Oh boy, here we go again. It appears that Porsche has finally retreated to the will of its purist fans and will bring back the three pedals for the next 911 GT3.
As it turns out, it wasn’t just mean commenters that bitched about Porsche’s decision to offer the latest GT3 derivative of the 911 only with the seven-speed double-clutch automatic gearbox. Important Porsche clients criticized them too as they felt that the relationship between man and machine had taken a blow for the sake of performance.
“The GT3 is full of systems that make sense on the track, but for the purist, there may be something lost,” Andreas Preuninger, head of Porsche’s GT program, told Car&Driver. In order to make things right for them, Porsche is developing the back-to-basics 911 R, which uses the GT3 engine paired to a traditional manual transmission, but that’s just the beginning.
Porsche doesn’t want to repeat the same mistake and therefore plans to offer the next generation of the GT3 with a choice of two transmissions, a seven-speed PDK and a good old-fashioned manual, thought it won’t be the seven-speeder used in the base Carrera models.
“It is our long-term goal to have the customer decide between the two approaches,” said Preuninger. SO, 911 purists, rejoice: your prayers have been answered.
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