Litchfield Porsche 911 Carrera T 2018 UK first drive

Faster, sharper and more exciting than the base-model Carrera it's derived from, the Porsche 911 Carrera T is one of the best new sports cars of 2018.

But like most cars, it has been designed and engineered to slot into a model hierarchy.

That means there is potential within the Carrera T that Porsche has consciously left untapped. At least, that’s the way Iain Litchfield, founder of performance car tuning specialist Litchfield Motors, views it.

His reimagining of the Carrera T isn’t a total reworking, but instead a fine-tuning exercise. Litchfield calls its OEM+. He’s quick to point out the Carrera T is already a very competent car, but he reckons he and his team have made it better still with some choice upgrades.

The Carrera T sits 20mm closer to the road than the standard Carrera, but Litchfield’s chassis upgrades drop it by that much again at the front, while the rear sits down by 10mm, on slightly stiffer springs all round. This gives the car a more purposeful, hunkered-down look when stationary and introduces a little more rake, which should enhance the car’s turn-in once on the move. The lowering springs are by KW and work alongside the Porsche Suspension Management switchable dampers.

Litchfield benchmarked a current 911 GT3 for steering feel, and so its upgrades for the Carrera T include revised front suspension geometry. A set of four wheel spacers help fill the out wheel arches and top off a subtle but well-considered set of revisions.

Litchfield’s engine upgrades aren’t quite so subtle. Actually, the upgrades amount only to new engine management software and a much freer-flowing exhaust system (with either an Akrapovič rear silencer or a Remus item), but the results are emphatic: power is up from 365bhp to 480bhp, while torque climbs from 332lb ft to 450lb ft.

With optional carbonfibre fixed-back sports seats, as fitted to this test car, the Carrera T feels a very different animal to the stock Carrera. The thinner rear glass, deleted rear seats, fabric door pulls and smaller, Alcantara-trimmed steering wheel help make it feel so much more purposeful than the entry-level model – to the point, in fact, that you’d swear you were sitting in a GT3.

Although the KW springs are stiffer by around 20% at the front and 10% at the rear, the car’s ride quality has been more or less unaffected, and the brilliantly judged damping that makes the factory-spec Carrera T work so well on our bumpy roads is carried over intact. Even on a really tricky section of B-road, the car’s suspension is pliant, absorbing bumps rather than being kicked about by them, while the body is so well tied down that you simply never feel it get light or out of phase with the wheels. It feels like witchcraft.