Porsche 911 Targa 4S first drive in the UK

Should you be in any doubt about the eye-catching appeal of Porsche’s powerful new Targa 4S, how about this.

With the electrically-operated Targa roof open in the glorious sunshine, I was sitting quietly at the wheel of the £130,000 sports car in front of the German firm’s UK headquarters on the outskirts of Reading, adjusting the seat and driving settings, before heading off for a first fun-filled test-drive on UK roads.

Then, out of the corner of my eye I saw a sporty estate car whizz past in the distance before pulling up sharply. The vaguely familiar, casually-dressed driver looked over, waved, got out, and trotted across the tarmac to where I was parked up.

Was it a car photographer I’d worked with?

As he drew closer in his blue t-shirt and jeans the penny finally dropped: it was singer-songwriter and car aficionado Jay Kay from Jamiroquai who’d spotted the new Porsche – on German plates and ahead of first UK deliveries this August –  and admitted he just couldn’t resist coming over for a closer look.

In another era, before the coronavirus pandemic, I’d have invited him in for a drive. 

With his vast experience of performance cars, I might even have got him to write this review for me. 

Sadly, with strict social distancing measures in place and the fact that Porsche had gone to great lengths to ‘sanitise’ my car down to its switches and sealed plipper key, it wasn’t to be. 

But we had a good – two-meter socially distanced – chat. 

He’d been dropping off one of his own cars for a service and, even though he admitted he was slimming down his own vast car collection to remove some of the ‘shrapnel’, he was so taken with the Targa he took a few pictures on his phone, with me behind the wheel. Talk about role reversal.

So what a fantastic scene-setter for my own test drive around the highways and byways of Berkshire including skirting the beautiful Ridgeway and its tremendous views.

Porsche’s long-term attitude with the 911 is ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t’ fix it’ – just keep refining it to within an inch or centimetre of its life. 

And this is this case with the new 911 Targa 4s, the eighth generation of the Targa niche since its inception 1965. It joins its 911 Coupé and Cabriolet siblings to form a tantalising Porsche trio.

Immediate impression for a first drive on Britain’s potholed roads is that the suspension felt quite hard at low speed but that’s easily tweaked by adjusting the damper settings to suit – or simply putting your foot down a bit. Sorted. It springs into life.

Once in the swing, around the twisting county lanes of Berkshire it proved a delight, gripping the road like a limpet and proving exceptionally engaging. 

With the Targa top open it’s great to get the delightful wind-in the hair sensation.

True, it’s a half-way house between a full-metal coupe and a fully top-down cabriolet. But you get the best – not the worst – of both worlds. 

In the glorious sunshine I drove mainly top-down, though with the top up it is wonderfully cocooning with a surprising amount of headroom.

Playing around with the settings, I toggled between normal, ‘Sport’ and, when feeling particularly adventurous, ‘Sport-plus’ and felt the sinews tighten considerably. 

In the latter two modes the exhaust sound increase to a throaty rumble, and the blips and blisters when gears drop down are deeply satisfying.

It burbled quietly through small villages and towns, but was let off the leash on long-legged country roads with beautiful vistas. On a long straight stretch the acceleration is exhilarating – until you just run out of road.

All that oomph from the Targa 4S comes courtesy of a powerfully lean rear-mounted 3.0-litre flat-six engine uprated to 450 horsepower  – an increase of 30PS on its predecessor.

That allows the car to accelerate from rest to 62mph in just 3.6 seconds with the Sport Chrono package (as fitted to my car) or in 3.8 seconds without. 

That’s our tenths faster than the car it replaces – up to a top speed of 189mph, which you’ll only get near – and keep your licence – on a test track or de-restricted German Autobahn. 

The willing engine is linked to a slick eight-speed dual-clutch transmission- a ‘Doppelkupplung’ for those interested in the original German – which is very perceptive with its changes, though you can switch to paddles on the wheel for greater hands-on engagement. 

An intelligent all-wheel drive traction management is standard and helps boost grip, and keep drivers out of trouble.

The 911 Targa 4S can also be ordered with the new seven-speed manual gearbox – with which the Sport Chrono package is combined – as a no-cost option.

All that hard driving is thirsty work – for the car – so the official average fuel economy 26.2mpg may not reflect more spirited driving styles. CO2 emissions are 245g/km. Both are based on the new ‘real world’ WLTP measure. 

Styling-wise, it is evolutionary and certainly not revolutionary. 

The nose features more pronounced front wheel arches with rounded LED headlights while the bonnet has a recess to evoke the design of the earliest 911 generations. Apart from the front and rear sections, the entire outer skin is aluminium.

But it’s a comfortably sporty and supportive cockpit in which to sit while munching up the miles. 

The interior echoes the 911 Carrera models with a clear, straight-lined dashboard and recessed instruments, said by Porsche to be inspired by models from the 1970s. 

Thankfully it was not inspired by other less successful design icons of that era – such as flared trousers, tank-tops, kipper-ties and wedge-heeled shoes.

In line with that evolutionary philosophy, the new 911 Targa borrows styling cues that hark back to the original 1965 Targa with its removable roof section above the front seats when it was billed as a ‘safety cabriolet’.

At its heart is the innovative roof system that helps combine a sleek coupe-like appearance and wraparound rear window with the delightful wind-in the hair indulgence of open-topped motoring.

But whereas the original Targa top required some manual dexterity to remove and store the central roof section, the new car does it all automatically and electrically at the touch of a button and in just 19 seconds.

It’s a delight to watch the ballet-like choreography as the fully-automatic system stows the roof top behind the rear seats.

But you have to leave a bit of extra space behind the car to avoid dinging other vehicles, fences or walls in the process.

The thick protective Targa sides create a bit of a visual blind spot when looking out to the side at trick junctions, though the blind-spot warning does help compensate for that.

My 4S model was fitted as standard with 20-inch front wheels and 21-inch rears, while its 350mm brake discs had red-painted brake calipers (six pistons at the front and four at the rear). Ceramic brakes are an option.

It also came with a wide variety of electric stability controls with more acronym initials than you can wave a stick at –even when translated from the German to the English.

As a trump card, Targa models are also equipped as standard with ‘Porsche Wet mode’ which because of the baking hot dry weather I had no chance to sample. 

The car-maker explains: ‘Sensors fitted in the front wheel housings are capable of detecting water on the road surface and, if significant volumes of water are picked up, a signal in the cockpit provides a recommendation for the driver to manually switch to Wet mode. 

‘The vehicle drive systems are then adapted to the conditions to guarantee maximum driving stability.’

For the first time the new car is also fitted with Porsche ‘InnoDrive’ which includes adaptive cruise control.

An enhanced Smartlift function enables ground clearance to be programmed so the front ride height can be raised.

In the UK Porsche is offering customers a chance to test their new car’s potential and develop their own driving skills around a track at the Porsche Experience Centre at Silverstone. I should take it because there’s a limit to what you can do on the road – and keep your licence – in this car.

Starting price for the car I drove is £109,725 but mine was packed with nearly £20,000 of ‘extras’ which bumped the final price up by the cost of a decent new family hatchback to £129,172.

These additional add-ons included the Sport Chrono Package (£1,683), rear-axle steering (£1,592), adaptive sports-seats plus with 18-way memory (£2,315), carbon matt interior (£1,263), tinted lED main headlights with matric (£2,487), a sports exhaust system with black tail-pipes (£1,844), a heated leather GT sports steering wheel (£383) black high-gloss wheels (£842) and Carrera White Metallic paint (£876).

A drop in the ocean for super-rich cool-cats like Jay Kay, but certainly not Virtual Insanity. Take one for a spin and let me know what you think. I’ve already primed Porsche.

*The road test was carried out in compliance with corona-virus safety and self-distancing measures instituted by Porsche GB