- I drove a $141,000 2020 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S and a $224,000 2020 Porsche 911 Turbo S, back-to-back.
- Both sports coupés sit at the top of their respective 911 ranges, in the eighth generation of a design that dates to the early 1960s.
- The Turbo S is the most powerful 911 in Porsche's history, while the 4S is a spectacularly stable performance machine.
- I preferred the 4S, but the Turbo S's magnificence is hard to question.
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The only other time I can remember having two Porsche 911s more or less back-to-back as review cars was a few years ago when I enjoyed a 911 Carrera S and then a Targa 4S, in somewhat quick succession.
But history repeated itself in 2020, when I sampled the new 992 iteration of both the Porsche 911 4S and the 911 Turbo S within weeks of each other.
Both versions of the eighth-generation 911 were commendable. If anything, the big takeaway was that, against the odds as always, Porsche has yet again improved upon a venerable design from the early 1960s that, from an objective engineering standpoint, is flawed; the rear-engine layout should yield such staggering performance. And yet.
However, I did prefer one 911 to the other. So here's a side-by-side comparison, highlighting similarities and differences:
Photos by Crystal Cox, unless indicated otherwise.