Porsche 911 Turbo S

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Porsche’s 2026 911 Turbo S is a ballistic, twin-turbo, 701-horsepower monster

Other upgrades

To handle the 61 hp (45.5 kW) of additional power over the outgoing car, the new Turbo S features 10 mm wider tires at the rear—sticky Pirelli P Zero Rs to be exact. Porsche also outfitted a new form of active suspension to the Turbo S, which uses one of the pumps from the Panamera’s trick new Active Ride suspension to drive actuators at each of the car’s four corners.

By raising or lowering pressure, the 911 Turbo S effectively varies the stiffness of its anti-rollbars, resulting in a cushier ride for daily driving and a more aggressive one in Sport or Sport Plus. The feeling of the Turbo S is never exactly plush—those low-profile tires aren’t ideal for that—but neither is it harsh. I felt quite comfortable cruising over the broken Malagan asphalt, making this an ideal daily driver.

I didn’t even mind the soft-top convertible in the Cabriolet, which raises and lowers quickly and, even at highway speed, doesn’t add much road noise to the equation. Still, if I were buying, I’d go coupe instead of Cabriolet, if only for the extra headroom and cleaner styling.

I won’t be buying, though, because I can’t afford one. The 2026 Porsche 911 Turbo S starts at $270,300 for the coupe or $284,300 for the soft-top Cabriolet, plus a $2,350 destination fee. That’s for a reasonably well-equipped car, including the new active suspension and carbon-ceramic brakes, but start digging into the options catalogue or ponder the expanded palette in Porsche’s Paint to Sample lines, and you’ll quickly find yourself on the painful side of $300,000. That’s a mighty amount of money for a 911, a whopping $40,000 MSRP increase over last year’s model, but given the wild level of engineering required to deliver this much power and responsiveness, it doesn’t feel completely out of line.

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Porsche’s insanely clever hybrid engine comes to the 911 Turbo S

Today, Porsche debuted a new 911 variant at the IAA Mobility show in Munich, Germany. It’s the most powerful 911 to date, excluding some limited-run models, and may well be the quickest to 60 mph from a standing start, dispatching that dash in just 2.4 seconds. And it’s all thanks to one of the most interesting hybrid powertrains on sale today.

Rather than just bolting an electric motor to an existing 911, Porsche designed an entirely new 3.6 L flat-six engine, taking the opportunity to ditch the belt drive and move some of the ancillaries, which can instead be powered by the car’s 400 V traction battery.

The system debuted in the 911 GTS T-Hybrid, which Ars recently reviewed. For that car, Porsche added a single electric turbocharger, which works like the MGU-H in a Formula 1 car. It spins up almost instantly to 120,000 rpm to eliminate throttle lag, but also recaptures excess energy from the spinning turbine and sends that to the 1.9 kWh battery pack.

The result is a turbocharged engine that has a remarkable throttle response that’s more like an EV, with no perceptible lag between initial tip-in and power being delivered to the wheels.

For the 2026 911 Turbo S, there are a pair of these electric turbochargers. And like the GTS, you’ll find a 53 hp (40 kW), 110 lb-ft (150 Nm) permanent synchronous motor inside the eight-speed dual clutch transmission. Total output is a heady 701 hp (523 kW) and 590 lb-ft (800 Nm), which is sufficient to cut the 0–60 mph (0–98 km/h) time to 2.4 seconds. 124 mph (200 km/h) takes just 8.4 seconds, half a second less than the 2025 Turbo S.

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