Porsche 911 Targa: the tiara of the range

Some cars demand attention. The Targa simply removes her hat, slowly, and waits for the room to notice.

An audience in grey

The court met her at a Porsche showroom in Sydney, dressed in grey, and grey has never behaved less quietly. Under the showroom lights that signature Targa hoop ran a bright band across her shoulders like a tiara handed down since the sixties, and the half-cabriolet roof above it promised theatre before anyone had touched a thing. We are, allegedly, professionals. It did not help.

The theatre of the roof

Ask nicely and she performs one of motoring's great party pieces. The glass rear canopy bows backward, the roof panel folds itself away like a butler clearing the table, and the whole ceremony ends with the hoop standing proud against the sky. It is half cabriolet, all occasion, and it turns the school run, the harbour run and the midnight fuel run into three separate galas. The hoop is not merely decoration either; it is the structural brooch that lets her be open-topped and unmistakably 911 at the same time. In a city that serves harbour sunsets for free, a roof like this is less an option than a civic duty.

Beneath the drama sits the honest 911 truth: a flat-six singing away behind you, all-wheel drive keeping her manners impeccable in any weather, and a cabin you could commute in daily without a single complaint. This has always been the 911 for those who want the sunshine without surrendering the silhouette, and the 992 stages the whole production with more polish than ever. Yes, she costs serious money. She also looks like considerably more, which in this court counts as arithmetic in your favour.

Four crowns, one on retainer

So, to the crowns. She takes four, and the court wishes it minuted that the hoop earned one of them entirely on its own, a piece of jewellery that happens to hold up a roof. The fifth is not refused, merely on retainer with the GT department: the day the racing wing turns its gaze upon a Targa, the court will convene at dawn with the velvet box already open. Until then, four crowns, worn at exactly the angle a tiara should be. Would we take the coupe instead? On a rainy Tuesday, possibly. Then the sun comes out and the argument folds itself away with the roof.

Come as you are, Your Majesty. Leave with the roof down.