Official: Next Porsche 911 GT3 To Come With Manual Gearbox, Naturally Aspirated Six

The next generation of the Porsche 911 GT3 will offer a six-speed manual gearbox, with the confirmation coming from the lips of Andreas Preuninger, Porsche’s head of GT models.

The next GT3 will be offered with the six-speed manual gearbox used in the 911 R as an option, Preuninger told British magazine Autocar. The hardcore version of the 911 will continue using a naturally aspirated engine “for the foreseeable future”.

He also said that the Cayman GT4 will have a successor and despite the introduction of the new turbocharged four-cylinder engines, it will still be powered by a six cylinder engine.

Porsche is also considering offering more ‘purist’ models in the future as regulars in the production run, if the 911 R has a reaction strong enough from the audience.

The idea behind the limited 911 R was born out of a manual development car made for the 991 GT3. This was created for comparison testing with a GT3 PDK prototype that was eventually chosen for production.

“We had a GT3 manual test car left and we all loved it,” said Preuninger. “The manual still had many positive sides. So we took the spoiler off the test car, added some lightweight stuff, some stripes and a classic interior. At this point, I took it to the chairman. He liked it, but we had no engineering capacity so only started work 13 months ago. That’s a short time, so I insisted on all the decision-making and a long, long leash from the board.”