P-Car Talk Podcast

Thank Our People
Big shoutout to the crews putting in work this weekend. IMSA customer racing had JDC Miller taking 3rd overall, with GTD going to Manthey in 1st, Phorm and Wright's Motorsport rounding out 2nd. And over in Europe, the 24 Hours of Spa customer racing saw Lionspeed take the win in the GT3 R. Solid weekend across the board for the customer teams, and it's always worth pointing out how deep the talent pool is right now.
The 963 Is Coming Back
So we were wrong, and honestly we're happy about it. The 963 is confirmed for next year, which means Porsche is about to spend millions of dollars just to prove us wrong for talking trash. We'll take it. Still no Le Mans on the schedule though, which has us wondering out loud if the factory team is a little salty at the FIA and just decided to focus everything on IMSA instead. Pure speculation, but it's not a crazy theory given how things have played out.
GT4 Goes 911
The new series taking over for GT4 is running a 911 instead of a 718 Cayman, and honestly the reasoning writes itself. The obvious one: the 718 Cayman isn't in production anymore, so you can't exactly build a race series around a car that doesn't exist. The less obvious one: it's another built-in opportunity for Porsche to sell more race-spec 911s. Curious what you all think about losing the Cayman as the entry point car for this class.
Fake Paddle Shifters on the Taycan
In "who asked for this" news, the 2027 Taycan is getting fake gear shifts, simulated paddle shifting, as a $1,000 option. We're not going to pretend we have a strong take here beyond mild bewilderment. It's a sign of where EV performance cars are headed as manufacturers try to recreate some of the physical feedback people miss from ICE cars.
Leipzig Takes Over From Slovakia
Also filed under "who cares but let's talk about it anyway," Porsche is shifting production back to Leipzig from Slovakia. Got us wondering if Porsche will ever actually build cars stateside. Our gut says probably not anytime soon, given how tied their manufacturing identity is to Germany, but we'll argue both sides of that one on the show.
Get On the Fahren Waiting List
If you haven't put your name down for Fahren yet, now's the time. Rally season creeps up fast and car prep should already be in progress if it isn't. Some of the summer rallies have already come and gone, but the big fall events are right around the corner. Our lineup is a mix of air-cooled and water-cooled cars, so there's room for both camps. Don't sleep on this one, you'll miss your shot to drive with a group of genuinely like-minded people.
That's the show for this week. Head to pcartalk.com for event info, and if you want to support what we're doing, hit up Patreon.com/pcartalk. Find us at @pcartalk.
Kimchi Crew: Steve, Leslie, Chris, Ken, Aaron, Matthew, Sean, and Nik.

Thank You to Our CrewThank You to Our Crew Before we get into it this week, a big thank you to everyone who keeps this show going — the listeners, the community, and everyone flying the P-car flag out there. You know who you are. We appreciate you.
Another Rough Weekend for Porsche Motorsport There is no sugarcoating it — another race weekend, another result that hurts to watch. One car out with steering rack issues, the other limping home in 12th. For a factory program with the pedigree Porsche carries, this is not where anyone expected to be at this point in the season. The year opened with real promise, and now we are sitting here trying to figure out what went sideways. The thing that makes it sting more is context: this is the last year of the current factory effort, which means every result carries extra weight. Is this a program that ran out of steam at the end? Is the talent still there but the development cycle just dried up knowing the curtain is coming down? The crew has thoughts, and none of them are particularly optimistic. We are not here to pile on, but we are also not going to pretend a 12th and a DNF is anything other than what it is.
Porsche x Toy Story — Buzz Lightyear and the Clone Army Porsche teamed up with Toy Story for a charity livery and honestly, as a one-off it is kind of hard to hate. It is silly, it is colorful, it is for a good cause — fine. But here is where the fun starts. How long before the clout-chasing segment of the community starts dropping their own Buzz Lightyear wraps? Because you know it is coming. We are officially starting the counter. Every time one of these shows up on Instagram over the next few months, we want to know about it. Send them to us at @pcartalk, we will keep a running tally, and we will report back. Play along at home. The over/under on copycat liveries by end of year — place your bets now. To infinity and beyond, apparently.
The Big One: When Your 996 or 997 Engine Goes Boom — What Do You Actually Do? IMS failure. Bore scoring. If you own a 996 or 997, these are not hypotheticals — they are scenarios you have thought about, probably more than once. So let us say it actually happens. The engine is cooked, damage is too severe to rebuild sensibly, and you are staring at a bill. A proper factory-spec engine replacement is going to run you somewhere around $50,000 depending on who does the work and what parts are needed. That is a real number, and for a lot of people owning these cars, it reframes the entire ownership conversation. So what do you actually do? You have options, and none of them are comfortable. You pay the freight, source a replacement engine, and keep the car correct — which is the defensible move if you have a clean example and plan to keep it. You find a used engine and gamble on its history. Or you go a completely different direction. And this is where the conversation gets interesting, because people have gone different directions. LS swaps in 911s exist. K-swapped 996s with a turbo bolted on — we have seen it with our own eyes. It runs. It is fast. It is also deeply confusing to look at under the hood of a 911. The question is not just mechanical, it is philosophical. A 911 is defined by the engine in the back. That flat-six, that specific architecture, is what makes the car what it is. When you pull it and replace it with something that was never meant to be there, are you still driving a 911 or are you driving something else that happens to have a 911 body? There is no wrong answer here, especially when the alternative is a $50K repair on a car that might be worth $40K. But the crew has opinions, and this one goes long. Where would you go, and why?
Outro That is a wrap on this one. Thanks for riding along. Find us at pcartalk.com for events and everything P-car, support the show at Patreon.com/pcartalk, and hit us on Instagram at @pcartalk.
Kimchi Crew: Steve, Leslie, Chris, Ken, Aaron, Sean, and Nik.

Thank You to the Kimchi Crew
Before we get into it, a genuine thank you to everyone who listens, supports the show, and keeps this community alive. You know who you are. We do this because we love it, and you make it worth doing. Now let's get into it.
Detroit IMSA: BOP'd Into Irrelevance
The Porsche GT3R at Detroit was so heavily Balance of Performance'd that it was barely a factor, and the prototype entries qualified so far back in such a short enduro format that catching up was a near-impossible ask before the green flag even dropped. But let's be honest with ourselves here: IMSA was on GM's side from the jump. The race is in Detroit, GM's backyard, and anyone paying attention could feel the gravitational pull toward keeping the home team looking good. This isn't new. The frustration with series organizers placating to manufacturers based on geography or politics is real, and it's a recurring stain on what should be a pure competition. When the racing result feels predetermined by the city it's held in, that's a problem worth calling out.
The 911 Market Is Not Coming Back Down
We touched the surface of this last episode when we talked about Mezger-engine GT3s drying up and the 993 price surge, but it's time to go deeper because the numbers are getting genuinely hard to rationalize. 997 Carrera S's: a green manual with 35k miles is asking $108k. Midnight blue, 55k miles, manual, asking $90k. For a Carrera S. Let that sit. 996 Turbos, which we've covered before, are now seeing 95k-mile manual cars asking $90k. The market logic here is that against the backdrop of new Porsche prices, these feel like deals to people entering the hobby. And look, we get it, but that doesn't make the numbers any less wild.
The broader picture is this: if you are chasing a manual 911 of any generation, any configuration, the era of stumbling into a good deal is over. Base 991.1s with 50 to 80k miles are moving at $65k to $80k. Base Carrera, not an S, not a GTS. And before anyone says you can still find a reasonable 996 base 911 for $35k to $40k with 90k miles -- we'd push back hard on that. That is not a bargain. That is a lot of money for a car that will demand attention and investment. The "affordable 911" narrative needs to be retired.
Here's the thing we want to be transparent about: there is zero financial incentive for us to tell you to go buy a car. We don't get a cut. But if you want a manual 911 and you're sitting on the fence, today is genuinely the better bet than tomorrow, because every data point we're seeing says the floor keeps rising regardless of generation. This is not a bubble in the traditional sense. These are driver's cars with a finite supply of desirable manual configurations in a world that stopped producing them. Why do you think this keeps going up? We'd love to hear from the community on that.
What makes this genuinely upsetting, not just analytically frustrating, is that the price appreciation is pricing out exactly the people who should be owning these cars. The passionate ones. The ones who would drive them, maintain them right, and actually care. Instead they end up with people for whom it's a flex or a garage sculpture. That's a gut punch for anyone who's been in this community long enough to remember when that wasn't the case.
JC9 Carrera GT: A Solution Looking for a Problem
The JC9 is essentially a reimagined Carrera GT body with visual cues borrowed from the 917. On paper that sounds compelling, but sitting with it longer brings up some real questions. The Carrera GT doesn't need to be fixed. It is one of the most celebrated analog driver's cars ever made. Slapping a new body on the concept and marketing it to ultra-wealthy buyers who want something exclusive feels like the automotive equivalent of a solution looking for a problem. KISS. Keep it simple. The military drilled that into some of us for good reason, and it applies here. The original formula was right. The more the car world chases bespoke reinventions of icons for nine-figure clientele, the further it drifts from what made those icons matter in the first place. Thoughts on this one? We have mixed feelings and we're not hiding it.
Indecent 911 Hatchback Wagon: Cool Idea or Vaporware?
The renders coming out of Indecent for a custom 911 hatchback/wagon are genuinely striking. They look cool. Full stop. But the question that always follows something like this is whether this is another "put your money where your mouth is" moment, where the concept gets traction on the internet and then quietly disappears when build deposits don't materialize. The 911 community has seen this cycle before. People love the idea of something unconventional until they have to actually commit to it. Is there a real market for a coachbuilt 911 wagon? Maybe. Is the execution going to live up to renders that were made to generate buzz? That's always the harder question. What do you think -- cool and you'd want one, or a stunt?
Outro
That's a wrap on this one. Catch us at pcartalk.com for upcoming events, support the show over at Patreon.com/pcartalk, and find us on social at @pcartalk. As always -- Kimchi Crew: Steve, Leslie, Chris, Ken, Aaron, Matthew, Sean, and Nik.

Ruckus Debrief
Ruckus is in the rearview and the roads delivered. Cold weather, beautiful scenery, and rock chips that serve as a reminder you actually drove the thing. This is what it's for. No complaints from anyone in the crew — the kind of event you start planning to return to before you've even unpacked.
The Headlines: Porsche Jobs, Nurburgring, and Luft Atlanta
Porsche is cutting 500 jobs tied to ongoing revenue pressure and nobody here is happy about it. We never like to see people lose their jobs — full stop. On the racing side, the 24 Hours of the Nurburgring is right around the corner, which means a lot of sleepless nights ahead for the right reasons. And for the enthusiast crowd, Luft is headed to Atlanta this October. Last year it was North Carolina, so the southeast is getting some real love on the calendar right now.
Vanthoor to McLaren — And What Porsche Isn't Saying
Laurens Vanthoor is joining McLaren's hypercar program on loan from Porsche for 2027. No official announcement about what this means for Porsche's factory team presence, but the crew has seen this movie before. When Porsche starts farming out factory drivers and running every livery they can on the factory car, it's usually a preview of an exit — the same pattern played out before they stepped back from the RSR program. Nothing confirmed, but the read here is that Porsche is pulling back from that factory hypercar effort whether they've said so or not.
997 GT3s Are Gone — And the Price Is Whatever the Seller Wants
The 997 GT3 market has reached a point that only a handful of models ever hit: the cars aren't listed because the owners aren't selling. When they do transact, it's a phone call, not a listing. Word of mouth, private deals, specialty dealers with one car every few months. A 997.1 GT3 with a minor Carfax note and 60,000 miles is moving at $175,000, and the crew doesn't think that's anywhere near the ceiling. The reason this happens isn't complicated — as more people enter the Porsche world and chase a real driving experience, demand for the cars that actually deliver it concentrates. Supply doesn't move. Price does. The only honest answer a seller can give a buyer right now is: find me another one.
Thank you for the support — it genuinely means everything.
Follow us at pcartalk.com for events, Patreon.com/pcartalk for the P-car Club, and @pcartalk everywhere else.
Kimchi Crew: Steve, Leslie, Chris, Ken, Aaron, Matthew, Sean, and Nik.

The GT3 S/C
Hot off the press, literally revealed yesterday, Porsche unveiled the 911 GT3 S/C, and we had a lot to say. Let's start with what it actually is, because the name does some heavy lifting. S/C stands for Sport Cabriolet, though Porsche being Porsche, they let you sit with that for a second before confirming it. The badge itself is a callback to the 911 SC from the late 1970s, where SC meant Super Carrera, a car that basically defined what the usable everyday 911 looked like before the GT program existed. Using it here is either a brilliant wink at the obsessives in the room or the kind of marketing move that makes you think someone in Zuffenhausen has been deep on Rennlist. Either way, it works.
So what did they actually build? Porsche took the lightweight bones of the 911 S/T and dropped in the naturally aspirated 4.0 liter flat six from the GT3. 510 horsepower, 9,000 rpm. And the result is the first ever open top GT3 in production history. Not a limited run. Not 1,948 units. You can actually order one, which is either the most exciting or most controversial sentence in this episode depending on who you ask.
The Weight Question
This is where the internet was ready to roast Porsche, and they came prepared. The GT3 S/C weighs 1,497 kilograms. That is just 18 kilos more than the standard GT3 coupe and about 30 kilos more than the 991 generation Speedster. For a convertible that number is almost offensive in how good it is. Carbon fiber on the hood, fenders, doors, and rear anti roll bar. Magnesium wheels standard. Carbon ceramics. They even swapped the battery to a lithium ion unit to kill another four kilos. At some point it stops being engineering and starts being a personality disorder, but we respect it.
The Roof
Here is the thing that split the room a little. This is the first GT3 with a fully automated power top. Twelve seconds. Electric. Works at up to 37 miles per hour. The purists who are already composing their forum posts about how the Speedster had a manual tonneau cover and that was the whole point, we hear you. But if you have ever been caught in a South Florida rain shower at a Cars and Coffee in your suede seat 911, you understand why this exists. Porsche also threw in a heated rigid glass rear window and an integrated electric wind deflector. This is not a race car you bought to trailer. It is a road car they actually want you to live with.
Manual Only. No Debate.
No PDK option. Not available. The GT3 S/C comes exclusively with the short ratio six speed manual and that is the entire spec sheet on transmission. At $273,000, Porsche is making a pretty clear statement about who this car is for. The chassis is tuned closer to the GT3 Touring than the full winged GT3, which makes sense because you are not taking this to a track day, you are on a mountain road with the roof down and the flat six screaming toward nine thousand rpm with nothing between you and that sound. That is the pitch. That is the whole pitch, and it is a genuinely good one.
What It Actually Means
The S/C picks up the spiritual thread the Speedster left, but Porsche is clear it is not a direct successor. The Speedster was a numbered tribute. This is a catalog car, which is either democratizing access to the GT3 experience or softening what made the Speedster special. We landed somewhere in the middle on that one. What is not debatable is that the cylinder heads are revised from the previous generation GT3 and the camshafts are the sharper units from the GT3 RS, so the engine is genuinely better. You get more top end character. You get it with the sky above you. At this price, with this spec, Porsche is not asking you to compromise. They are asking you to decide what kind of driver you are.
Outro
That is the GT3 S/C. Drop your thoughts in the comments, are you buying it, are you waiting for the inevitable RS version, or are you holding out for something that says Mezger on the cam covers. Find us at pcartalk.com for events, support the show at Patreon.com/pcartalk, and follow along at @pcartalk. Big love to the Kimchi Crew, Steve, Leslie, Chris, Ken, Aaron, Matthew, Sean, and Nik. We will see you next week.