The 997 Porsche 911 Targa Is the Quirky 997 Nobody Remembers

This is a 2007 Porsche 911 tar 4S and is probably the strangest and most peculiar version of the Porsche 911 997 that was manufactured in the late 2000s. It may not look particularly strange or peculiar from your angle, but it is because it has a huge glass sunroof and because hardly anyone bought it, in fact many enthusiasts don't even know that Porsche made a tar version of the 997, but they did and today I'm going to review this one and show you all of its quirks and features before you get there. big news started, this 997 tar 4S is currently for sale and is being auctioned live on cars and bids.

This taret is a one owner car that was purchased new by the owner 17 years ago. It has a six-speed manual transmission with relatively few modifications. mileage and it's the wildly rare tar body style, so once you're done watching this video, click the link in the description below to visit the live auction for this 997 tar 4S where you can bid on it and buy it only on cars and bid at the right time. for the fast and characteristic features of the 997 911 tar, but before we get into the specific peculiarities of this car, a little history because the history of the taret is long and winding with some very strange and unusual turns, which is why the 997 came out Porsche 911. for the 2005 model year and the tar version with its giant opening glass sunroof, we'll get there, it returned for 2006, but the story of the 911 taret begins long before this car dates back to the 1960s and 1970, where El taret started so here's the basic deal at that time there was a lot of talk that the US government regulators were going to kill off the convertible, basically the idea was that convertibles are not safe if they are turned over , there is nothing to protect the people inside and they will be removed and frankly, by the standard of the 1960s, that was probably accurate, but convertibles were very popular back then, so the automakers They began thinking about ways they could create a similar convertible feel while also meeting regulatory challenges, such as a bar on the overhead vehicle. so that if it turned over it could support its weight and people would not die and thus the taret was born.

Now the original 911 Taret models came out around this time and they basically had a removable roof panel, a peel-off panel that could be removed. to provide the open-air experience of a convertible, but unlike a convertible, it was not a fully folding roof that reached all the way back for total open air because directly behind the drop-down panel was a bar that ran along the entire rear of the Por Usually the car behind had a fixed glass rear window, so in theory it was a kind of convertible, but it was not a true convertible, it gave you the best of both worlds, safety and open-air driving experience, and It wasn't just Porsche. who did this, several other car manufacturers also created tar versions or t-tops or peel-off panels whatever they called them, many different cars and car companies had similar vehicles around this time;

However, what happened next was a bit surprising, specifically after returning and Talking about it for many years, the US government did not ban convertibles despite the conjecture, the hype that perhaps they would have to go away , never really happened, so these Targets gradually overtook the cars that had come out in the '60s, '70s, and '80s. They began to leave the market once automakers realized the government was never going to crack down on convertibles. Ferrari, for example, had defects during the 70s and 80s, but abandoned them in the late 90s, disappeared completely and most other automakers followed suit, very few Target.

High-roof models made their way in the '90s and '00s, but Porsche kept the taret roof all this time and all these years, although they simultaneously offered a convertible that was much more popular, there were still buyers who wanted the tar and, hence, Porsche. I kept making them, but in the mid-90s there was a big change from the traditional TGO roof that came before, where you lifted it up and it was cumbersome and then you had to find a place to put it. In the mid-90s, they switched to an electric motor. giant glass sunroof on the 993 version of the 911, the 993 tar, that car got the glass sunroof, the huge one, and a new version of the taret was born, as you can imagine, it wasn't tremendously popular because, in the end, you could get a convertible and it provided an even more open driving experience or if you wanted a coupe you could get a coupe but Porsche continued to offer it even when sales slowed down and I have to say I worked at Porsche when the 997 Targo was on sale and at the end In the production of this car, we were lucky to sell 8 to 10 of them per month nationwide.

The Cayenne manual transmission was more popular than the late production 997 Target. They just weren't a popular vehicle and as a result, they are tremendously rare. One of the rarest versions. of the 997 Porsche 911 and the 996 and 993 that came before the target models are wildly rare and, frankly, it's a wonder they even continued to offer them, but they did. The real quirk of this car is obviously its glass roof and most enthusiasts, even hardcore Porsche enthusiasts, don't know how it works and have never seen it work, so let's go over the process right now. Here on the center console there is a switch, this switch moves back and forth and operates the top lens and it has two separate positions, so if you push the switch halfway back, just half a push, then the sun visor that is fixed in place over the front seat area that retracts back, the sunshade disappears and then you have a full glass canopy above you so you can enjoy the sun if you press the Targo's rocker switch all the way, then the glass panel begins to retract back and interestingly passes under the fixed glass panel at the rear and then creates an open-air driving experience over the front seat. compartment so you still have the same outdoor experience you had on previous Taret models from the 70s and 80s, but now it's all done electronically with the flip of a switch.

Interestingly, the sunshade works independently of the Targo's roof, so even when the Targo's roof is in its rear position, if for some reason you want the sunshade to be there, you can make that happen by simply pressing the switch on the other side. direction, half a push and the sunshade will open again, unfold and reveal itself as a sunshade. it blocks rear visibility back there, but you can do that or of course you can close it again so you have full glass and don't have to try to look through the sunshade while the glass top is back over the back seats now, next interesting thing of course is when you go to close the roof of your Targo and as you do so you press the switch in the center, in the other direction, you press it all the way and then the Targo roof closes automatically and you can see that slides back. in the same position where it was before creating a full roof on the car as expected and the target top is now closed and from there you can once again operate the sun visor;

It is half push back or forward to make the sunshade move. in any direction you want, if you want shade from the sun, you can do that or if you want it completely open, you also have that ability and that's the basic operation of the top lens, but now there's more, the more there is. al taret is back here this will really surprise Porsche 997 911 owners. They have this rear window at the rear of the car like all the 99 7 coupes and in the 997 Coupe this rear window is fixed in place which has sense because The storage compartment is in the front, this is just a rear window like in a sedan or any other coupe, but in the 997 tar things are a little different.

Take a look at the key and you will see that you have two buttons to open two compartments, one obviously the front trunk you push it and it opens, but the other there is an arrow pointing to the back of the car that does not open the engine compartment to the rear engine, instead you push it and open this glass panel back here, you can lift it up and open it and then you'll have access to a little storage compartment behind the rear seats. Now again this is not available on any other 997 Coupe model, it was just in the tar, a bit more practicality here if you wanted a bit more.

You could have space to store things, it turns the 997 into a hatchback and I think practically no one knows that it is like that, but with the tar it was like that and the same thing is sold on the driver's door, you have switches to open the front trunk. The rear engine compartment and rear glass of the taret-top hatchback now, interestingly, when you pull the switch to open the rear glass, there is a separate warning message for the rear glass in the gauge cluster display warning you that the tar hatch is open. Porsche had to come up with new buttons, new switches and even a new warning message just for the taret to make all this work, but they did it and it's actually quite a clever thing, this giant sunroof, the sunshade and some extra practicality, and there's one more really.

One cool taret touch we have to talk about before we continue and that would be this silver stripe that goes over the windows on the side of the car on the taret 997 911. Porsche only puts this silver stripe on a Target, so if you see a coupe 9997 and you can't see the situation of the sunroof maybe you see it from the side and you wonder is it a tar your question will be answered by the silver stripe if the car has the silver stripe then it is a taret yes Isn't it then a coupe? It was a very subtle way for Porsche enthusiasts to distinguish between the taret and a normal 911 Coupe from the side and now you know it too, after years of quite medoc ER sales figures, the taret being a unique and tremendously rare of the Porsche 911, everyone knows what happened next with the 911 Target for the next version of this car, the 991 911 Porsche completely changed the way the roof of the Targo works, they made it more like a traditional peel-off panel like in previous years and They gave the car an anti-roll bar that went along the sides like the targos of yesteryear, it was a kind of nostalgic game, it gave you more air opening because the roof rails did not stay in place like in this taret. and radically increased the appeal of the 911 taret once again these days the 911 taret is among the most desirable body styles of the newest

porsche

911.

There are long waiting lists. People really want to get a tar. It's considered really cool again, which is very funny because for so many years it languished and Porsche almost got rid of it completely before revamping it in 2013 and 2014 to bring it back in a more exciting way, but this car comes from the early days when almost no one had the Target and it's tremendously strange. and next we move on to the powertrains because the 997's powertrain situation was quite unusual. I say that because all 997 tar models were all wheel drive you couldn't get a two wheel drive tar, you just had a base model tar 4 or tar 4S.

Now I'm not entirely sure why they did this, but I suspect they thought that if you live somewhere that is always sunny and without bad weather, you will just buy a convertible, the goal is more for people from colder climates where they might need all wheel drive and then they get this quasi convertible and that's why they gave them all four wheel drive at least that's what I thought but they all did now this taret is a taret 4S model and like I told you I could get a basic taret or a 4S now the base car in 2007 had a 3.6 L Flat 6 with 320 horsepower and 275 lbet of torque if you upgraded to the powerful tar 4S the engine was upgraded to a 3.8 L Flat 6 and the power increased to 355 horses of force and torque jumps to about 295 lb-ft, so the 4S added more power, more torque and a larger engine as for interesting taret quirks and features Beyond its taret roof, I reviewed quite a few 997 911 models, so I won't go into all the interesting aspects, but I will go over the highlights starting with the fact that you can see the engine, which doesn't look like much, but is impossible on newer 911 models during the last 15 years or so.

You can't actually access the engine in a Porsche 91, but in the 997 era you still could, so here it is and next we move inside the 997 Target, where one of the first things you notice when you sit down isthat the center console is a veritable button fest with all sorts of different buttons and switches to control the infotainment system, climate control and various other things every time someone tells me they hate touch screens and want to go back to buttons physical. I think about this car. is what it would look like if you went back to physical buttons, it wouldn't be pretty and it wouldn't be easy, it's hard to determine exactly where the button you're trying to press is located because there are so many, many of them since it's not a touch screen and, in fact, that's another interesting and novel element here, the infotainment screen, it's an old school system, nothing that someone today would try to use the very old feeling navigation system, an old map.

It's funny to see that this was the pinnacle of technology 17 years ago, but in fact it was and considered quite cutting edge at the time, but not today, with that said on the subject of information and screens in this car . One thing I've always loved about the 997 and other Porsches of this era is that this little piece coming out of the steering column controls the readout in the center of the gauge cluster and allows you to scroll through and see several important parts of the car. information like, for example, the music you're listening to, your tire pressure, your distance to empty, your average fuel economy, you don't have to go to the center screen and find out where all those things are, You can just scroll through with this little stock and you find it right there on That screen in front of you is kind of an auxiliary screen that shows only the most important things and I think that's a great idea.

I love that feature, but let's go back to the center control for a second because there are two buttons on this center console that are especially important, one is this one that turns on the sport exhaust, which is a factory sport exhaust that this car was optioned with when It was new and sounds great. Listen, you'll notice another button here, right next to sport. exhaust that turns on your sports suspension, you press it and things get a little firmer, but it also improves your handling, makes you corner faster and of course, directly next to it you have the button that you have to press to go up or down the rear wing on a non-turbo 997, the rear wing was actually just a flap on top of the engine bay and raised automatically at certain speeds to increase its stability, but if you wanted to raise it manually yourself you could do so with Now , with the push of a button, the other thing I always loved about the 997s were the cool cup holders these cars have.

It's on the passenger side of the dash. You can see that there is a silver strip here that just looks like a decorative panel. but you push it, it pops down and then it reveals that there are cup holders hidden inside the dash right here now to pull out the cup holders you just push them in and the cup holder comes out pretty standard but the nice thing is that you can then close this trim panel so it doesn't I show you all the inner workings of the cup holder, so now you have the cup holder out so you can use it to put a drink in, but the dashboard still looks as good as before. and when you don't want the cup holder anymore, it goes back in so you don't have to look at those cup holders.

It's actually a pretty clever idea. Pretty clever engineering, although it may seem like excessive engineering now. Another thing worth noting here is that you can open the glove box and you'll notice these little strips on the top, these panels, those are CD slots, you would press the button on the side and then it would fall forward and out and you could store CDs in there, It wasn't a CD changer, it was just for storing CDs, so when you wanted to listen to your favorite CD, it was now there, in the glove box of your storage compartment, like in the back seats of this car, just like other models. 997 have rear seats and they are very small with very upright backrests, it would be tremendously uncomfortable and cramped to sit in these rear seats, but there are two of them with full seat belts in case you use them more likely. although you will want space for storage and here is a nice feature you can fold down the backrest the back of the backrest is carpeted and then you have a larger storage area back there now this is true on most 911 models you can fold it down .

Fold down the back of the rear seats for storage, but it's difficult to access in most 911 models because it's behind the front seats and hard to get to, but on target, with its hatchback rear glass, It's actually pretty easy to get to, so if you fold it up. In the back seats you have a surprisingly large amount of storage space where you can store things if you want to go on a road trip in your 997 taret which is also a 997 hatchback and of course there is more storage space in the front too . You can see that the front boot here has a pretty decent amount of space on its own, which adds to the practicality of this car.

This was undoubtedly the most practical variant of the 99 7 911. Well, driving the 997 tar 4S um, it always feels like that. It's good to be in a 9 997 911 because these cars are set up perfectly: the clutch, the shifter, the steering, the feel, the sound, the size, they are just wonderful and I love a new 911 and I love a 991, but the 997 is To me the 997 feels like the last feeling of the old school, the 911s, now people were saying that about the 993 and then they said the same thing about the 996 and now here I am talking about the 997, but a Once you know they got bigger, they got bigger. more luxury, they got more pdk, they got more expensive, you lost some of the appeal, some of the throwaway smallness and some of the mechanical feel of the previous cars, uh, and this one feels so mechanical and man, this transmission is so good that the clutch. on the shifter they are just perfect, absolutely perfect especially the shifter it just fits perfectly oh I love driving a stick 997 they are just wonderful now I say this after spending an hour this morning driving my pro GT, Uh, I woke up. at 5:00 a.m. m. in front of everyone and I took it out for a moment and that car also has perfect shifter clutch action, but this is similar and that's high praise for a car that costs, you know, 12th.

I, this it feels like that in terms. how well designed it is from a shifter and clutch point of view, and that's a huge compliment to the 997. Here's something interesting I worked on at Porsche when the 997 was on sale as a car new one I had. four different 997s as company cars. I've driven countless 997s in various situations, including some for video. I just made a video of the 997 Turbo about a year ago. I have never driven a Targo. Targos are so immensely rare that I have never driven them. one, in fact, you almost never see them, so when we had the opportunity to photograph this taret and run with the cars and the offers, I said yes please, especially considering that this car is a fantastic story, so it is a one-owner car and the woman who owns it.

He specced it as a new car in 2007 and has had it ever since and told me that he spent most of that time in a minivan driving his kids around, but that he had this in the garage for fun, you know, on the occasional occasions in the ones I couldn't drive a minivan and it's very rare to see any kind of taret, let alone know a nice unmodified one owner manual transmission and it's an S so it's just this if you're looking for a Tar this is it the one that oh the 997s drive so well and you know I've gotten myself into this trap where I think you need turbo to have a good time in a 997 but here I am in an S and man is it.

It's a good time, this car is fast, it's fun, it's small enough to throw around. I marked 997, so a nice car with relatively low mileage, not modified and not damaged, is one of the great Porsche experiences you can have, especially considering the price they sell for. Whether you get a base Carrera or anything up to a turbo, it's just one of the great Porsche experiences you can have, really the 997s are wonderfully tuned every time I drive one. I remember this car being so good to use, so wonderfully designed, and like I said, the new 911s are the same, but there was something about this era where the 911s felt more mechanical, they felt more accessible to drive fast, man, The steering is just perfect, it always is and always.

It's not as precise as in a modern sports car, a new one, but it's better than you'd expect and the handling is just fantastic. The car feels so stable and so flat. Cornering is so flat, very predictable, yet very little body roll. so that the ride doesn't hit you, which is, of course, another big part of the benefit. The ability to do it all so you know your card and still have one of the best sports cars of all time. It's just a swap of all the 911's they do very well and this is just a fantastic reminder that it's a wonderful car and a great reminder of how great a good 997 really is and that's the 997 Porsche 911 tar 4S like I said , many enthusiasts do not.

I even know that this body style exists, but it exists and you can buy this fantastic one on cars and sales, and now it's time to give this tar a Doug score and Doug's score is here, 61 out of 100, which puts to 997 Target 4S here against. In some similar cars, there's a lot to love about this Target 4S, as it has all the great qualities of a regular 997 Carrera S, such as excellent acceleration, fantastic handling and excellent shift and clutch action, plus the novelty of the unusual Targo roof and the added practicality of a The hatchback and all-wheel drive also help make this a surprisingly well-rounded Porsche for