Look, most of us are going to be pretty happy with Porsche’s twin-clutch PDK. Smooth in traffic after a long day in the office, but lightning fast up and down the cogs in manual mode on a nice road come the weekend, it does offer the best of both worlds. And yet, there’s still something undeniably special about having a pedal for the clutch and a lever to choose your own ratio.

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Porsche, of course, still offers manual in many of its sports cars and in the newly turbocharged 911 Carrera it’s a happier marriage than with the old atmo flat-six. See, the tall gears – third is good for 50km/h all the way to 180km/h – made it hard to properly exploit all the previous engine’s performance (and noise) stashed at the top of the tacho.

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But otherwise everything else about this manual sports car is pretty bang-on: a nice shift knob, a near-perfect driving position, a delightful-to-use clutch, and a nicely-judged shift through the gates.

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