Litchfield unleashes monster power from new Porsche 911 Carreras

THE PORSCHE 992 Carrera is a crushingly rapid car. Back in the August edition of Wheels we tested a Carrera 4S at 3.4 seconds to 100km/h and 11.6s down the quarter. That’s only a tenth down on a 991 GT3 at the end of the dragstrip, so it’s unlikely buyers will get out of one and feel that it’s a bit of a slug.

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Nevertheless, there exists a hard core of 911 owners who just want more of everything and Litchfield, a respected tuning house in the UK, has extracted a whole heap of power from the water-cooled 3.0-litre turbo lump. 427kW to be exact. That’s 17kW more than the new 992 GT3 is rumoured to get and only 20kW down on the forthcoming 992 Turbo.

The Toyota Supra makes a lot more than its published 250kW

The company claims to achieve that figure for both the Carrera and Carrera S models solely via ECU remapping. In other words the changes are completely reversible should you wish to partake and then return your Carrera to its base tune when the time comes to sell it on. A spanner never sees your car.

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Torque gets a leg up as well, increasing by a colossal 122Nm, bringing the grand total to 651Nm. The torque curve does change from the Carrera’s broad plateau to a more top-end oriented graph, which will delight those who loved the manic rush to the redline that they got from a GT3.

Better still is the fact that Litchfield charges just £1194 ($2163) for all this additional grunt. Buy a base 283kW Carrera for $229,500 and that translates to 51 percent more power for less than 1 percent extra. Sounds like a bargain to us. But can things really be that cut and dried? Perhaps not.

Developing the same power from both the Carrera and the Carrera S suggests that the former is effectively a crippleware version of the latter, its original power output artificially curbed in software. That’s not the case. The turbocharging hardware of the Carrera is different to the Carrera S, with smaller turbine and compressor wheels and a commensurately lower boost pressure.

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Litchfield admitted that they performed their development work on a Carrera 4S, so may well have to issue a revised figure for the base Carrera tune when they get that car into their workshop. Whichever model you opt for, the company is also looking to amp up the noise, courtesy of specially developed lightweight exhaust systems from Remus and Akrapovic.

We’ve contacted Litchfield to establish whether there is a facility to have this map installed locally. If you’re an Australian Porsche 992 owner, stay tuned.