2025 Porsche Taycan Turbo GT Goes to Extremes

For Porsche, the Taycan Turbo GT’s 1092 horsepower was just the starting point in the quest for EV supremacy. The four-door sedan ditches its rear seat, swapping in a carbon-fiber storage bin (saving 49 pounds); it removes the driver’s-side charge-port door and associated wiring to save weight, even at the expense of an entirely new fender stamping. It also uses thinner windshield glass, ditches the rear speakers, and tosses the floor mats. We can’t help but respect Porsche’s all-in commitment on its new top dog in the Taycan lineup.

Granted, the most extreme measures come only if you select the Weissach package, which, in addition to the weight-saving measures, brings a large, fixed wing in the back along with front and rear splitters and underbody changes that help create to 175 pounds of front and 310 pounds of rear downforce. Weissach-package cars also get gummy Pirelli P Zero Trofeo RS Elect track-oriented tires as standard, whereas they’re optional on the more feature-laden standard Turbo GT. All Turbo GTs have forged 21-inch wheels. We drove Europe-spec cars, which also get fixed-back carbon-fiber buckets, but those don’t meet U.S. unbelted-occupant crash requirements (absurd U.S. regulations strike again). Overall, the Turbo GT with Weissach is a claimed 165 pounds lighter than a regular Turbo GT and 157 pounds lighter than a Turbo S.

Transformative Tires

Here’s your regular reminder that tires make all the difference, and at our drive on the 2.4-mile Monteblanco circuit outside Seville, Spain, the Trofeo RS Elects completely transform the Turbo GT. There’s so much more front grip than with the standard Pirelli P Zero R rubber, which is to be expected, but the tires also totally change the balance of the car. With the P Zero Rs, we were a little underwhelmed by the tame, mild-understeer balance at the limit. But the Trofeo RSs—which have many Taycan-specific differences in the angles of the belts and plies, according to Pirelli, as well as the compound versus the off-the-shelf version or the ones fitted to the Ford Mustang Dark Horse—work the rear end much harder. It’s also far easier to get the rear end to waggle, but it still doesn’t bite. Even in Sport Plus mode, the steering effort is relatively light, but the pavement texture flows far more freely to one’s fingers than in most EVs. The active dampers that are also available across the rest of the updated 2025 Taycan lineup, called Porsche Active Ride, are standard on the Turbo GT. Even at racetrack speeds, they make for oh-so-flat cornering and the ability to more completely leverage the tires’ grip. We found the brake pedal to have a slight dead zone at the top of its travel, but then the large fixed calipers and carbon-ceramic rotors—Porsche trimmed almost five pounds from the brake hardware as well—shed speed of the roughly 4950-pound Taycan seriously quickly.

Peak Power

The Turbo GT retains a two-motor powertrain, but a 900-amp rear inverter, what converts the battery’s DC energy to AC for the rear motor, replaces a 600-amp unit from the Taycan Turbo S and is the key element in the massive power boost. The higher-flow inverter eats into some trunk space, not that buyers of a two-seat sedan will likely mind. Peak output can briefly kiss 1092 horsepower (for two seconds), with 1019 horses available for 10-second bursts; the Turbo S has a 938-hp peak.

Adding some grams to the Turbo GT are steering-wheel-mounted paddles that are unique in the Taycan lineup. These were the idea of development driver Lars Kern, making it easier to actuate the boost mode than using the button at the center of the mode-control knob, which is how it’s done on lesser Taycans. The button remains, but the right paddle is easier to grab when doing serious wheel work, and Kern did so nine times during the Laguna Seca lap and 20 during the ‘Ring lap to add a 160-hp hit for 10 seconds at a time. Porsche didn’t want to do a mono paddle like GM has done on its EVs to control additional regenerative braking, so the left paddle switches between the Taycan’s two regen settings.

Every other Weissach package that Porsche has offered—which until now has only been available on sports cars such as the 911 GT2 and GT3 RS, the Cayman GT4 RS, and the 918 Spyder—has cost serious money, typically $15,000 to $30,000. But on the $231,995 Taycan Turbo GT, it’s a no-cost option. This perhaps says a lot about how many Taycan buyers the company believes are clamoring for such a hardcore electric sedan.

Track Times

But the big question, ostensibly the Turbo GT’s reason for being, is whether it’s quicker than the 1020-hp Tesla Model S Plaid and the 1234-hp Lucid Air Sapphire. Straight-line acceleration is too close to call, with Porsche’s acceleration claims putting the Turbo GT right on top of or fractionally ahead of what we’ve measured from the other two. Porsche has already set records for production EVs at Laguna Seca and the Nürburgring, in both cases one-upping the Model S Plaid. At the ‘Ring, the Turbo GT went nearly 18 seconds quicker than the Tesla and an insane 26 seconds quicker than the previous Taycan Turbo S. That’s a monumental improvement, but there was some low-hanging fruit. Development driver Kern, the wheelman for both of those records, says the Turbo GT’s higher top speed—180 mph or, with the Weissach package, 190 mph—alone was worth three to four seconds through the fastest sections, where the Turbo S previously maxed out at its 161-mph limiter. Kern reckons that the Trofeo RS tires are worth roughly 1.5 to two seconds at Laguna Seca and about six seconds at the Nürburgring. The engineering necessity was for the car to be able to give its all for an entire lap of the ‘Ring. Kern recalls that during the record-setting lap, the battery temperature started at 57 degrees and rose to 144 degrees, just shy of the 149-degree give point.

At our last Lightning Lap outing, the Lucid Air Sapphire decisively set a new EV record, going nearly 11 seconds quicker than a 2020 Taycan Turbo S. But the Turbo GT, with acceleration equal to the Sapphire’s, far more extreme tires, and about 350 pounds less weight, should have more than a fighting chance at taking back that mantle. We can’t wait to find out if it does.