TechArt’s Porsche 911 Carrera T Has A Thousand-Year-Old Gearknob

One of our favourite details in the new manual-only Porsche 911 Carrera T is its gearknob, beautifully made from walnut wood in a nod to Porsches of years gone by, like the Carrera GT and 917 racer.

Now, though, German tuner TechArt has done its thing with the Carrera T, and taken the whole wooden knob thing to perhaps its logical conclusion. The shifter’s not made from wood taken from a poxy living tree, but one that fell into a bog over a thousand years ago, and was preserved by all the general… bogginess.

TechArt hasn’t just slapped a bit of very old tree in the Carrera T and called it a day, though. It’s part of a whole upgrade package it calls the Tsport R, available in four different levels of equipment.

No matter which level you plump for, the 3.0-litre twin-turbo flat-six is tickled to the tune of 498bhp and 390lb ft, up from 389bhp and 331lb ft in the standard car. You also get a new sports exhaust and rear spoiler with the basic package.

As you move up through the different tiers, you’re treated to things like that gearknob that was around at the same time as the Byzantine Empire, plus various bits of exterior carbon that definitely weren’t. Opt for the highest level of kit, pictured here, and you get a full suite of aero bits including a roof spoiler, ducktail wing, front splitter and GT3-style bonnet nostrils, and a smattering of interior carbon and Alcantara.

Away from the T, TechArt has also developed a new gear selector for the currently automatic-only remainder of the 992.2 Carrera family, which apes the look of a manual shifter. Not sure why, but it’s probably preferable to the slightly disappointing little nodule you get in the latest PDK models. The Tsport R, meanwhile, is available to order now.