It worked for Lamborghini and Ferrari, why wouldn’t it work for Porsche? We are of course talking about the Ferrari 458 Speciale Aperta and the Lamborghini Huracan Performante Spider, two hardcore supercars with crop tops, both more desirable than their Coupe counterparts. It seems from these spy shorts than Porsche wants to get in on the action too with a Porsche 911 GT3 Touring Cabriolet.

It was a long-held belief that a performance oriented version of a supercar needed to be a Coupe. Coupe’s have superior structural integrity and that’s what you need, right? With the construction of modern supercars, it seems that you gain very little by chopping off the roof. This is how Ferrari and Lamborghini managed to master the convertible supercar. Using carbon fibre monocoques, there is little difference between the characteristics of a coupe and spider.

With the 911, things are slightly different. The 911 doesn’t have a carbon fibre monocoque for one thing. It’s platform is entirely metal, meaning it is difficult to achieved similar levels of structural rigidity within the same platform. This is probably one of the reasons Porsche never tried it before with its RS and GT models.

The car you see in the photos looks set to change that. The Porsche 911 GT3 Touring Cabriolet looks set to debut some time before the current generation 911 bows out. The photos show a car which wears the GT3 facia’s and shares the central exhaust position but misses the rear wing and its coupe roof!

It’s rumoured that the GT3 Touring Cabriolet has been in development alongside the new Speedster. The GT3 Cabriolet will likely share the familiar 4.0 liter six-cylinder naturally aspirated boxer engine. It produces 500 hp at 8,250 rpm and a maximum torque of 460 Nm. The Coupe accelerates from 0-100 km/h in 3.9 seconds and hits 200 km/h in 11.5 seconds. expect figures just short of that for the Cabriolet.