Porsche 911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet

As master illusionists Siegfried & Roy demonstrated night after night—well, most nights anyway—the spectacle of?two sequin-studded Germans ordering around uncaged and hopefully housebroken lions and tigers can be riveting. Not nearly as gamy, but accomplished with equally Teutonic flourish, is the job Porsche has done taming its once-wild and still-exotic rear-engine flagship. Whereas existential consequences once awaited those drivers of early 911s too unwise or foolish to try lift-throttle maneuvers midcorner, today’s 911 is certainly more forgiving than an uncaged Bengal tiger.

With the Carrera 4 and Carrera 4S, Porsche rolls out the first four-wheel-drive versions of?its new, seventh-generation 911. Porsche claims the previous version of the Carrera 4 accounted for 34 percent of ?911 sales worldwide. Replacing last year’s 997-based models, the new Carrera 4 and 4S coupes will go on sale early 2013, with the cabrio iterations of both due in spring.

Compared with the rear-drive Carrera, the rear fenders of?the 4 and 4S each flare an extra 0.9 inch, and a 1.4-inch-wider or 1.7-inch-wider rear track (Carrera 4S or Carrera 4, respectively) and slightly?wider tires lurk under those zaftig hindquarters.

On the winding roads of our test route near Graz, Austria, the weather served up a soupy mess of fog, rain, and, in the higher elevations, some snow. It made it all the more…engaging to explore the dynamic limits of a rear-heavy sports car while darting around narrow, unfamiliar byways. Aside from the slight loss of?feedback in the Carrera 4’s electrically assisted steering, the 4 coupe and the 4S cabrio felt cool and collected sabering through the Austrian countryside. And that was on winter tires. With brake-based torque vectoring to manage any understeer that might crop up and the electronic torque-allocating overlords of Porsche Traction Management (standard kit on all C4 models) to clean up whatever potential instability might occur, the 4WD Porsches cut and thrust their way like lions augering through a herd of ?wildebeest. Or Las Vegas tourists. The cars simply go where they are pointed.

We could actually see the front wheels helping to pull the car out of?the corners. In the instrument pod of the Carrera 4 is a torque-distribution gauge, including two bar graphs that indicate how torque is apportioned to the axles as you manipulate the throttle, swap gears, and encounter different road surfaces. Or, indeed, trees or trucks, if?you give this bit of dashboard show business anything more than a quick glance.

The seven-speed manual’s gates are closely spaced, and it’s easy to select the wrong gear, particularly while pulling the lever back for upshifts. If you don’t coax the shifter to the right, you might do a five-four downshift instead of the intended five-six upshift. Porsche apparently has anticipated this and provides a gear indicator below the tachometer. It has also implemented software that prevents seventh gear from being selected without first going through fifth and sixth.

In urban driving, there’s an engine stop-start system that works as advertised—meaning it kills the engine when you reach a standstill and lights it just before you get moving again—but as in the Boxster, restarts are a little on the harsh side for our tastes. Owners will also want to watch their cars’ wider haunches on tighter streets, as we foresee more than a few scraped wheels. Carrera 4s with the PDK automatic have Porsche’s new Active Safe system, which uses the distance-control function of the adaptive cruise control to prevent rear-end collisions. If it detects that a crash is imminent, it will give visual and audible warnings; if those are ignored, Active Safe performs a quick stab at the brakes that will increase to full-ABS application if the driver is still asleep at the wheel.

It’s almost $15,000 to upgrade from a Carrera 4 to a Carrera 4S. For that, you get a car that’s about 0.4 second quicker to 60 mph. Increasing the bore of the standard 4’s 3.4-liter flat-six bumps displacement to 3.8 liters in the 4S and raises output to 400 hp from 350 and torque to 325 lb-ft from 287. That’s not a massive jump, but the C4S also nets the buyer larger-diameter front brake rotors, six-piston front calipers, wider rubber, an upgrade to 20-inch wheels from 19s, and standard torque vectoring. As in other 911s, there is available PASM with adjustable electronic dampers and a ride height reduced by 0.3 inch.

But if you’re going to the show, you might as well get the best seats. In both the C4 and C4S, it might be worth the extra $1850 for the Sport Chrono package. Manual-transmission models with Sport Chrono blip the throttle on downshifts when in Sport Plus mode, a new feature this year that somewhat echoes Nissan’s SynchroRev Match, introduced on the 2009 370Z as part of its Sport package option. And when you push the Sport Plus button on models with Sport Chrono, the sometimes annoying stop-start system is deactivated, the throttle map gets more aggressive, the dampers are firmed up, and, if ?equipped, the optional dual-clutch automatic transmission goes into a “race course” shifting mode. The intake sound symposer and the optional sport exhaust are also activated for a more robust blat.

Actually, robust might be an understatement. We took a Carrera 4S cabrio, top down, through a long tunnel and slowed to a sober speed before punching the throttle and holding it to redline. It’s definitely worth recording for your next ringtone. Automatic-transmission-equipped cars feature launch control for NHRA-worthy, 5000-plus-rpm clutch dumps that catapult you off ?the line like—yes—a scalded tiger.