Porsche’s decision to offer a manual transmission with the 911 GT3, off the back of the very limited run of stick-shift 911Rs, was seen as something of a gamble by the company, and not least by Motorsport Division’s head of road-car development, Andreas Preuinger.

"We were having bets about how many we would sell," he admits, "and we recognised the risk that the demand might not be as strong as we hoped.

"But I can say that it has been a success, it meets our expectation for what the share would be. You shouldn’t forget that when you offer something new there’s a big demand at first, and that can fall away, but I think we’ll end up at around a 30 percent share for the manual transmission, although obviously that varies in different markets."

Above: The 911 GT3 has a manual, but the RS will remain PDK only

But although he admits the success makes it likely that a manual gearbox will remain part of the mix for the basic GT models, there’s no chance that it will also be offered with the harder-core RS variants.