Overview The Porsche Carrera 4S Cabriolet is for the driver who demands the purest (al fresco) driving experience in a four-season-capable package

Pros Glorious flat-six engine, lightning fast PDK transmission, impressive all-wheel-drive, quiet cabin

Cons Price/options makes mortals light headed. Missing from a $160,000 car: blind spot sensors, rear view camera, and keyless entry/ignition. Really?

Value for money Poor

What would I change? Improve rear sight lines, increase in cabin storage, simplify console and centrestack controls

EDMONTON — I’m doing the unthinkable. I’m testing a new Porsche Carrera 4S convertible, and I’m punishing it with heavy winter work.

The Carrera 4S Cabriolet’s natural environment should be top down in the glorious sunshine, clipping apexes on smooth ribbons of pavement lined with palm trees.

Instead, we’re bulling our way through deep snow and the temperature is -21 C. The Porsche’s front splitter (designed to keep the nose planted at 290 plus km/h) is creating a bow wave of snow as we plow along neighbourhood streets. Mother Nature has just body slammed Edmonton with a mid-November blizzard, dumping 30 cm of snow.

I thought Porsche folks were pranking me when they offered a Carrera 4S Cabriolet for mid-November testing. C’mon – testing a convertible? In the Prairies? In November?

But after slogging through snow-clogged streets for a week, it seems there’s method in Porsche’s madness. The German company has been campaigning to convince buyers that Porsche sports cars, typically worshiped as exotics rolled out only on “special” days, are indeed practical daily drivers, even in Canada.

We put the Carrera 4S Cabriolet through a week’s worth of extreme, winter testing. So, how did our German super model fare? The short answer is amazingly well.

Are you looking for a new convertible? Check out the Convertibles section of our New Vehicle Preview to see what your options are for 2014

Our test unit came with what I’d consider the “basics” of a sports car intended for four-season Canadian driving: Porsche’s full-time, active all-wheel-drive, high performance winter tires, heated steering wheel and front seats, and arguably, the pièce de résistance, the car’s magnesium roof. (The roof is covered with textile making it look like a soft top. This is stylistic trickery that camouflages what is essentially a retractable hard top.)

The Cabriolet’s soft top-look roof has a sound deadening fabric covered liner, which also serves as insulation to keep the interior warm. It makes for a very quiet cabin, even at highway speed. And the roof retracts in a quick 17 seconds.

During our test period, we left the Carrera parked outdoors overnight without plugging in the block heater. At -21 C, the car fires instantly and the three-position heated seats warm quickly. They’re nice and hot within a few minutes. Surprisingly absent from the test Porsche’s arm long list of performance electronic technologies (some of which are active suspension management, torque vectoring, stability management, traction management) is a snow/winter setting. (Some manufacturers provide a winter or snow setting for their automatic transmission, forcing second gear starts to reduce the possibility of wheelspin.)

Driving the Carrera 4S in deep snow has its challenges. The car’s low slung undercarriage drags through deep snow, and the monstrous Pirelli Sottozero (P245 front, P305 rear) are high performance winter tires (meaning they’re designed to perform well on wet and dry pavement as well as snow and ice), so they dig through snow competently, but the ultra-wide (8-1/2-in. front, 11-in. rear) alloy wheels pack full of snow. The additional ballast in the 20-in. wheels causes them to be severely unbalanced, and at any speed above 60 km/h, the car shudders unhappily.

Still, the Carrera 4S performs winter duty like a good soldier. In deep snow, traction is enhanced by its grip-friendly rear weight bias, traction control and all-wheel-drive. Should the driver be juvenile and apply excessive amounts of throttle to experience the joy of 400 horsepower on surfaces with little traction – and I’m not saying I did – the Carrera 4S simply squats, digs in, and accelerates in a glorious cloud of snow.

Driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic with the top up, the curvaceous Cabriolet is out of its natural habitat and makes me grumpy. The stylish, retractable roof has broad C-pillars and the rear window is small, making rear vision poor. Porsche’s (optional) ParkAssist system beeps annoyingly when pulling up behind a stopped vehicle. We ended up disengaging it. Our tester optioned out to more than $160,000 and has no blind spot warning system and no backup camera (useful items that are standard equipment on a $30,000 Toyota Camry XLE. Adding insult to injury, for the Carrera 4S’s price, it lacks keyless entry and ignition.)

I didn’t expect driving the Carrera 4S Cabriolet to be any fun in our extreme winter environment, but it proved me wrong. The 400-horsepower naturally aspirated 3.8-litre flat-six engine and PDK transmission is a brilliant combination, and arguably the best powertrain choice for Canadian (speed regulated) driving conditions. The flat-six engine’s sonorous growl is endlessly entertaining and makes the optional ($5,720) Burmeister audio system seem a perfectly good waste of money. As a convertible, the Carrera’s chassis is impressively solid, and for a world class sports car where road holding is a prime directive, the suspension delivers a surprisingly comfortable ride.

Our week of winter testing proved that this all-wheel-drive Porsche is virtually unstoppable and can bull its way through deep snowpack if need be. For sports car enthusiasts who demand a pure – al fresco – driving experience and want a four-season roadster, the Porsche Carrera 4S Cabriolet absolutely fills the bill.

2013 Porsche Carrera 4S Cabriolet, as driven by Tim Yip

Type of vehicle All-wheel-drive 2+2 sports car convertible

Engine 3.8-litre flat six

Power 400 horsepower @ 7,400 rpm; 325 lb.-ft. of torque @ 5,600 rpm

Transmission Seven-speed PDK

Brakes Four-wheel vented disc

Tires P245/35ZR20 front, P305/30ZR20 rear (winter)

Price: base/as tested $134,100/$160,145

Destination charge $1,085

Natural Resources Canada fuel economy, L/100 km 11.2/7.6 (premium unleaded)

Standard features Auto start/stop, Porsche Active Safety Management, Porsche Stability Management, Porsche Torque Vectoring, Porsche Traction Management with Active all-wheel-drive, stainless steel exhaust, aluminum doors and lids, leather seating surfaces, tilt/telescopic leather steering wheel, power folding/locking convertible top, Bi-Xenon leveling/cleaning headlights, nine-speaker 235-watt audio/nav, speed-activated rear spoiler, remote entry/alarm, electrically deployed windscreen

Options Anthracite brown, Umber leather, PDK transmission, heated steering, ventilated seats, ParkAssist, Sport chrono package, multi-function steering wheel, power sport seats, Premium Package, power sport seats, Burmeister audio system, wheel spacers