A seven-time Porsche owner who spent 20 years in the car business and instructs high-performance driving has sold his Porsche 911 Carrera GTS for a Tesla Model Y Performance. Thomas, host of the GTS Car Life YouTube channel, posted the 29-minute video last week. It is the third Tesla in a Texas household that had three Porsches before the swap.
His daughter’s Model Y Premium came first, after three weeks with a Porsche Macan EV left him disappointed. His wife then sold her 2023 Taycan 4S Cross Turismo and takes delivery of a Model Y L next week. Thomas says he used to call Teslas appliances, the same word tech reviewer Marques Brownlee reached for in the Model Y Performance review EVXL covered in January.
He credits the car with 510 horsepower and 513 lb-ft of torque. Tesla’s US spec sheet for the Model Y Performance says 460 hp.
Bad Knees and a Daughter’s Model Y Pushed the 911 GTS Out of the Garage
Thomas bought the Model Y Premium as a safer college car for his daughter after three weeks with a pair of Macan EVs he calls a disappointment, without saying why. Then he hurt his bad knees, sold the 911 GTS he never planned to part with, and ordered the Performance.
The Taycan went for a different reason. “The Taycan brakes always seem to fight me,” he says, describing a pedal that needed more effort than it should and a car that crept forward at stops until he had to stamp on it. The Model Y’s brakes, he says, keep it still once it stops. That complaint lands on a model whose global sales fell to 16,339 in 2025, from a 41,296 peak in 2021, a slide that has Porsche weighing whether to fold the Taycan into the Panamera line.
Her replacement is the stretched six-seat Model Y L, which Tesla opened for US orders in July at $61,990, when the standard-length Performance sat on the configurator at $57,990.
Tesla Advertises 460 Horsepower, and Road & Track’s Test Found 510
Tesla’s US spec sheet lists the Model Y Performance at 460 hp. The 510 hp and 513 lb-ft he quotes come from Road & Track’s November 2025 test, which put system peak power 50 hp above Tesla’s. His 3.3-second 0 to 60 mph time and 155 mph top speed match Tesla’s.
The hardware he singles out does match the car. The forged, staggered 21-inch Arachnid 2.0 wheels, the carbon fiber spoiler and an adaptive suspension that sits about half an inch (13 millimeters) lower than other Model Ys are all Performance-only. He repeats Tesla’s aero claim of 10% less drag and 64% less lift than the previous Performance, and sets the car against his old 911: 408 hp, seven tenths slower to 60 mph, and a 190 mph theoretical top speed of which he never saw more than 145 mph on the back straight at Circuit of the Americas.
His list of faults runs to seven items. The rear suspension hops on bumps, FSD does not steer around potholes, panel fit varies from car to car, the seats are too soft for him, Waze is unavailable, Tesla offers little customization, and Track Mode is gone, taking its thermal management with it. Tesla told Edmunds during that outlet’s review that it dropped Track Mode because owners rarely used it.
His Car Log Says FSD Drives Half His Miles, and the Description Carries a Referral Link
Thomas says his car’s log shows he drives the Model Y Performance himself 50% of the time and hands the rest to Full Self-Driving (Supervised) at $99 a month. He calls FSD “far safer than humans” and says fellow instructors agree. His video description carries a Tesla referral link.
The number behind that belief is Tesla’s own safety report, the same report two US senators asked NHTSA in June to pull apart, and the one EVXL examined yesterday when Jason Oppenheim bought his staff ten Teslas on it. Thomas also tells viewers on camera to order through any owner’s referral link, his included, for cash discounts or free months of FSD.
EVXL’s Take
This is bad news for Porsche, and the 911 is the smallest part of it. Nobody sells a Carrera GTS because a crossover corners better, and Thomas doesn’t claim it does. He sold it because his knees hurt and because the Tesla does everything around the driving better: the phone key, the navigation, the storage, the brakes that hold at a light. Porsche should worry more about the Taycan. A man who teaches braking for a living says its pedal fought him, and his household replaced it with a Model Y L rather than a Cayenne Electric.
He’s also an evangelist with a referral link who quotes a horsepower figure 50 above Tesla’s own and repeats Tesla’s safety line as settled fact, so I’d discount the superlatives. The garage inventory is harder to discount. Three Porsches out, three Teslas in, in one Texas household, and the buyer is exactly the enthusiast Porsche spent two decades cultivating. Porsche can keep the 911 on gas forever and lose nothing from this video. It cannot afford the Taycan customer walking across the street.
Sources: GTS Car Life on YouTube, Road & Track, November 27, 2025
EVXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.
