The royal Porsche 964
This article, originally written by Kieron Fennelly, was featured in issue 103 of Total 911. Pick up your copy now from the Imagine Shop.
Two features in particular made the 930, Porsche’s first production Turbo, stand out: its imposing rear wing and massively flared rear arches, widened to house the rubber necessary to transmit the torque.
Porsche itself produced a widebody non-turbo Cabriolet, and the 3.2 Speedster came in both narrow and widebody styles. However, it was not until the 964 model that Porsche extended the widebody or ‘Turbo-look’ to a non-turbo 911 Coupe.
It was against the background of the early Nineties recession that Porsche devised its 30 Jahre 911, introduced, as the name implies, to celebrate 30 years of what was already a motoring icon.
This model used the Coupe version of the widebody, a style already seen on the 911 Turbo, which appeared on the scene two years after the 964 C4 in 1990. As the anniversary (September 1993) would fall at the end of the 964’s production run, it put Porsche in a quandary.
Ideally the 993, which first appeared in autumn that year, would have carried the honour, but Porsche did not wish to complicate this launch, so presented the 30 Jahre at the traditional spring show, the Geneva Salon, in March.
A top-specification car was planned to milk as much money from the market as possible. The 30 Jahre would have the Turbo body and chassis, including its brakes and the 300bhp 3.8 engine, which powered the 964 RSR in GT competition.
A dozen years later, air-cooled 911s had already become history and Porsche had just introduced second editions of its water-cooled 911, the 997, and its mid-engined sister, the Boxster. Meanwhile, Berkshire-based Chris Scott decided to do something about the Porsche he had been promising himself since his teenage years.
“I decided to look for a 964,” he recalls, “because it was the last of the traditional 911 shape, including the upright head lamps. I remember driving behind one when they were new and as we decelerated off the M4, I was struck by how the spoiler retracted. I thought, ‘I must have one of those.”
Chris wanted a low-mileage, right-hand-drive manual C4 with air conditioning. It had to be original both mechanically and bodily, and not in Guards red or white! It was a year before he uncovered such a 964. It was in London, which was where Chris was working at the time, so the short journey over to St Bartholomew’s hospital was straightforward.
To find out this Porsche 964’s royal connection and read the feature in full, pick up your copy of issue 103 from the Imagine Shop now.
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