Porsche 964 - Why a 964 C2?

Why a 964 C2?

My 964

Running reports
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Report 1 (Fall 2001)
Report 2 (Spring 2002)
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Lelystad (15-4-2002)
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Swedish Weekend 2002
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Why a 964? That's easy. I really like the look of the classic 911. I know that a 968 is roughly as quick and handles better. Then again, I tend to buy a car based on emotion (mostly), and driving a 911 gives me a much greater thrill than driving a 944 Turbo or a 968. So it had to be a 911. Standard advice when buying a Porsche seems to be 'buy the most recent you can afford'. In my case, that left a late model 3.2l (with the G50 gearbox) or an early 964. Choosing between the two proved easy: I can't sit comfortably in a 3.2l. Add the more benign handling and creature comforts of the 964, and the choice is made.

964's come in many different shapes. The C4 provides a brilliant 4-wheel drive system, whereas the C2 only drives the rear wheels. For people who like fresh air there's the cab. A nice compromise between a coupe and a cab is the famous Targa. If a standard 964 isn't sporty enough for your tastes (and you can afford it), you might go for an RS. And last but not least, there's the Turbo (a.k.a. the 965).

So why did I choose a C2 coupe? Answer: it followed from the following requirements.

I want an entertaining ride
The faster the better
I don't want a noisy, maintenance-intensive roof
It must have a manual transmission
The car has to fit in my budget

While the C4 is incredibly sure-footed under all circumstances, it's also 100kg heavier and has much more understeer. The understeer can be fixed, as described in a series of articles called "Wringing out the C4" (see the 1992 page of my reviews pages). The weight difference can marginally be felt at higher speeds. For me, the decider was the higher maintenance cost of a C4. So, it was to be a C2.

I would love an RS, but good ones are very hard to find and very expensive. Therefore the RS was out, more's the pity.

What can I say about the Turbo? It's very very fast (especially the 3.6l), but needs more maintenance and is more expensive.

Although I was tempted to try to find the last of the true Targa's, practicality (I know, a strange concept when mentioned in the same sentence as '911') put me off it. I like driving at high speeds. A targa roof adds a lot of noise to the noise created by the engine, tires and wind. And there's the potential for leaks.

All things considered, the car I came home with is a Carrera 2 coupe. The color is Amazon Green (which looks blue most of the time) and she has 17" Cup wheels. The suspension is original. She should go from 0 to 100 km/h in 5.7 seconds (difficult to verify, but it feels seriously quick) and have a top speed of 260 km/h (much easier to verify: put a GPS receiver on the dashboard and check the top speed afterwards). Mine does 265 true km/h before bouncing off the rev limiter in 5th gear. The speedometer points to a rather optimistic 281 km/h :)) Not bad for a car that left the factory in 1991.