From the June 1996 issue of Car and Driver.
It’s a good bet that any poor sap selling a car with a 32-year-old body will have fingernails approximating Al Davis’s festering stubs, a trailer-park address on his business card, and a hellish thatch of strawberries on his knees from all that begging and scraping. The exceptions are persons who sell Harleys, Jeep Wranglers (with their snappy Iwo Jima styling), Zamboni skating-rink ice resurfacers, and Porsche 911s.
Indeed, the 911 not only continues to set records as one of the longest-running sex objects on the planet, but today there are no fewer than seven models of the car first introduced in 1964. This is a startling array of merchandising for a car so long in the tooth (5606 sold here in ’95), many more models than you’ll find in, say, a Ford Crown Vic catalog.
These seven Porsches drift heavenward in suggested price from $67,545 for the fundamental rear-drive coupe to $115,780 for the 400-horsepower Turbo coupe.
The cheapie, if you will, is the best deal: the rear-wheel-drive six-speed Carrera coupe (a Tiptronic transmission adds $3591); then come the all-wheel-drive Carrera 4 ($74,530), the Targa ($75,245), the ragtop ($77,720), the all-wheel-drive model tested here with the road-racer Turbo body ($78,820), followed by the all-wheel-drive convertible ($84,705), and the bad-boy Turbo.
What distinguishes this 911 are its body, its brakes, and its tires. The skin of the Turbo model has been mated to the all-wheel-drive Carrera 4. That means there’s a different air dam up front, a squat-looking rear end that is significantly flared at the rear wheel wells, and a narrow slit of brake lights set above the rear window instead of below. It has the Turbo’s huge power-assisted, four-piston brakes, 18-inch Turbo-look aluminum alloy wheels instead of 17s, and lower-profile tires—Pirelli Asimmetrico P-Zero 225/40s up front and 285/40s in the back.
The difference between the 4S’s Turbo body, at left, and 911 is wildly flared rear wheel wells.
Once again, Porsche has squeezed more power and torque from the 3.6-liter aluminum-alloy six—from 270 hp to 282 and from 243 pound-feet to 250. Our six-speed 911 4S ran 0 to 60 in 4.9 seconds—identical to the all-wheel-drive 911 we tested in December 1994—and turned the quarter-mile in 13.5, a tenth of a second quicker than the previous car. Top speed was 161 mph (though its braggadocio speedo falsely registered 175 mph). Porsche says the added power can be sensed in midrange. Correct. Wind it out in second gear and you’ll see 68 mph at redline, and a few blinks later, 100 in third. (By the way, just starting this engine sent a tough, dozing neighborhood cat we know loping off at a distressed trot, belly close to the ground, ears pressed back. It has that effect on guys in rap-vibrating late-model Camaros, too.) The 4S’s skidpad performance of 0.87 g was 0.03 g lower than our last Carrera 4, and the 4S plowed more because the fat rear tires prevented our achieving the neutral attitude of the base Carrera 4.
Our cousins in Britain, who got hold of this model early on, complained that the new tire setup, although providing more grip, let go more sharply in corners. To the contrary, we found the car extremely surefooted and virtually impossible to send into a slide. Even lifting off the throttle or touching the brake in the deepest part of a corner did not upset its poise. (This may be due to the Brits’ use, dating back to the days of Oliver Twist, of gruel in road-construction material.) This is also the first 4wd Porsche of this generation that steers as purely as the rear-drive models.
You also get the Turbo’s “immobilizer” key fob. The jury’s out on this one. The key cannot be used to unlock the car, and if you forget to lock up—or dally at the gas pump—it gives you three minutes, then shuts down the ignition system, so no one, including you, can drive it until the fob is fussed with again. So, it’s a question of looks. Is the Turbo body worth an extra $4290? Well, in addition to that skulking cat, a middle-aged man showboating a matching pair of show-quality Great Danes one Sunday in oh-so-chic Birmingham, Michigan, stepped on one of his dog’s paws, jaw ajar, and did a full-stare 180 as we snarled by. You get what you pay for.
Specifications
Specifications
1996 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S
Vehicle Type: rear-engine, 4-wheel-drive, 2+2-passenger, 2-door coupe
PRICE
As Tested: $78,820
ENGINE
SOHC 12-valve flat-6, aluminum block and heads, port fuel injection
Displacement: 220 in3, 3600 cm3
Power: 282 hp @ 6300 rpm
Torque: 250 lb-ft @ 5250 rpm
TRANSMISSION
6-speed manual
DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 89.5 in
Length: 167.8 in
Curb Weight: 3274 lb
C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 4.9 sec
100 mph: 12.8 sec
1/4-Mile: 13.5 sec @ 102 mph
130 mph: 25.0 sec
150 mph: 44.8 sec
Rolling Start, 5–60 mph: 5.9 sec
Top Speed (drag ltd): 161 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 161 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 0.87 g
C/D FUEL ECONOMY
Observed: 18 mpg
EPA FUEL ECONOMY
City: 16 mpg
C/D TESTING EXPLAINED