TIPPING POINT

Ready for the 1989 model year, the 964 arrived on the scene with all guns blazing. It was designed to bring the air-cooled 911 — a car seen by many as awkwardly dated — into the modern era, without losing the model’s signature look. The updated design was unashamedly a gentle evolution of the G-series, but underneath, the 964 was mostly new. And, as if anti-lock brakes, coil sprung rear suspension, an automatically deploying rear spoiler, power steering, a unified body and four-wheel drive wasn’t enough, Porsche offered the 964 with the brand’s first ‘proper’ automatic gearbox: Tiptronic.

Some of you might want to assign this honour to Porsche’s Sportomatic transmission, but, as detailed in the last issue of (order a copy at ), Sportomatic was a manual gearbox with automatic operation of the clutch. It did, admittedly, use a torque converter between the engine and the gearbox, smoothing operation and allowing for stopping when in gear, but Sportomatic didn’t have the capability to automatically change ratios. Nonetheless, despite Sportomatic’s lack of commercial success, it’s said that Porsche’s factory engineers liked the system, and it was the first port of call when they started planning the development of a new automatic gearbox in