Perhaps you’ve been hankering after a 911 for a while, uncertain where to jump into the plethora of variations on the theme?
Inevitably, price has much to do with your choice and, unless you have deep pockets, air-cooled classics are a great deal of money these days. This puts you in more recent water-cooled territory, with the 996 and 997 your potential entry-level 911. Sure, there’s a broad range of cars within the price range of, say, between £15k to £25k, with good 996s vying with mediocre 997s through the whole span, but let’s stick with the 996, because a good one represents better value. I’ll tell you why in a minute.
It hasn’t always had an easy ride, the 996. Announced in 1996 together with the 986 Boxster, Porsche’s radical communal-platform philosophy contributed immensely to the company’s salvation as a manufacturer ahead of its other saviour, the game-changing Cayenne. Not many Porsches polarised enthusiast opinion as markedly as the 996, however, successor as it was to the beloved air-cooled 993. The 996’s Boxster stablemate was less criticised due to treading what many saw as new ground (914 aside), whereas the 996 sought to reinvent the 911. Propositions seldom come more audacious.
In production from July 1997 and on sale from late autumn that year, the 996 was, at the outset, a love-it or loathe-it car. And, unsurprisingly, given fifty years of air-cooled antecedents, many Porsche buffs were prepared to loathe the model with an almost sectarian fanaticism. Air-cooled die-hards considered it to be little short of an abomination, never mind that it looked a bit like an overbaked 993 (it was seven inches longer, two inches wider and shared much of the
