The world of the Porsche 911 can be a confusing place, not helped by Porsche retaining the ‘911’ badge for successive evolutions of the car which became ever different from the original 1963 model.
The most obvious departure from the classic air-cooled 911 with its Beetle-esque silhouette was the 993 generation, launched in 1993 which would be the last of the air-cooled cars. Before the 993 however, came the 964 which may have looked very similar to the classic 911 but which was – or at least, Porsche claimed it to be – 85 per cent new.
The accepted version of events is that efforts to replace the 911 with an altogether more modern and more conventional car – think 928 – had been unsuccessful in the market and so the decision was taken to radically update the original. The 964 was a clever reworking of the original which at a glance looked very similar to the familiar 911 but used a platform which had been radically revised.
Such an extensive update allowed Porsche to find the space for a proper heating and air conditioning system (the original relied on a Beetle-style system
