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It’s been a while since I’ve featured Porsche’s 911 RS America and I’m curious about their current place on the market now that the air-cooled market has slowed down a good bit. It also provides us a nice contrast with yesterday’s Carrera 2 and I think reveals some of the potential issues with that car’s price relative to similar 964s. The RS America represented the US version of the 964 Carrera RS, though in truth it’s a far cry – and far cheaper – than the RS. It features a few aesthetic details that separate it from a standard Carrera 2, most notably the fixed whale tail rather than the mechanically-raised spoiler standard on other 964s, along with the departure of some creature comforts in the name of lightness. Performance is enhanced with sport suspension borrowed from the Turbo. These have remained highly sought after on the second-hand market over the past two years with values of many of them easily exceeding six-figures. The example here, a Grand Prix White 1993 Porsche 911 RS America, comes in with an asking price just below $100K. Of the four available options this one comes equipped with sunroof and A/C.
This 911 is particularly interesting to me for a number of reasons. Modified 911s aren’t anything new, but this one strikes me as somewhat different from many of those we see. I would guess the two most common classes of modified 911 we come across are heavily-modified track cars and backdated 911s that aspire to combine modern mechanicals with vintage looks. Track cars come in a wide variety of condition, but typically remain quite functional within the arena around which they’ve been designed. The backdated 911s can be all over the place and generally possess a little bit of that pared down track focus in the interior. This 964 is sort of both but also neither of those. It’s clearly not backdated, yet it’s execution does somewhat stem from the Sport Purpose 911s of the past; those cars that owners could use for canyon runs, hill climbs, and even some rally races and which were modified for that purpose. Porsche has long been a brand that mixed luxury and performance and those 911s attempted to shift that balance a little more toward performance. Still, this 964 doesn’t seem like a track car either; it appears to remain well suited for the road. It’s a rare thing to find in a 964, at least based on what I’ve come across and that in itself makes this interesting. The base is a 1993 Porsche 911 Carrera 2 Coupe with 59,900 miles on it and it’s seen a good deal of suspension and interior work to help bring it more in line with the 911’s dynamic pretensions.
At this point I have featured pretty much every rare 964 variant that exists, and as I’ve stated previously there were a lot of rare 964s, more so than other 911 models. I’m fairly certain this one will complete the set, even if the Turbo S2 can be argued to be an option package rather than a distinct model. No matter. With only 20 such beasts produced, so as to meet the minimum production numbers for homologation purposes, the Turbo S2 is one of the lowest production 911s we’ll find across the entire 911 range. Other parts of the world would receive the 3.3 liter 911 Turbo S, a much lightened higher-horsepower variant that provided a wonderful sendoff for the 3.3 liter turbo that served Porsche so faithfully for much of the 930’s life and the early years of the 964 Turbo. For the Turbo S2, modifications were limited to the engine so these aren’t as lightweight and hardcore as the Turbo S, but with 381 hp delivered only to the rear wheels via a single turbo the performance would be very brisk and attention holding. For their production Porsche sent 20 US Turbos to Andial where their engines were modified before being delivered to their new US owners. The example here is somewhat peculiar among very rare Porsches: it’s been driven! Here we have a Slate Grey Metallic 1992 Porsche 911 Turbo S2, located in Calgary, with 91,100 miles on it.
My quest for interesting 964s continues apace and while many of them exist they are rarely easy to find. Enter the example we see here, a rare Diamond Blue Metallic 1989 Porsche 911 Carrera 4 Coupe, located in Florida, with Marine Blue leather interior and a robust 155,102 miles on it. Readers might recall that I featured a Diamond Blue Metallic 3.2 Carrera Coupe last week with a similarly contrasting interior. That 911 offers a nice juxtaposition for grasping the changes Porsche instituted when it debuted the 964, the first full redesign the 911 had seen in over a decade. The new shape was a little rounder, a little more stocky looking. It also came with a host of technological changes, most significantly the debut of the Carrera 4 – Porsche’s first all-wheel drive 911. While the system has seen significant improvements since its debut it still stands as one of the more significant changes brought to the quirky engineering of Porsche’s most iconic road car.
The second of my 964s takes thing in a much more interesting, though also in a more likely divisive direction. Unlike yesterday’s Cabriolet, which likely would make for an excellent open-top driver 911, the Coupe we see here aims straight for collectors. That is in part due to its low mileage, but largely due to its eye-catching color combination. With an Amethyst Metallic exterior over a Cobalt Blue interior I can honestly say I’ve seen nothing else like it. There’s likely a reason we haven’t come across such a combination previously. The juxtaposition probably will be hard for some to get their head around. One of our commenters remarked that the Amaranth Violet 993 we featured last week would have been very much Prince’s style. I think this Carrera 4 takes us even further in that direction.
