Perhaps the 993 doesn’t ultimately have the involving feel of the 1970s car, but the truth is that it’s far less tiring to drive quickly

Of course, we’d all like a 2.7 Carrera RS. It goes without saying – I’ll take mine in Tangerine, please – but prices for these cars have effectively doubled in the last few years. That’s what happens when a car is repeatedly acclaimed as one of the best driver’s machines ever made. People start to take notice, and the values go up.

So, whereas a few years ago you could have bought a nice RS for maybe £70,000, you’re now looking at £150,000 or more – a right-hand-drive Lightweight version made a cool £220,000 at H&H’s Buxton sale in February this year (and it was finished in Tangerine, too). That puts them out of the reach of all but a few lucky individuals; the rest of us have to cut our cloth to suit our pocket. Which is how the Octane editorial team – forever on the look-out for today’s top buys – came up with this month’s cover feature.

What, we argued over a few drinks in the Wollaston Arms, was the best 911 after the 2.7RS? And which was the best value? Two candidates immediately sprang to mind. Of the classic pre-’74 911s, the 2.4S is the nearest in performance, its 190bhp fuel-injected engine giving away just 20bhp to the 2.7RS. But if you cast a wider net to include all the air-cooled 911s ever made, then the last-of-line 993 represents fantastic value for money and is reputedly a great drive, too.

With the help of two enthusiastic 911 owners, we headed to the wide open spaces of Wales – and the bright lights of Cardiff – to put our theories to the test.

To be honest, I didn’t care very much about how Paul Madden’s Metallic Green 2.4S would drive. I just knew that I coveted it because it looked so utterly fabulous. The so-’70s Porsche colour of Metallic Green is original, and it suits the 911 perfectly.

Paint aside, the 2.4S is desirable for several reasons. But first, as Jennifer Aniston used to say in those TV ads, the science bit.
 
The ‘S’ model had been introduced in 1966 – ‘S’ standing for Super – as the hot version of the 911, upping the standard 2.0-litre engine’s 130bhp to 160 by means of bigger valves, a higher compression ratio and two Weber 40IDS carburettors. A good start.

Over the next few years, Porsche made it even better, by switching to Bosch fuel injection in 1968, and then progressively enlarging the engine to 2.2 litres in 1969, and 2.4 litres – actually 2341cc – in 1972. The 2.4S developed 190bhp at 6500rpm, which is just 20bhp less than the 2.7RS; although the RS did have rather more torque, at 188lb ft compared with the 160lb ft of the S.

Enough facts and figures. Paul Madden’s car is a 1972 2.4S, instantly recognisable to Porsche aficionados by the oil tank filler cap located in the wing behind the driver’s door – a feature unique to this model year. Porsche had relocated the engine’s oil tank in its never-ending quest to improve weight distribution, but since the filler cap was now easily mistaken for a petrol cap – with predictable, if not hilarious, results – they moved it back under the engine lid for 1973.

Another giveaway that this is a 1972 car is its discreet chin spoiler. The 911 had a relatively slippery shape but it also acted like a wing: air passing over the top had further to travel than it did underneath, giving rise to negative pressure, particularly at the rear. At this stage, Porsche didn’t worry about the rear end – you had to be cornering really fast for it to be a problem – but adding the little chin spoiler reduced front-end lift by almost 40 percent.

The lack of a rear spoiler certainly gives the 2.4S the edge over the RS in appearance terms. The Carrera’s ‘duck tail’ was added for a very good reason but it did nothing aesthetically for the 911’s shape. Unadorned, its simplicity means you appreciate the details all the more, from the tiny slatted horn grilles inboard of the front side lights, to the beautifully curved and polished door latches, to the super-slim anodised alloy window frames. It all looks so delicate.

That impression is carried through inside the car, where a slender gearlever sprouts from an almost-flat floor. The four-spoke steering wheel is thin-rimmed, and narrow screen pillars mean the cabin feels light. The car is compact by modern standards but it seems spacious inside, helped by the absence of a transmission tunnel and a general lack of fripperies. You do get electric windows and a sunroof in this RHD car – remember when an opening sunroof was considered the height of luxury? – but the one place Porsche really went to town was the instrument display, which comprises five big dials right in front of the driver.

Settle into the sports seats – an option fitted to this car when new – and twist the key. It’s an interesting experience. You expect fuel-injected cars to run perfectly smoothly from cold but the 2.4S is a little ragged first thing, and there’s even a hand thottle down beside the handbrake so you can keep
the revs up until it warms through. The soundtrack is complex: a mixture of fan whine, mechanical clatter and thrum, and a wet plishy-plashy sound that’s curiously reminiscent of a big, low-compression sidevalve. One thing it’s not is quiet; 993 owner Paul Truckle is amazed how noisy the 2.4S seems in comparison with his own car.

Pulling away from our Cardiff hotel, the morning after a night of ‘guerilla photography’ outside the Welsh Assembly Building – fortunately, the local CCTV operators must have decided terrorists wouldn’t roll up in a brace of 911s – the 2.4S is untemperamental; although most of the power comes in high up the rev band, there’s enough torque to trickle the car through city traffic without rowing it along on the gearlever.
 
In fact, if the 2.4S has a flaw, it’s that the gearchange has a rather springy feel. It has a conventional H-gate, with fifth out on a limb to the right, but – on this car at least – you need to give the lever a little sideways twitch as you snick it from third to fourth. Once learned, no problem: but attempting to force the lever into a slot is doomed to failure. Like any precision instrument, this 911 requires a sympathetic touch.

Travelling in convoy to our photo location in the hills above Crickhowell, there’s not much chance to extend the 911 so Paul and I pass the time in conversation. He gives me the potted history of his car: sold new to a Greek shipping magnate in central London, it later suffered the indignity of being painted Guards Red, like so many ageing 911s in the 1980s, before being bought and restored on Paul’s behalf by a then-young restoration outfit, Early 911. The car required extensive metalwork but the quality of the rebuild was superb and it still looks and feels in concours condition, five years and 15,000 miles later. Paul even uses it on track days – ‘it only really comes alive above 5000rpm,’ he says.

This healthy attitude extends towards urging me to take the car off and play with it for a while on the fast moorland roads around us. I don’t need much encouraging. As Paul has already suggested, you really have to wind up the flat-six to extract its real performance – and to enjoy the unique sound of that Porsche motor howling and wailing through the Welsh hills, the low-speed clatter now transformed into a zinging snarl. From 3000rpm it feels merely brisk and it’s not until you broach 5000, 5500, 6000rpm that the engine finds its second wind and starts to pull fiercely.

It’s not just the engine that’s working hard; the driver must do so, too, for driving the 2.4S quickly is as much a physical challenge as a mental one. The non-assisted steering is fabulously communicative but loads up significantly in tight corners, and you start to feel the effort in your shoulders after a while. Slow in, fast out is the mantra; these early cars run on comparatively skinny 185-section tyres all-round, demanding a high degree of anticipation when you’re pressing on in unfamiliar territory. But then, that’s how you should drive any car, not just a 911, and the Porsche never feels the slightest bit
tail-happy on these dry roads.

More of a worry are the grazing sheep that dot the roadside for miles in each direction, oblivious to traffic. Fortunately the 2.4S has disc brakes all round: an emergency stop caused by one such errant ruminant proves that the 2.4S pulls up quickly and neatly without locking the front wheels – which is more than can be said for a Toyota MR2 travelling in the opposite direction. The sheep was quite unconcerned, of course.

Thrumming into the hilltop car park in front of a waiting photographer and rapidly chilling pair of Porsche owners, I’ve rarely wanted to hang on to a car so much. But it’s time to skip forward a couple of decades and try a very different 911, the 993 Carrera.

Self-employed software engineer Paul Truckle owned a Porsche Boxster and (briefly) a 930 Turbo before he bought this 993 four years ago. It’s not an everyday driver and he occasionally wonders whether he should sell it, but says he thinks he’d come to regret doing that. I think he’s right.

Porsche had been going through a tough time when the 993 was introduced in, logically enough, 1993. Sales had been plummeting since the late ’80s and there was even talk of a takeover by Volkswagen or Daimler-Benz. The revival started when Dr Wendelin Wiedeking was appointed as chief executive in September 1992. By adopting Japanese haiken practices to reduce costs and improve quality, he got it back on an upward slope – and the new 993 marked the start of a revival in Porsche’s fortunes.

It was always considered a stop-gap, however. Porsche had taken the air-cooled flat-six as far as it could go in terms of juggling power output with increasingly stringent emissions legislation, and knew that the only solution was to adopt liquid cooling; the air-cooled engine was simply becoming too hot. The plan was to introduce the all-new, water-cooled 996 in 1996. Meanwhile it needed a replacement for the 964 of the late-’80s, which had been criticised for its uninspiring handling and NVH issues.

For a stop-gap, the 993 was a resounding success. Styled by Briton Tony Hatter, it looked elegant, with headlights faired back into the wings; paradoxically, those laid-back headlamps increased the resemblance to early 911s by emphasising the simplicity of the overall shape once again.