PORSCHE 968 CLUBSPORT
The PORSCHE 968 CLUBSPORT
My friends in the Porsche fraternity know my views on front-engined, watercooled Porches. I respect the 928, but like the BMW 850CSi it's too big and heavy for a car that can only sensibly carry two adults in comfort. At least Mercedes are honest about their equally heavy SL being just a two-seater roadster. The BMW and Porsche have rear seats, but you would need to amputate your legs to get in the back. I am only 5ft 8in tall, but when I drive an 850CSi, the back of the driver's seat almost touches the rear seat squab! It is almost as bad in the 928 which has less rear headroom. If I wanted to carry four people rapidly in comfort, then I would choose another great car made by Porsche. No, not the Audi RS2. It has horrendous turbo lag. The Mercedes E500. Now there's a proper four-seater sports car.
So I respect the 928, but I have never cared for the 924/944 range. In the days when I was driving Golf GTis and Sciroccos, I nearly bought a 924. A test drive put me off. The way a car's engine sounds and responds is half of the driving pleasure. Compared to the VW, the Porsches had a harsh, cooking motor, and the later 924 Turbo did not cut it with me either. Not bad cars you understand, but compared to the VWs and straight-six BMWs, the 924 motor did not inspire.
The 944 was better, but I preferred the engine of its Italian contemporary, the Alfa Romeo GTV6, and the handling of the Lotus Excel. I bought none of the above as I was working my way towards a 911.
There are times when cheaper cars put things in perspective, and one morning in 1987, my VW Golf GTi 16v press car was exchanged for a Porsche 944 2.7. After getting just a mile down the road, I wanted the VW back. The 16-valve 944 had no low speed guts and had to be revved like crazy to make it go. And it was not that fast anyway. Compared to the GTi, it also lacked grip in corners. I was not impressed and not at all surprised when it was quickly superseded by the 3.0-litre version.
The car I did take to though, was the 944 Turbo. The forced induction system took the hard edge off the four- banger and, as my police class 1 driving instructor had always taught me to keep the engine revs up, I never suffered the off-boost moments that some people complained about. I was able to cover ground rapidly and securely in all weather conditions in this car, and as a daily driver, I actually rated it above the 911 Carrera 3.2 which was current then.
The 944 Cabriolet I drove in 1991 was a good car, but not a great Porsche. It did everything well, had plenty of torque and went like a ding-bat. But once again, the engine note was flat and uninspiring. I handed the keys back to the Porsche delivery driver with no regrets.
When the 968 arrived, I was not entirely convinced about this obvious facelift to a basic shape that was now getting on for a decade and a half old. Worse than that, it was not cheap. Retailing for around E34,000 in the UK, I thought that was taking the mickey for a car with just four cylinders. Ironically, the 944/968 was the Porsche that the Japanese and French opposition targeted with their RX7, Supra, 30OZX and A610 cars, and while the Japanese cars did well in the USA, their sales in the UK were also pretty dismal. I think there is a threshold of pain in the price positioning for cars of any type. For sports coupes in this mould, it seems to be around 230,000 and, only the hallowed few like the 911 and small Ferraris can get away with charging more.
Porsche's answer was to strip all the heavy electrically operated bits off the 968 to produce the Club Sport version at a bargain 228,000. It was patently obvious what was going on in the marketplace, for within weeks, Mazda and Renault whipped a corresponding amount of their cars. A whole batch of RX7s which had been threatening to take root in their warehouse, sold very quickly.
If Porsche's original plot had been simply to move more cars by reducing the price, then they inadvertently produced their best ever handling car in the process. But nothing at Porsche happens by luck, and the Club Sport was a properly thought through model in its own right.
In fact the changes, while not dramatic in themselves, added up to a pretty significant whole. The engine remained standard along with the dualmass flywheel and six-speed manual gearbox, which means that the extra straight-line go was gained through weight loss. Only about 50kg was trimmed from the car, but this was significant enough. The deleted parts were: electric windows, central locking, sunroof, electronically-operated tailgate release, heated washer jets, headlamp washer system, rear seats and some of the soundproofing. Without the electrics and with air-conditioning removed from the options list, a smaller 5OAh was part of the weight-saving exercise. The heavy electric seats also gave way to a pair of race style Recaros with backs and provision for a full harness set-up.
If you lighten a car without changing the spring and damper rates, you tend to stiffen the suspension ar Porsche took advantage of , dropping the ride height of the Sport by 20mm with shorter spring of standard rates. The standard Fichtel & Sachs remain. In this form, with the optional limited slip differential, rides more stiffly than standard still tolerably comfortable. The car comes from the factory sitting slightly tail down, which Porsche say improves the ability of the car to be steered!
In theory, the Club Sport is a car you can use every day and then take to the track on the weekend. And if you literally banged in a roll cage, ignition cut-off switch and fire extinguisher, you could go racing. But if track work was your intention for purchase, then you would be steered towards the optional Sport suspension which is 30-40mm lower than the standard 968 and fully adjustable so you can corner-weight the car for optimum handling. The M30 Koni dampers have adjustable height spring platforms, coil-over shocks at the rear rather than transverse torsion bars, and a three-position adjustable rear anti-roll bar. About 30 per cent stiffer than stock, and not unlike the 944 Club Sport produced by Porsche Cars GB for the race series some years ago, this set-up also has uprated brakes with bigger drilled, vented discs and Carrera RS four-pot alloy calipers.
Whichever suspension set-up you go for, the Club Sport benefits from a substantially larger footprint than the standard 968. From 7J and 8J x 16 with 205/55ZR16 and 225/50ZR16, the wheel size goes to 7.5J and 9J x 17 with 225/45ZR17 and 255/40ZR17 rubber. The wheels are also colour-coded to the car unless the chosen hue is black.
Porsche's black press car (the signwriting down the side was a delete option), had the standard Club Sport suspension and the optional limited-slip differential, but I also had the chance to try out a car with the stiffer Sport suspension. Even on relatively smooth, suburban roads, this stiffer car proved to be far too stiff for sensible road use. Like the Carrera RS, it might be invigorating for short blasts on a Sunday morning, but Porsche's version of vibromassage treatment would become quite tedious if you tried to use it on a daily basis. Shaken and stirred would be an apt description of an enforced commute in such a car, although it would certainly be in its element on the track.
The worst thing about the standard Club Sport is probably getting in and out as the racing Recaros have a high squab and back supports that require manoeuvring around before you can place yourself in the seat. The lack of backrest rake adjustment might also be a problem for a few people and the fact that the seat is mounted lower in the car might give you grief if you are under 5ft 3in tall. At 5ft 8in, I found no problems having levered myself into the seat and felt quite at home straight away.
I had expected good handling and was not disappointed, but it was the engine of the Club Sport that surprised me. With the same 3.0 litre 16-valve Lanchester-balanced four as a stock 968, the Club Sport has 240bhp at 6200rpm and 225 lb ft of torque at 4100rpm to propel it. In a car weighing 1320kg, with closely-stacked gear ratios and an lsd to help traction off the line, the Club Sport rockets to 6omph in 6.1 sec and has a top speed of 157mph. In practice, it feels faster because the sparser application of sound deadening material heightens the mechanical activity while the lost weight increases the hair-trigger response of the engine. The 11.0: 1 compression ratio helps that response and, together with the impressive low speed urge, gives the feeling that the car has begun to accelerate somewhere between the moment you think you want more power and the time your foot is coming down on the loud pedal. I never thought I would find myself describing a four-cylinder Porsche engine this way!
Low speed urge is one thing, but this big banger four fairly soars round to the red line with gusto as well, giving the fie to the belief that a four-cylinder motor over 2.4-litres cannot be made smooth. It is those Lanchester balancers at work again. The two contra-rotating shafts perform a minor miracle in smoothing out the secondary vibrations produced by an in-line four, and thanks to the variable valve timing, the big four seems to produce better torque than most 3.0-litre sixes of similar capacity. More than that, it is stunningly economical. During the period when I was not driving it hard - and that is difficult - I was getting close to 30mpg!
I am not a fan of variable power-assisted steering. It works very badly on all the Japanese cars I have driven that feature it loudly in their sales material, and I was not enamoured with BMW's first attempt at it in the oldshape 7-Series either. I hardly noticed the Porsche system on the 968 Club Sport, and that is a good sign. The most important thing about any steering system is that it should be perfectly related to the turn-in rate of the chassis. It should also insulate your hands from road shock while relaying the right amount of information to the helm so that a driver can make value judgements on the road surface and of course the amount of slip when the car is on the limit.
In these respects, the steering and chassis of the Club Sport are I just about perfect. The ride is firm, but not uncomfortable, and the responses are totally linear. You just need to lightly palm the wheel and think the car round corners. It turns in crisply and goes round like it is on rails with a mild stabilising understeer. Push harder and the car goes neutral up to the point where the tyres start to protest. A fraction more speed, and the car moves into gentle oversteer and you can hang the back out and throttle steer it from there. Across country, the punchy engine, slick gearchange and terrific handling balance make it devastatingly quick, but that extra bit of ride comfort helps too. There is no way that the version with Sport suspension could keep up on a bumpy B-road - it would not be able to get its power down properly. There are faster cars that would have trouble keeping up because of their chassis. The Ferrari 348tb, a nervous beast even on a smooth road, would be out of the running very quickly - or in a ditch. And it would take a very good driver to keep up in a pre-993 air cooled Porsche.
As you read this, 968 production, which has been running at four cars a day compared to two a day for the 928, has come to an end and the production lines are being re-jigged for the Boxster. There are enough cars to feed markets through the summer though, so there is still time to grab a Club Sport.
The Club Sport version was responsible for a renaissance in the slow 968 sales in the UK, and latterly, a UK-only Sport version which bridges the gap between the CS and the normal 968 was introduced. It is the Sport and Club Sport which have been most successful in sales terms. The Sport typifies Porsche's flexible approach to different markets. Suggested by Porsche Cars GB as a suitably specified and priced model for our market, the factory was able to accommodate the trim changes on their production line to cope. "As long as no mechanical changes are necessary, the factory is very flexible this way," Porsche Cars GB's MD, Kevin Gaskell explained.
Of the 924/944/968 models, the 924 Carrera GTS has already achieved classic status because of its rarity, but of the later cars, the 968 Club Sport stands head and shoulders above the rest because of its outstanding dynamic abilities and terrific value for money when new. The worth of the car has been endorsed by its outstanding residual values, and in its first year on the market it Was not unusual to find used cars selling for almost new list price!
If you were to put a Club Sport up against a Ferrari 348tb on a race track the Porsche, at a third of the price, is almost as fast in a straight line but leaves the Ferrari for dead on handling. And in terms of build quality and reliability, it is no contest. Such value is what Porsches are all about, but as a total package the 968 Club Sport is one of the greatest sports cars of all time.The author would like to thank Peter Bowden and John Titcombe for their help with technical information provided for this feature.
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