PORSCHE CARRERA CS
The PORSCHE CARRERA CS
Glancing quickly around, you will probably surmise that it's just another ordinary 911 (if any 911 can be considered 'ordinary'). Yes, there's that familiar five-dial instrument pack in unimaginative but functional black. And that equally familiar but still gorgeous view down the valley formed by the headlamp tunnels on the front wings.
The starter motor has the same Lewisgun chaffer you've come to know and love, but it feels closer - immediately behind the seat, in fact. Barely has this registered before the sound of the engine bursts through into the cabin, as if leaping for your throat like some half-starved wolf. Once again, it's a familiar sound, but louder - all the better for you to hear its complexities.
So, you deduce, no sound insulation; this could be interesting. Next you blip the throttle. As you do so the flat-sik spools up and down as crisply as any 3.2 Carrera's, so no real clues there, but somehow its voice is more appealing. So appealing, in fact, that you have a sudden and irresistible urge to drive this car, to hear this glorious engine sing at the very top of its range.
The clutch is fairly heavy, but this is obviously a machine designed to offer its best sensations and feedback when driven hard, and you suspect that the pedal action will be perfect when it really matters. You were half-expecting the gear change to require the same deliberate movement, too, but you soon discover that it needs nothing more than fingertip pressure to snick neatly from one ratio to another.
The next surprise isn't quite so encouraging, though. Something must be fouling the steering, you decide, because the front tyres aren't under-inflated, and yet you can barely move the leather-trimmed wheel. This could be hard work. Suddenly the warm glow of anticipation has dimmed just a little; now you've realised that to get the best from this car you'll have to adapt to it.
And it's the same story with the brakes: a rock-hard pedal, and clearly not much in the way of servo assistance, neither confidenceinspiring nor particularly conducive to heel-and-toe gear changes. But then you begin to extend the engine a little, to explore the enormous range of its performance, and suddenly its aural offerings connect directly with those little hairs on the back of your neck. This is more like it - the hard work could be worth it in the end.
Indeed at 4800rpm the engine suddenly seems to connect directly with your eardrums, the deeper resonance signifying a blitzkrieg assault not only on the arbitrary limit printed on the tachometer dial, but also the 6840rpm rev-limiter itself. Even at this rarefied level, though, there is no discernible drop in power. Yesss! This is going to be fun with a capital ‘F’!
Fortunately for your driving liscence you are on a rudimentary racing circuit - Jurby, on the Isle of Man, to be precise - so it’s safe to make your learning curve a steep one. At a gallop, now that the car is fully warmed through, the steering is alive and beautifully communicative, and despite that heavy low speed steering the nose of the car now seems to respond even more smartly than that of a regular 3.2.
And the brakes, with heat in the pads at last, have more bite, more feel, and much more power. Can they really be the standard items? Heel-and-toeing becomes more natural as pedal pressures increase, and it looks as if the brakes are going to be allies after all. And by now you are getting the hang of it all: hard on the brakes, then delicately back on the featherweight throttle. Lightly does it with your left hand on the gear lever, then back on the steering wheel with some real determination as you approach the next corner.
And so it develops, a bonding process in which every one of the car’s characteristics that initially seemed an obstacle becomes as natural and instinctive as breathing. When, after a period of intense concentration through a series of bends taken at the limit of the tyre’s grip, you have time to think about what you are doing, the realisation dawns that you just don’t want to stop driving this machine. Ever.
Can any car really justify such sentiment? The legendary Carrera 2.7RS was lionised at launch (and ever since) because it drove like a dream, thanks largely to the deletion of all non-essential equipment and also because of its optimisation (as Porsche might have put it) for track work.
Here was a homologation special that you could drive on business all week, then, come the weekend, drive to a circuit and (if you knew what you were doing) race to victory. MPVs? They’re just vans with windows and a few extra seats; the Carrera RS was the original - and by far the best - Multi Purpose Vehicle.
Much the same can be said to have applied to the 911 Carrera Club Sport when it was launched some 15 years later, so, back in 1999 again, why not view it in much the same light?
Timing, really. In 1973 the Carrera RS burst upon an unsuspecting motoring public and captured its imagination like almost no other Porsche since. In 1988, though the dramatic-looking Speedster was fresh, and beside these the 911 Carrera Club Sport looked like nothing so much as a rather cynical decal job with some almost painfully bright-red-centred wheels.
Hardly surprising, then, that one of the best ever built arrived almost unnoticed except by those fortunate enough to be able to road-test it ... and by those genuine enthusiasts who for 15 years had been waiting patiently for Porsche to make just such a 911 all over again.
So what exactly had Zuffenhausen changed to make the Club Sport such a dramatically different animal from the standard 3.2 Carrera? For a start, every Club Sport engine was 'blueprinted', that is to say assembled using components manufactured as closely as possible to the exact dimensions the designer specified.
Now all Porsche engines are made to exacting tolerances, so it would seem difficult, if not impossible, to improve upon themBut given time for tasks such as the careful selection of six perfectly matched pistonsfrom a batch of, say, a hundred, the balancing of every reciprocating component, the matching of compression ratios between cylinders, and a host of other tweaks, it is possible to make useful, measurable gains
Where the black art of the skilled engine builder adds even more power is in screwing together all the aforementioned parts in order to achieve the minimum of internal resistance to rotation. So a genuinely blue-printed engine should not only spin faster without complaint, but it should also produce more torque - and, therefore, more power across the entire rev range.
Porsche claimed no more horsepower from the Club Sport engine than for its standard 3.2-litre unit of the period, although reliable sources suggests dynamometer figures of 245bhp, a useful increase over the 231bhp of a stock 911 Carrera. Incidentally, the cylinder barrels and heads of these blur printed Club Sport powerplants were all stamped ‘SP’ for identification, and a seemingly minor but actually quite significant internal change was the adoption of lighter, hollow-stemmed inlet valves.
In order to take advantage of this imptoved buid-quality Porsche specified a revised DME engine-management system. Among the other things, this raised the rev-limit to 6840rpm, although in practice thid still seems far too low. So good was the blue-printing process, in fact, that these engines invariably feel as if they will continue to pull way beyond that limit.
So Porsche now had a peach of a power unit, but how best to take advantage of it? Easy: give the G50 five-speed transmission taller fourth and fifth gears (operated by a short-throw shift lever), fit a limited-slip differential to control wheelspin, and not least Bilstein dampers for firmer body control and then take a long, hard look at the rest of the car’s constituent parts remove-or simply omit - anything remotely superfluous.
Sunroof? Not just an unnecessary luxury, but a feature that brought a significant reduction in the body shell's torsional rigidity. Strike that. Difto the rear seats. Oh, and sir won't be needing electric height adjustment for the Sport front seats, will he? That's four servo motors and their attendant wiring gone. Four more vacate the doors: two for the windows, and two smaller ones for the central-locking mechanism.
Rear screen wiper? The way this car begs to be driven, nothing but another Porsche will remain behind you for long on a wet road, so a slightly blurred view won't be a problem. Headlamp washers? The way this car accelerates means that you won't be stuck behind anything long enough for them even to think about collecting dirt.
Those heavy recoil-bumper struts can be replaced with simple brackets - no town car, this - and most of the sound insulation can be scrapped, which means the rear speakers might as well go, too. They’ll never be able to compete with that glorious flat-six in all its undamped vocal might.
Now it becomes a little harder. A less comprehensive cabin heating system helps, then it's down to real nit-picking detail such as losing the passenger’s sun visor, the coat hooks, the lids of the door pockets, and even - get this - the courtesy lights under the front and rear lids.
Amazingly, someone even went to the trouble - and what must have been the considerable expense given the reatively small numbers involved - of commissioning a space-saver spare wheel in lightweight aluminium alloy. That must have saved all of a couple of kilogrammes.
In most markets in which the CS was sold the passenger-door mirror and PVC-based underbody sealant were notable for their absence, while UK-specification cars gained a fabric-covered plywood luggage shelf to mimic that formed by the lowered rear-seat backs in more portly versions of the 911. Curiously, they retained a glovebox lock, too: clearly there were some luxuries we Brits were considered unable to live without!
UK cars also came with front and rear so-called Sport Equipment spoilers, and 16inch colour-coded Fuchs light-alloy wheels. All of these additions and subtractions were, for the rather arcane purposes of Porsche's internal bureaucracy, lumped into one option package: M637.
Obsessive? Unnecessary? Quite possibly - not least because any theoretical weight loss would be more than wiped out by the addition of even a relatively small passenger- but at the same time there's absolutely no denying the veracity of the racer's old addage: for speed add lightness.
And the CS is lighter than a standard 3.2 Carrera. On paper the difference is a mere 50kg or so, but thats relative to a basic car with no options. Ever seen one like that? Thought not. In truth, at 1160kg the Club 100kg lighter than a modestly equipped 3.2, and that's why it manages a quarter of a second off the latter's 0-62mph time, and nearly a full second off its time to l00mph.
The CS has stunning mid-range flexibility too. Accelerating from 50 to 70mph in fifth gear takes just 7.4 seconds, hot on the heels of the 1996-model 993 with its 285bhp Varioram engine, and positively annihilating the 1997-model of the same car (which admittedly has taller gear ratios). And these are by no means the only younger Carreras it can embarrass. Make no mistake: the Club Sport is seriously quick
. But we're still not getting anywhere near the heart of its appeal. You can improve the power-to-weight ratio of any 3.2 Carrera if you're willing to spend money in the engine and junk half the electrics, but you still won't end up with a machine nearly as agile or half as enjoyable as the Club Sport.In fact, there's enormous scope for getting it expensively wrong and such fundamental medling with 911's is strictly for the brave and financially unchallenged.
Even so, the factory attempt still has some way to go before we are fully convinced. We know the Club Sport works beautifully on the smooth surfaces of a circuit, but how will it fare on the open road? Cars which excel on real roads quite often become extremely blunt instruments on the track, and the opposite is just as frequently true. But here on the Isle of Man the roads are refreshhingly limit-free away from civilisation, so we should be able to find out.
Flexibility is paramount for a good road car. On a circuit you usually know what to expect, and can be in the right gear for it, but on the road it's a different matter. Unless you have a particularly well-developed sixth sence you will sooner or later arrive at a corner that tightens up after you have committed yourself to it, in which case you will rely on the engine's spread of torque to maintain the car's attitude towards the exit.
Here the Club Sport is less able than, say, a 964 Carrera 2 RS but the benefit is that when in the CS you have learned to enter corners a gear lower than normal, you get to hear that inspiring engine note at the very height of its range. this potent but still cultured voice, coupled with the swift gear changge, will positively encourage you to keep everything on the boil; in fact, it's almost irresistible.
The steering, as we've said, feels heavy to the point of vagueness at low speeds. There is a point on the Isle of Man's north-east coast road which highlights this perfectly: the shoreline is fairly straight here apart from a tiny 'V'-shaped inlet whose contours the road hugs faithfully.
In size and shape, the apex of this natural chicane is little different from the purpose built affair on the Jurby airfield circuit, but since it is bounded by shere unforgiving stone, entry speeds tend to be much lower. Muscling the Club Sport throufgh here time and again for the benefit of Mr Robain's camera is hard,unrewarding work, in complete contrast to the joy of hustling through the chicane at Jurby even faster.
Two minor flaws in the Club Sport's armour, then, but you will find no more. Its suspension, potentially the greatest Achilles' heel of any competition bred car away from the circuit, is near perfect. It's taut enough to be fun, yet still absorbant enough to inspire huge confidence on badly ridged and pockmarked bends. You will not be forced off your chosen line by anything other than your own actions.
Given such a perfect balance in this machine, you have to wonder if any of the same people at the factory were involved in the suspension development of the 1992 964 Carrera 2 RS, a car worshipped by dentists the world over for the additional work its rock-hard ride must bring them.
But the Club Sport strikes a balance between road-car civility and race-car tactility in exactly the same way that the original 2.7RS does: it's all about feel, feel, FEEL! Through the steering, through the break pedal, throught the seat of your pants, through your spinal fluid, your eardrums.
Indeed, sometimes
Facts & figures of the 9II Carrera Club Sport
For the most part the CS was structurally and mechanically similar to the contemporary 911 Carrera 3.2. In addition to certain obvious characteristics, the panel below shows the major differences between the two cars
BODY
Two-door fixed-head coups only; fully galvanised
ENGINE
All-aluminium air-cooled flat-six; rearmounted. Two valves per cylinder operated by chain-driven single overhead camshaft per cylinder bank; hollow-stemmed inlet valves. Bosch Motronic DME, and LE-Jetronic sequential fuel injection. Fully blueprinted
Capacity
3164cc
Bore/stroke
95.0mm/74.4mm
Compression ratio
10.3:1
Maximum power
245bhp at 6000rpm (standard 3.2 Carrera develops 231 bhp)
Maximum torque
210lb/ft at 4800rpm (standard 3.2 Carrera produces 207lb/ft)
Output per litre
77.43bhp/66.37lb/ft
Power-to-weight ratio
211 bhp/tonne
Transmission
Five-speed manual only. Taller 4th and 5th gears than 3.2 Carrera (0.965:1 and 0.763:1, respectively). Limited-slip differential fitted as standard
Suspension
Uprated Bilstein gas-pressure dampers front and rear
Brakes
Ventilated discs front and rear, with four-piston calipers
Wheels and tyres
Front:6.0J x 16-inch with 205/55ZR16 Goodyear Eagle tyres
Rear:7.0J x 16-inch with 225/50ZRl6 Goodyear Eagle tyres
(7.0J x 16 and 8.0J x 16 wheels optionally available if required)
Weight
1160kg
PERFORMANCE
Maximum speed 152mph
0-62mph 5.1 secs
0-100mph 13.1 secs
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