MCP MOTORSPORT TESTIMONIALS
911 & Porsche March 2005
LIGHT STEED
This month's Buyers Guide to the 964-model RS should have convinced you that you need one of these iconic modern Porsches. If not, says Brett Fraser, then a few miles at the wheel of a rare Club Sport ought to do the job.
Light-alloy wheels borrowed from the then contemporary 911 Turbo help the looks along, stuffing the arches to the point where they seem certain to burst, but it's the way that the RS seems hunkered down onto terra firma that gives it such visual punch. It's as though the car is squatting close to the earth, digging its rubber claws into the surface to get the maximum possible grip. The posture doesn't seem as forced as it can with other lowered cars, and the body isn't embellished with massive spoilers and wings. It looks natural and athletic; this is a car with honed musculature, not some bodybuilding showoff.
.Fast cars that don't flaunt their ability always fill you with a sense of expectation, and the sensation is heightened when it's an RS you're walking up to. You'll have noticed that the car in our photos isn't standard. In fact, it's a race-specification RS Lightweight and has centre-lock wheels, a full roll-cage, competition seats and a fire-extinguisher system, but the driving experience that we'll be talking about from here on in refers to the standard road car. If you can actually call a 964 RS 'standard', that is.
Wrap an index finger around the slender, black door handle and press the trigger-style door catch; the door pops open and swings out with that visible lack of inertia that accompanies a lightweight item. The door doesn't feel at all flimsy, though, merely unencumbered with the mass endemic to electric window motors, central-locking mechanisms and soundproofing. The flat, black-vinyl door-trim panel confirms that this is a car with a clear focus, although the brightly coloured fabric pull-strap that operates the door handle shows that Porsche isn't entirely without a sense of humour.
Whether you'll find the seat upholstery equally amusing is open to debate. You can't see it in the pictures here - although you will in our buyers' guide that starts on page 54 - but the leather of the standard-fit Recaros is in a selection of slightly gaudy hues. It's a ready identifier for an RS interior, but not to everyone's taste, particularly the varying shades of pink and purple that upholstered the blue-painted RSs.
The seats themselves also take a bit of getting used to. They have enough fore-and-aft movement, but their backs are fixed into a position that many people might find overly upright to begin with. Persevere, though, and you'll find them - despite thin padding -comfortable even for long journeys, while the upright driving position they force you to adopt actually makes the controls easier to manage, particularly the steering. The Recaros' deep side bolsters require some clambering over when you get into the car, yet once you've slipped within their embrace you're locked in situ no matter how wild the driving gets.
Again you'll need to refer back to the buyers' guide for a photo, but the standard four-spoke, flat-dished steering wheel seems disappointingly humdrum after the fanciful - if undeniably practical - seating arrangement. Furthermore it obscures a section of the off-centre speedometer (the dials in general are further obscured by annoying reflections). And yet, certainly to hold, the wheel's diameter and rim thickness are spot-on.
While the lightweight door hints at missing sound-deadening material, when the engine woofles into life there's graphic confirmation of the fact. It's not that the RS is deafening, although it is much louder than the standard car; more that there's greater clarity and detail to the sounds it makes. You're now exposed to mechanical nuances that you probably won't have heard in a regular 964: the thrashing of valvegear, the gnashing of gears and when you get the plot on the move, the inevitable clunking of suspension.
Don't mistake the additional din for harshness, though, because it's mainly the stuff that soundproofing filters out from the standard car. That said, the racket from the RS (suspension, tyres and engine) can be wearing on motorway journeys. Not that motorways are likely to feature large on the driving agenda of your average RS owner. This is a car for back roads and race circuits.
According to the published figures the RS has a modest 10bhp more than the standard 250bhp Carrera 2, and at 1230kg (in the case of the Lightweight) is 10 per cent lighter, but the way the car bounds down the road suggests that either one or both of those statistics is wrong. Doubtless the enhanced audio package subjectively adds considerable spring to the RS's step, but there's more to it than sensory deception. In the low to mid-range when you tickle the throttle pedal the RS leaps unhesitatingly to your command because with less mass to shift, the torque can play its role more effectively. And there's a real willingness to this 3.6-litre flat-six, too, an ability to rev clean and fast from about 3000rpm right through to the red-line.
Just like the body shell, the RS's engine speaks of lean muscle and brisk response, neatly in tune with the rest of the car's dynamics and its overall flavour. And you could easily make a case for this being the best that the flat-six has ever sounded, its deep-throated wail delivered with a controlled violence that grows more intense the harder you rev it. Few engines of any configuration or capacity seem more in tune with the desires of an enthusiastic driver, or more complementary to the car in which they are installed. And it means that on a circuit, where you have the space and probably the time to experiment, the RS's throttle response and accessible power and torque are allies in learning how to balance the handling with the throttle.
Out on the open road what the engine provides is the means to thunder away from an apex with the zeal of a cheetah with the scent of lunch in his nostrils. Even if you've messed up your cornering line you can go some of the way to covering your mistake by simply planting the throttle and letting the engine's monstrous energy retrieve the lost pace.
What helps immensely here are the RS's traction and outright roadholding, which between them allow you to capitalise on the accelerative forces. As familiarity breeds confidence in the RS you'll find yourself entering corners with increasing gusto, reapplying the power earlier as you discover, a step at a time, how much grip there is in reserve. The normal laws of physics can't be bypassed, but unlike modern four-wheel-drive rally replicas like the Subaru Impreza Turbo the RS doesn't encourage you to think that it's going to take you all the way to paradise on your first date together.
While the RS stops short of edginess when driven hard it has that light, delicacy of steering and flick-flack agility that simultaneously engender exhilaration and slight wariness in the driver. You're enjoying yourself, but aren't so foolish as to believe that you might not get bitten. And in that respect the 964 RS reveals its shared DNA with the fabulous 2.7 RS.
Having mentioned its famous forebear, it's worth also opining that the 2.7 RS remains (perhaps, and wait for the heated debate) the greatest 911, but the 964 iteration runs it very close second. The 964 certainly feels a far more modem machine, one that you can drive today and not have to make any mental excuses about its age, particularly in the braking department, but also in its sheer pace from point to point. You have to drive it with sweaty-browed commitment, yes, but the 964 RS is as fast on real-world roads as just about any other car you care to mention, including some of the more modern 911s.
All of which might lead you to wonder why the 964 RS isn't more of an iconic 911 than it has been until this point. The answer is simple: bad press about its suspension when it was new. The RS's springs and dampers are pit-lane stiff, and compared with rivals at the time were seen as just too uncompromising for road use. Combine that with the fact that the RS then cost £13,000 more than a contemporary Carrera 2, and you begin to understand why the reception for this particular Porsche had a certain icy chill to it. After the first few lukewarm reviews of the RS on the road - it fared a whole lot better when the test was restricted to the track - the press seemed to pass it over and move on to other things, helping to make the 964 very much the forgotten 911.
Curiously, though, when you drive the RS today the ride quality doesn't seem so bad. Yes, the suspension is robustly firm, and no, it doesn't like urban acne, and it can be jiggled off line a little through particularly bumpy bends, but you can't dismiss it as unacceptably harsh and jarring. Obviously the RS's suspension has become no softer over time, but what has happened is that car suspension in general has become ever stiffer in order to cope with the fact that modem motors weigh so much and go so quickly. The process has been slow enough that we haven't noticed it happen. Compared with a modern sports car the RS simply feels like one of the gang, rather than a rough-riding rogue.
It's taken time, but the 964 RS has finally come of age, an achievement reflected in its escalating prices. For too long overlooked, this sharply focused 911 embodies everything Porsche represents - involvement, speed, pleasure, agility, and pure driver satisfaction. If your heart is set on buying one let your head confirm that the decision is the right one.
Race relation
Since it was designed as an homologation special to allow Porsche to compete in Group 'N' rallying and GT racing, and consequently featured a number of competition-specification components, it's no surprise that many 964 RSs were converted for circuit use. Such is the case with the car featured here, which although road-legal was used primarily for racing by its previous German owner.
Other than its after-market race wheels, externally it looks fairly standard, but inside a massive roll-cage instantly gives the game away. You'll also notice the competition seats, full-on fire-extinguisher system, a selection of trip computers and telemetry equipment, and a crude piece of ducting to direct air to the driver's face for additional cooling during a race. And you'll also spot the complete absence of carpets, and any sort of trimming in the rear of the cabin.
As is the way with race cars the driver's seat is mounted very low, and with one's movement restricted first by the seat's massive bolsters and second by the four-point harness this RS has certain drawbacks for road use. A further handicap is a racing clutch that behaves much like a light switch - it's either on or off, in other words.
Once you've got a bit of clear road ahead, though, you can start to enjoy the drive. With a bare metal floor the cabin's even noisier than that of a standard RS Lightweight, but since the sound is a mixture of hardcore mechanical music and demented flat-six scream it's a din you can easily learn to live with, and ultimately to savour.
Being that bit closer to the road, and with no cushioning in the seat, you feel every last lump and bump in the road surface through the seat of your pants, but, it also means that you feel attached to the chassis and in tune with how it's behaving. For our photoshoot the rain in north Norfolk was pelting down, but the racing RS inspired enough confidence for us to push on far harder than we'd have thought possible in the conditions.
Despite being even stiffer than standard the ride wasn't impossibly harsh, while the upgraded brakes - although requiring a manful prod to goad them into action - were extremely strong and progressive.
Martin Pearse of MCP Motorsport, a specialist in left-hand-drive Porsches of all kinds, and other quick German machinery (see also page 77 of the February 2005 edition), admits that there's a bit of work to do on this Ferrari Yellow Club Sport-specification machine to make it 100 per cent, but once that's done this should be an awesome trackday or club-racing car.
Pearse currently has the car up for sale at £37,995, and you can contact him on
07957 856281, or else visit his website at www.mcpmotorsport.com
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