Total 911 No. 228

I’ve been doing some digging for a recent 9WERKS online article regarding the lightest water-cooled 911s. Now Porsche has long subscribed to the idea of lighter sports cars being able to upset more powerful brethren on the race track, and that’s why air-cooled 911s have always been famously lightweight. However, the introduction of water-cooling in 1997 brought extra fluids on board the 911, not to mention all the additional plumbing required for it. That development, in addition to ever-tighter safety legislation, has seen the 911 gradually gain in mass over the years. “The most featherlight Porsche 911 of the water-cooled era is, in fact, the very first” But which is the lightest 911 of the modern era? The answer may well surprise you, for it’s not a GT product from…

Paris-Dakar 959 recommissioned One of three 959s that entered the 1986 Paris-Dakar rally has been sympathetically restored to working order by Porsche Heritage The Paris-Dakar rally will need little in the way of introduction to Total 911 readers. Porsche has a long history with the 14,000km (8,700 mile) epic, which calls for entrants to navigate the challenging desert terrain between France and West Africa. In 1986, three Porsche 959s took to the start line. The winning French team of René Metge and Dominique Lemoyne were followed home by Jacky Ickx and Claude Brasseur in 2nd, while a service car driven by project manager Roland Kussmaul and Wolf-Hendrik Unger finished 6th. The Porsche Museum has preserved the trio as part of its collection and now, thanks to the work of Porsche…

STAR CORRESPONDENCE Contact Total 911 Facebook /total911magazine Email editorial@total911.com Pinky’s design? Dear Sir, I’m always surprised no one points out the headlights on Pinky Lai’s 996 design in the studio (see photo). The ultimate headlight on the car wasn’t what he worked up in the studio! Without question the Boxster headlight was mandated by the higher-ups in Porsche due to the fact they were almost bankrupt and simply couldn’t afford a separate headlight/signal light arrangement until much later with the 997. Better to have a Boxster headlight on the 996 at the time than a Toyota 911. Dennis Mazzoni If you look closely at the photograph, you’ll notice that this specific ‘taping’ excercise bears very little resemblance to the production Porsche 996 whatsoever. There’s no adaptive rear spoiler, which…

Interesting and eclectic 911s. That’s our monthly goal with Spotted: to highlight 911s for sale that are a bit different from the norm. This month’s entry is certainly that, and no, it’s not an autocorrect error in the search bar when typing ‘eclectic’, either. The 911 shown above is electric, which might have some of you turning the page already, but bear with us. The 911’s always been a bit of a Meccano set of components that enables not only Porsche itself, but also a countless number of specialists, to create exactly the car they want. You’d not be concerned, then, if this beautifully clean-looking Grand Prix white ’89 Carrera was powered by a 964’s or 993’s flat six, or featured some hot cams, fruity carbs, a bigger capacity or…

Dakar first drive Apparently, the idea for an off-road 911 was first explored with the 991. Development reached the point of running prototypes, but the management got cold feet and the project stalled. It’s me who’s got the cold feet today, though. That’s because I’m standing on the ice track at the Winter Fahr Training centre in Muhr, Austria. It’s evident that the management’s concerns were finally overcome. The 911 Dakar is a production reality – albeit one that’s limited to a run of just 2,500 cars – because there are several of them in front of me. Total 911 has been referring to it for some time as the Safari, and the low-down is that Porsche had intended on calling its new all-terrain 911 exactly that. And this was…

I started with Porsche in 1996,” reveals Frank Moser. That was 27 years ago, in the material technologies department before he transferred to whole vehicle development. There, Frank worked with Wolfgang Dürheimer, then member of the board for research and development, as his assistant. Next, he moved to complete vehicle testing, before Matthias Müller gave him a role in production, overlooking quality at the Zuffenhausen plant. This role was later expanded to being responsible for quality across the entire company. “I have my dream job. Every job I did before was a dream job, because working for Porsche is a dream job,” says Frank. That’s a line we’ve heard many times before, in many interviews with Porsche employees, and it always rings true. Since July 2022, Frank’s dream job changed,…