C o m p l e t e 9 6 4
HISTORY
The Porsche 911 for the model years 1989 (introduced November 1988) to 1993, designated Porsche 964, was developed in response to the dramatic decrease in sales of the Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2.
In an attempt to win back the old Porsche enthusiast, the company realised that a completely new driving experience would have to be developed, one that would captivate the imagination of the sports car enthusiast. To this end, Porsche decided to embrace the advent of a new concept that Audi had stumbled upon a few years before- four wheel drive in a sports coupe.
The birth of four wheel drive technology within Porsche arrived with the introduction of the Porsche 959, a superlative (and extremely expensive) automobile, loosely based on the 911 but show casing all of the companies highest end technology. After the success of the 959, it was determined that a "working mans" 959 should be developed to take advantage of the reputation gained by the 959 (and it's four wheel drive technology).
And so was born the Carrera 4, Porsche's first foray into an affordable full time four wheel drive performance automobile, and the first of the 964 family. I have since received confirmation that the 911C4 is actually based not on the 959 from which only the steering was inherited, but actually the Porsche 953 which was the AWD version of the 911SCRS or Porsche 954. The 953 was built and rallied in 1983 and 1984 winning the Kenyan Safari Rally. By comparison, the derivative of the 959 transmission was not used in the standard C4. Instead, these 959 derivative transmissions were used in the lightweight C4s (also called the 911 C4RS of which 20 were sold- see [Variants] section).
In the attached pages, you will find a detailed description of the changes made to the 964 when compared to the earlier Carrera 3.2 (produced from 1984 to 1989- the predecessor to the 964), and a brief comparison to the car that replaced the 964, the 993.