1 964 C4 Lightweight

So rare that you’ve probably never even heard of it, all 20 964 C4 Lightweights represent the epitome of what a reduced-weight 911 should be

Of all Porsche’s lightweight superstars to leave Weissach, none are as hardcore (or rare) as the 964 C4 Leichtbau. Meaning, quite literally, ‘light build’, the Leichtbau was the brainchild of Jürgen Barth, Porsche’s client racing manager. He recommended building it after an American customer suggested that Porsche construct a lightweight, competition-centric variant of the standard road-going 964. Barth secured fewer than 50 orders, with only 20 being built, making this one of the rarest 911s on the road.

The Leichtbau takes its name seriously. It is essentially a stripped-out race car, featuring many motorsport bits from Porsche’s 953 Paris-dakar rally car, including a manually adjustable four-wheel-drive system that allowed the driver to adjust torque front to rear and side to side. The gearbox itself was the low-ratio five-speed from the 953 as well.

The 964 Lightweight starts off with the standard 964 narrow body, but that’s where the normalcy stops. There are numerous examples of how Porsche went to serious lengths to keep the car as light as possible. The doors and boot lid are made of aluminium, the side windows Plexiglass with small, sliding openings, and the side mirrors are small and placed right up along the door panel. The whaletail is made of fibreglass, and there’s zero carpeting around the interior.

The remainder of the standard interior is ditched in favour of Recaro bucket seats, a Matter roll cage, a Momo competition steering wheel and a motorsport-derived hydraulic handbrake. Both the steering and brakes lack power assist, and there are no anti-lock brakes – even more moves to reduce the curb weight. There isn’t even a clock on the dashboard; it was omitted in favour of a piece of Velcro for a stopwatch.

To complement all these weight-reducing measures, Porsche fitted the Leichtbau with additional stiffening welds at the rear of the car. The brake discs and calipers came from the SC RS, and the suspension came from the 964 Carrera Cup car. Tyres are standard spec, and while the wheels may look standard too, they’re actually made of magnesium to lower the 964’s unsprung mass.

The end product was a 1,100 kilogram beast of a car, boasting a 350 kilogram weight drop over a standard 964 C4. This low weight, combined with the 265bhp flat six from the 964 Carrera Cup car, resulted in a power-to-weight ratio of nearly 250bhp per ton. It might be hard to find one, but it’s even harder to catch one off the line!