Ian Harris

Shoreham, UK

@harrisclassics

I love the Porsche world; through social media, Whatsapp groups and local car meets everyone seems to know someone, or a car that someone owns that might be for sale, or a friend that knows someone that knows! In my last column I had commented that I was missing a 964 in the stable and how hard it was to find a nice example, let alone a manual C2 Coupe that seems to be rarer than the 964 RS at the moment.

I’d put the word out to a few friends – there is a group of 964 owners that I go to the Alps driving with, and through a friend of a friend I got sent details of a black C2 manual Coupe that had been upgraded. I was sent some pictures and before I knew it I was off to view.

The owner was lucky enough to have been allocated a 992 GT3 and took me for a drive. It was a great car, lovely spec in Agate grey, the interior was stunning and I was really impressed. It’s almost an everyday GT3, it had only covered 100 miles so the drive was short and sweet but gave me an idea of what it was capable of.

As a result of his new toy, this black 964 was potentially up for sale and I was warned it wasn’t going to be cheap. The owner Ben, lovely chap, chucked me the keys to the 964 and off I went for a test drive, I knew it was going to be special from the spec and upgrades and I wasn’t wrong! Having been lucky enough to own a 964 RS and also a very well-built 964 RS recreation from RS parts, it had a lot to live up to and without any doubt it’s the best 964 I’ve ever driven. The deal was done within minutes for me to buy it.

So what makes this such a special car? First there is the engine: it’s now a 3.8 Porsche-built engine at great expense, which was tuned by the wellknown independent specialist RPM Technik. They fitted 993 Varioram and various other performance parts, plus full MOTEC engine management, to produce a 329bhp engine with instant pick-up and bottom-end torque. This was then fitted with a Race System exhaust with equal headers that simply sounds superb.

Some other upgrades include the 964 Turbo brakes all round, electric air conditioning from Classic Retro Fit, a set of Recaro pole positions, fully adjustable Öhlins suspension, Elephant Racing steering, suspension parts and possibly the best upgrade for me, a six-speed close ratio gearbox.

I love 964s and if I had to write down all the upgrades that I would do, they have already been done to this car. Don’t get me wrong, the car wasn’t cheap, but I’ve saved a lot of time and money buying it already done. With all my cars I still like to modify and make them my own, so I have a long list of jobs that I want to do to the car, including paint correction, different wheels and a clean up of the interior. I’ll look forward to sharing my updates and modifications with you next month, now I need to drive this superb 964 as much as possible!