Together with the Boxster, the version of the 911 with the internal codename 996 secured the continued independence of Porsche exactly 25 years ago.
Fans were amazed when they first laid eyes on it at the IAA International Motor Show in Frankfurt in 1997. It was a car that broke with multiple conventions. With the exception of the heavily modified iconic 911 design and the rear-engined drive concept, everything was new. It used water cooling instead of air cooling and a ground-breaking parts-sharing concept with the 986-generation Boxster meant that up to the B-pillars, the interiors of the 996 and the Boxster were identical. What remained unchanged was the boxer principle of the six-cylinder engine. What was new was the willingness of the engineers and designers to turn much else on its head.
It was time to “break with old habits,” says August Achleitner today. From 1989 to 2000, he served as Head of ‘Technical Product Planning, Vehicle Concepts and Package including Special Projects’ and as such was the strategic head of the overall 996 vehicle concept. “Porsche needed a car in a lower price segment, to help generate a higher volume of sales. So this led to the idea of the Boxster and the 996 sharing parts.” There was no question that the new 911 had to look like a 911 – but which engine would be installed in the rear was not initially clear. “We experimented with the engine because the air-cooled two-valve-per-cylinder designs were at the end of the road technologically in terms of emissions and power,” he explains. “And air-cooled four-valve boxers didn’t work due to various hotspots that we couldn’t get a handle on. In 1989, a compact V8 was even fitted in the rear on a trial basis, but that idea was also discarded. So that brought us to water-cooled, four-valve boxer engines.”
Porsche Newsroom
Fans were amazed when they first laid eyes on it at the IAA International Motor Show in Frankfurt in 1997. It was a car that broke with multiple conventions. With the exception of the heavily modified iconic 911 design and the rear-engined drive concept, everything was new. It used water cooling instead of air cooling and a ground-breaking parts-sharing concept with the 986-generation Boxster meant that up to the B-pillars, the interiors of the 996 and the Boxster were identical. What remained unchanged was the boxer principle of the six-cylinder engine. What was new was the willingness of the engineers and designers to turn much else on its head.
It was time to “break with old habits,” says August Achleitner today. From 1989 to 2000, he served as Head of ‘Technical Product Planning, Vehicle Concepts and Package including Special Projects’ and as such was the strategic head of the overall 996 vehicle concept. “Porsche needed a car in a lower price segment, to help generate a higher volume of sales. So this led to the idea of the Boxster and the 996 sharing parts.” There was no question that the new 911 had to look like a 911 – but which engine would be installed in the rear was not initially clear. “We experimented with the engine because the air-cooled two-valve-per-cylinder designs were at the end of the road technologically in terms of emissions and power,” he explains. “And air-cooled four-valve boxers didn’t work due to various hotspots that we couldn’t get a handle on. In 1989, a compact V8 was even fitted in the rear on a trial basis, but that idea was also discarded. So that brought us to water-cooled, four-valve boxer engines.”
Porsche Newsroom
