Zirconocene

This may be a little random but as it's basically Friday afternoon here (apologies to those not in the US, or that have to work on Friday after the holiday). I was looking at the forum name and got to wondering about the naming scheme for the various flavors of models.

I have 2, maybe 3 questions:

1) Would a 968 Turbo have been a 975?
2) Why the 7 digit offset between N/A and Turbo variants?
3) Is the 968 named as it is so as not to be confused with the 911 line variants? I would assume that the follow up to the 944 would be, from a consistency standpoint, the 964.

Like I said, a bit random, but I like words and language and this is similar...

Any historians out there that can chime in?

DSMblue

Interesting questions, but I believe most of the naming conventions are from internal Porsche project codes. What isn't mentioned in the forum name is the 937, which is the project code name for the 924 Carrera GT and variants. Your observations are entirely rational. 964 was already taken for the current iteration of the 911 that was a contemporary of the 968. No idea why there was a 7 digit offset for project numbers for Turbo variants in the transaxle cars. For 911's, first Turbo was a 930, so 19 digit offset there. I wonder if more of the history would point to something like 900 series, 2 door, 4 cylinder = 924? That type association would make for a neat fit with the 928 = 900 series, 2 door, 8 cylinder.

FrenchToast

No. What is your thinking behind this? Is it from below?

There is a reason for the 924 and 931 numbers, it has nothing to do with the arithmetic difference. The 924 is named such because it was part of Porsche's 2nd generation of cars, and used a 4 cylinder engine. This was the original logic assigned to cars after the 901 and 902. This logic didn't last long however. Karl Rabe was the person who assigned many of the numbers, as I recall. I imagine he was often confused as to how to apply logic to all of Porsche's developments.

The 931 received a separate number because of the major changes. 931 was the first available number representing the third generation of chassis development.

The 968 would have likely been named 964 had the name not already been taken. The 968 was originally to be called a 944 S3, but they decided at the last minute the extent of the changes (especially the visual ones) warranted a new name. The 8 was likely used to relate to the 928.

The origin of the 964 number is for the 6th generation* of Porsche designs and its use of 4WD upon debut (2WD was available the following year). The 2WD version was not called a 962 because that was already taken.

*By this time, sequential generations were pretty loose. Future numbers would no longer reflect a chronology of chassis development.

The 964 number was already assigned by 1988, and they did not decide to rename the 944 S3 until ~1990.
_

The history and logic behind the numbers is fairly complex. Most of the 900-series numbers are actually occupied; not many are 'open.' Porsche has already started to use alphanumeric codes because there aren't enough empty slots.

901 (the genesis of 9##) was originally chosen in the same way as the 356 - for appearance. 356 was chosen in an attempt to make people think Porsche had worked on 355 prior designs (they had done a few dozen, but not 355!). I'm not sure who they fooled. It was presumably chosen also for its sound and visual appearance. 901 was chosen in much the same way.

If you'd like to learn more about the history, I suggest Karl Ludvigsen's book Excellence was Expected.

The numbers occupied by the 924 family are
924
925*
931
932*
933
937
938*
939
941
942*
944
945*
946
947*
949
951
952*
968

*These are +1s for RHD vehicles. They are less an actual model and more a way to distinguish certain parts that are RHD-specific.

This method isn't uncommon for many models that have major and specific parts for a certain application. These numbers are sometimes 'overwritten' or shared by other models. For example, a 942 technically refers to a special four-door 928.

Zirconocene

That's a fantastic answer, and a great link to go read some more. Thanks!