Damian in NJ

In the October Thoroughbred and Classic Cars is a very nice article on Club Sports, featuring a Maritime Blue car. It even says on the magazine cover 'Why it should top your list of Porsches to own'.

grants_968

In a future month the 968 article might be online. Very happy to see continuing press coverage of our 968. Press coverage of course is a big driver of values and sales, which the new models enjoy.

While exploring the magazine's web site I came across an interesting artice, very relevant for us in the humid deep south, on how to properly store your car in a garage. I learned a thing or two

Classic Cars Magazine's article "Your garage is killing your car!

ckathens

Do we really want to see the value and sales go up!? Haha.. Well now that I actually own a 968, I guess it would be nice ot have the value go up... But maybe we should be keeping this jewel our little secret.

Alex Cook

I've seen that car at a few concours events. It's absolutely stunning

gnosis

Finally, the best handling Porsche ever is getting the recognition it deserves!

Clayton

richard glickel.

Clayton,

Did Porsche sell the CS in each of the 4 years of 968 production?

Do the CS suspension & brakes differ at all from the M030 option available on non-CS cars?

Thanks.

Richard

gnosis

The CS was introduced in 1993. As far as I know, the M030 option is the same for 968 and 968CS, although when I was looking to buy my car there were two left in Australia, and both were claiming to be Club Sports, but the car I ended up buying was the only one of the two with cross drilled rotors. I have noticed also that the 968 Sport, which is only available in Britain, claims to have M030 suspension but it doesn't have cross drilled rotors. So there may be some differences in the M030 specification.

The other thing that most people don't realise is that some Club Sports came with options. All Australian cars were delivered with air conditioning, and that means they all got the normal wiring harness instead of the light weight one other Club Sports got. Mine also has central locking and power windows, which would be difficult to put in a "basic" Club Sport because the wiring harness won't support them. Mine has rear seats and normal cloth trimmed front seats, instead of the racing bucket seats and covered over rear seat areas in some Club Sports. Nonetheless, mine is a real Club Sport according to its VIN. If you got in early enough to order yours from the factory, you could even specify the colour you wanted, so even though the literature says Club Sports only came in white, red, black, yellow, and blue, you will see other colours around too, but they must be rather rare.

Sorry I can't be more definitive on the M030 question. I'd like to know for sure myself, so I hope someone else can add their comments to this thread.

Clayton

david968s

Clayton - The Sport doesn't have MO30 as standard. Essentially the Sport was a CS with rear seats, comfort seats in the front (like yours) central locking, electric mirrors, windows and boot release, and of course the heavier wiring loom. It sounds like your CS is basically Sport spec with Aircon! The Sport was a reaction by Porsche UK to the fact that many CS's were being specced back up like yours was, so they created a CS with all the most popular options and called it a Sport.

Hope that clears things up! Interesting info about CS colours. I know of a metallic silver one in Spain, but have never seen a CS in the UK that wan't one of the standard colours!

Cheers,
Dave

Damian in NJ

That Maritime Blue one in the article had to be specially ordered, right? I thought Riviera Blue was the blue picked for the CS.

david968s

Perhaps it was the case that they were only (supposedly) available in solid colours - and there was two types of solid blue? I reckon I have seen more Riviera than Maritime blue CS's around, but there are a number of both in the UK.

I too have seen the car in the article and it is very smart indeed!

wjk_glynn

Hi Clayton,

It's more accurate to say that it was the best handling Porsche of its era (certainly better than the 964 and 993), but it cannot hold the claim of best ever. That title is now held by the 996 GT3. That shouldn't surprise anyone. In fact, if the Porsche engineers didn't make improvements after more than a decade of development, I'd be seriously worried!!!

The 968 was the last application of rear-trailing arm suspension by Porsche, and the 968 CS w/M030 was their best ever implementation of that setup. But that suspension architecture had reached the end of its useful development life and multi-link was seen as the future.

The 993 brought in multi-link rear, but the implementation wasn't perfect. The problem was that there was a lot of bushings in the backend. The end result was that you could get quite a bit of lateral heave in the rear end. It was also very sensitive to alignment...

But they nailed it with the 996. (and especially the GT3 versions). And from all the initial reports I've read on the 997S, they've made even more gains with the new active suspension and steering (far better than BMW's implementations BTW).

Now a lot of people bring up the rearward weight bias of a 911 as a negative in terms of handling. It's not actually the rearward weight bias that is the problem (E.g. F1 cars have a large rearward weight bias). It is the the fact that the 911 is rear engined, and so you end up having considerable mass concentrated in the worst place for directional stability. In addition, rear-engines make it difficult to add rear-diffusers. That's why Ferrari doesn't have to add rear-wings to the 360 or 430, like Porsche still has to do with its current 911's.

But given enough time, Porsche has engineered solutions (e.g. trick differentials with 100% lockup on overrun, etc.) that have overcome most of those problems, to the point that the current cars have moved on past the 968.

Now, that doesn't take anything from the 968 and if you decide to go aftermarket, there are improvements to be had from Moton, JRZ, etc. But the 996 GT3 is now the king of the handling hill...

Karl.

Alex Cook

Maritime Blue was a 92/93 colour, and Riviera Blue replaced it for 94/95.

Maritime gets my vote

Thom

I would be interested to know in how the VIN indicates if a 968 is a Lux or a CS.

Alex Cook

13th digit of VIN is 1 on a CS, 0 on a Euro coupe and 2 on a US coupe.

gnosis

I wouldn't know, since I can't afford to buy a 996 GT3 for comparison purposes. Have you driven both? Fast?

I'll wait for the day someone beats me in 996 GT3 without relying on the extra horsepower to do it (since it has an extra 50% to cloud the issue).

I expect I'll be waiting for some time, multi linked rear end notwithstandng. But rest assured, when it happens I'll post on here and admit you're right.

Of course it could be a while before it happens simply because 996 drivers are so nervous. In the back of their minds, playing tricks with them, is the ever-present fear that the rear end is going to let go without any notice. All they have to do is have second thoughts mid-corner, and they're history.

Hey, who can blame them? After all they're driving a car that's been fundamentally flawed in design for all these years and requires space shuttle engineering in its butt just to make sure it arrives at the accident scene nose first.

Clayton