Porsche celebrates 25 years of 911 996

It’s the 25th anniversary of the trailblazing 996, the first water-cooled 911 and the car that helped saved the brand

When Porsche revealed the 996 generation of the 911 at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1997 it was a game changer. The car broke with convention in a number of ways, and wasn’t without controversy. Some 25 years on, Porsche has been fondly recalling that era, with insights from the major players involved in its creation.

With the exception of the rear-engined, rearwheel drive concept, pretty much everything else was novel when it came to the 996. Retaining the principles of the six-cylinder boxer engine, the new 911 broke with Porsche tradition by being cooled not by air, but water. And that wasn’t all. The model also introduced an innovative parts-sharing concept with the 986-generation of Boxster that was launched a year prior, meaning that up to the B-pillars the two cars were identical.

“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,” says August Achleitner, strategic head of the 996 project. “We experimented with the engine because the air-cooled, two-valve-per-cylinder designs were at the end of the road in terms of emissions and power,” he said. “And air-cooled, four-valve boxers didn’t work due to 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.”

Under the direction of Harm Lagaay, the design was a challenge and reflected the look of the Boxster concept car presented at the Detroit Motor Show in 1993. “We mastered it by first designing a number of different Boxster-996 matching parts,” Harm said. “What people forget is that we were working on all three versions – 996, 986 and the concept car – at the same time. Otherwise, it would have taken too long before the public heard about the cars. The pressure and the imperative of saving the company was the top priority,” says Harm.

It came as a surprise to the designers when the press were critical of the car’s headlights. Internally there was never any question and the design had been universally praised in the Boxster concept car not long before. No matter, as the Porsche plan worked, and what followed was the largest mix of 911 variants ever created – from Targa to GT2 and beyond. Porsche would go on to sell approximately 175,000 examples and, 25 years on, the 996 is remembered as a key part of the Porsche 911 story.