Porsche 968 Club Sport

The story

By the early 1990s the 968 was being written off as a facelifted 944 with a bigger price, even though it was more than 80 percent new and carried the largest four-cylinder engine in any production car. Porsche answered with the Club Sport for 1993. The rear seats, power windows and mirrors, most of the sound deadening and the airbag wheel all went; fixed-back Recaro buckets, 17-inch Cup wheels and a 20 mm lower ride height arrived. Weight dropped to 1,320 kg (2,910 lb), and Porsche quietly understated the performance to avoid paying for fresh type approval.

Its speed lives in the chassis rather than the engine. With the engine up front and the gearbox at the back, the mass sits almost exactly midway, the steering builds weight progressively, and the car commits to a line early and stays faithful to it. Britain's Performance Car named it Performance Car of the Year for 1993. Production counts are disputed, from about 1,400 to just over 1,900, and none were sold new in the US. When it ended in 1995, the front-engined, four-cylinder Porsche ended with it.