And so begins the 50th anniversary of the Porsche ‘transaxle’ cars. What better way to get warmed up than by bringing together arguably the two ultimate incarnations of this bloodline: the 928 GTS and the 968 Club Sport.
Understandably, it’s impossible and frankly undesirable to make a direct comparison between the large, V8-powered grand tourer and the stripped back, four-cylinder motivated road racer. Their mission statements couldn't be more widely diverged, but their reasons for existing are so closely tied to a tumultuous period in Porsche’s history, it’s inevitable we should get them sharing road space and they both offer a fascinating take on what made – and still does make – Porsche’s transaxle cars such a beguiling ownership experience. Sometimes the best cars of all spring from great adversity.
That both of these cars arrived in a time of real desperation for the Porsche concern cannot be ignored. It’s easy to gloss over now how close Porsche got to the brink in the early ’90s, where it became dangerously exposed to the prevailing financial hardships at just the time when it had a chaotic and ageing product line-up. There was a humiliating retreat from the WEC-equivalent world of sportscar racing, an American Indycar Championship Auto Racing Teams project that had yielded little in the way of results in return for significant expense, and then there was the absolute debacle of the F1 engine programme with the British-run and Japanese-funded Footwork Arrows team. To paraphrase one Porsche motorsport insider of the old guard: “In just a few years, we’ve destroyed our reputation built up over the previous 40”.
Then there were the road cars. A lack of investment and frustrating setbacks over the previous 10 years had now come home to roost. The 964 was a car that might have taken the world by storm if it had been unveiled when originally intended but, arriving at the end of the decade after the financial crash, it was performing badly in the marketplace. Sales had collapsed, the Carrera RS was so difficult to find buyers for that they were being disposed of through the employee lease scheme at the factory and, after the cancellation of the 965, the 911 Turbo was having to forge ahead in a new decade with embarrassingly antiquated technology. Still, that was the 911 – it was a survivor and we all know how good the cars still actually were.
When it came to the transaxle cars, however, the picture was looking even more bleak. To see our pair of Midnight Blue transaxle beauties together, you wouldn’t think for a moment that there could be anything negative associated with such a glorious duo. However, by the early ’90s, the 928 was suffering while attempting to do battle with more modern rivals such as the Mercedes Benz R129 SL (and the Porsche-developed 500E, for that matter) and the extremely sophisticated BMW 850i.
What actually was the 928, anyway? A car that had been born with the clear mission statement of replacing the 911 as a pure sportscar had morphed, sometimes awkwardly, into a big GT car – a role it had never been designed for. But it couldn’t betray its sports car origins, particularly in terms of ride comfort and NVH (always a 928 bugbear for the press of the time). Then again, for those select few who did understand what the 928 was all about, it was a car without peers; a unique combination of high speed, solidity, performance and comfort. It was the cross-continent muscle car in a sharp suit for those in a hurry, in an era when making such progress was still ‘a thing’.
From a peak of 5,403 units in 1987, 928 production numbers were on the slide. In the UK, the range had settled around the S4 (auto-only) and the manual-only GT, offering the Jekyll and Hyde of 928 performance. The sporty branch of the family had suffered a faltering start, with the Club Sport version selling just 17 units globally (an 18th car is now in circulation) as it attempted to answer a question that no one had perhaps ever asked. In the UK, Porsche GB ordered the cars as a unique SE (Sports Equipment model) that was effectively a Club Sport with some niceties and weight put back in and sold 42 of them. It wouldn’t be the first time such a move was pulled (consider the 968 Sport some year later) and the £55,970 SE begat the slightly more habitable GT but, by the early ’90s, Porsche really needed to consolidate its range because offering three entirely separate model lines in the 964, 928 and 968 really made no sense whatsoever for a small company. The economies of scale were non-existent and unsustainable.
It was against such a backdrop that the GTS model was planned. In this period, top-level management had successively culled much of what would have injected fresh blood into the 928, such as the planned four-door and cabrio models that survive as prototypes and much larger displacement engines up to six litres. Nevertheless, the 928 needed to hang on in a ‘one size fits all sense’ for a few more years, playing both GT and super coupé roles with either gearbox fitted.
Enter the long-stroke, 5.4-litre version of the 32-valve V8, complete with forged connecting rods. Good for 350bhp and 369lb/ft of torque, it certainly placed the 928 firmly back at the top of Porsche’s production car tree, even if the six-speed manual gearbox in development for it was cancelled. New 9” Cup Design alloy wheels required blistered rear arches to accommodate them and the 255/40/ZR17 tyres and the rear wing was colour-coded at the same time, with a reflector linking the rear lights. As the GTS lined up for its March 1992 press launch, it looked as formidable as ever.
It would be hard to find a nicer example of the GTS than Club member Keenan Jenning’s car. Showing around 34,500 miles and with superlative paint, it still cuts a real dash on what has turned into a gloomy, grey autumnal day after a bright and promising start. However, there’s one crucial detail that will dictate so much of today’s driving: it’s an automatic gearbox example. That’s far from unusual – the majority were – but, viewed through a modern lens, it instantly dates the GTS in a way that’s alien to current 911s and other Porsche products. Coupling the V8 to the old four-speed torque converter is nothing like ticking the PDK ’box today and it creates and ensures a very different driving experience. In auto form, the GTS plays the relaxed cruiser but not the sports car, and I’ve set my expectations accordingly. Deep inside, a part of me longs for it to magically transform into the five-speed manual so we can really feel, hear and cherish that classic V8. Never mind.
Sure enough, the GTS is leisurely in the way it moves away from rest. The V8 supplies a gentle woofle in the background but knows its place, and the impression is of a car that’s sturdy and of substantial mass. It’s heavy for the time at 1,650kg, but not particularly so by modern standards. I’m not sure the Warwickshire lanes today are going to play to its strengths. To get the best from the V8 on these roads, you need to use the T-bar shifter and hold it in second or third gear, but the slight jolt when manually moving back up the gears feels like a polite tap on the shoulder that you’re driving the car in a way it doesn’t really like. Many of the road surfaces are poor, exaggerated by heavy cambers and marked with potholes, and the 928 doesn’t feel overly happy, with a lot of bump and thump coming from the rear axle and plenty of road noise.
And yet there are fleeting moments where the GTS reveals plenty about why you might still want to own one. As soon as the road smooths out and the pace rises, it feels much more at home. In fact, the faster you go, the better it gets and not just in a straight line but around more sweeping, flowing curves too. The wheel is still far too much of a stretch away from me (I’d need a spacer in there), but the laid-back driving position now feels amazingly decadent, with the bonnet stretching away to infinity and your view ahead punctuated by those peculiarly round headlamps raised upwards. My mind drifts to the open roads of continental Europe; a French N road, perhaps, feeling the 928 hunker down in a long curve that requires a steering input lasting whole seconds.
The car accrues speed in an endearing fashion. You light the flame and the speed piles on
and on until the numbers are big ones, and even the old automatic ’box suits the experience in this environment. What an evocative car for big road trips. It’s spacious inside too but somehow cosy at the same time, with useful little seats that could double as generous luggage bins behind you and, of course, a unique sense of ’70s/’80s style that goes right down to the large, chunky switchgear. The 928 GTS is simply a wonderful experience.
If the 928 requires a little imagination to place it in its ideal environment, then the other Midnight Blue car here today requires no such mental gymnastics whatsoever. Marcus Siddons’ 968 Club Sport is an intriguing specification, easily explained when you hear it was ordered new for the Japanese market. It’s left-hand-drive, as is the fashion for enthusiasts in Japan despite traffic running the same way as the UK, and its non-sunroof shell has the luxury options of air conditioning, window tints and electric windows. Then again, it also has the standard Recaro bucket seats and, as Marcus tells me later on, it’s as fit as the day it left Germany.
Much like its big brother, the 968 was in difficulty during the early ’90s. Despite the claim that 80 per cent of parts for the 968 were new, the car originally destined to have been called the 944 S3 was struggling for sales in a recessionary market. Also like the 928, it was facing a new breed of rivals, principally from Japan, that offered more power and performance for keen prices – think great driver’s cars like the Nissan 300ZX, the Toyota Supra and the ‘FD’ Mazda RX-7. Against them, the little, four-cylinder, naturally aspirated 968 seemed peculiarly old-fashioned and expensive.
Enter the Club Sport. I won’t go into too much detail about the changes here over the standard car, save to say that anything Porsche felt they could leave out, they did. That includes the rear seats, the electrical assistance of various items and plenty of soundproofing. In the UK, the icing on the cake was that it cost substantially less than the regular 986 coupé too at £28,975 versus £33,547. At a time when Porsche’s brand image in the UK was clearly suffering from the hangover of selling cars in bulk to non-enthusiasts during the previous decade, the little Club Sport was a breath of fresh air – a car very much aimed at driving enthusiasts first and foremost and with a pleasingly simplistic approach to the task, from the bold primary colours to the value price tag.
Today, from the very first moment I pull away in the CS, it is demanding a conversation. Flicking from first to second in the six-speed ’box has elicited a little too much pitch movement on the first few occasions and it’s like sitting down in a pub opposite a friend who’s in the process of telling you some home truths. “Time the shift ever-so-slightly differently”, it says. “Release the pressure on the clutch like this for the smoothest result, okay?”
“Okay then, I will”, I say, and instantly the shift is perfectly slick. Adjustment made, it never happens again because we’re now in sync. I mention this because, in many ways, it’s the cornerstone of what makes the 986 CS one of the greatest Porsches ever made. One of the great performance cars full stop, in fact. Rarely has a car been so in tune with the driver as the CS. It’s a car where every tiny input you make is relayed into something the car does and it communicates in a way that is so utterly beguiling, you feel an immense bond with it after even the first mile.
On these roads, the CS is in its element; the poor surfaces offering no hindrance to how enthusiastically you can pedal it. Not for the CS the cumbersome approach and aggravation of the GTS out here. Instead, it relishes the challenge and the balance of the car – the fundamental rightness of any transaxle Porsche – is here to be experienced to the fullest. The big 3-litre ‘four’ responds so crisply to the throttle that it belies its more modest power output, undoubtedly a corollary of the mass reduction, and so it sings with an appealing twang as it works through the rev range. Not once do I feel myself wishing for more power. To be honest, I just don’t want to stop driving it – every driver interface, from steering to brakes, is sublime.
Just 382 examples of the 928 GTS left the factory in that final year of production, a painfully low number given its position as the Porsche flagship. After nearly two decades, the big coupé had bowed out in considerable style and there certainly wouldn’t be another Porsche like it again. Despite the rumours, Porsche never did decide to make a two-door Panamera coupé, surely the obvious spiritual successor to this car and one that would have been a fascinating character in its own right. And as wonderful to drive as the 968 Club Sport was and is, a niche model couldn’t save the overall 968 model line either. Its life, too, was clearly coming to a close.
There’s an intriguing symmetry in both these cars ending production in 1995, before a new era was ushered in by the Boxster and, soon, the 996. While the ‘transaxles’ are every bit as ‘Porsche’ as what came before or since, the contrast with the ’90s/’00s Wendelin Wiedeking era is absolute. From their build to their tactility, their soundtrack to their style, they really are nothing like the later cars at all. If we must group cars under one man, then just as Wiedeking has his mitts all over that later period, then the transaxle cars – logical, practical and so endearingly Germanic – will forever be associated with Porsche’s boss of the ’70s, Ernst Fuhrmann: the man who was prepared to see the 911 die to make way for his multi-tier range of front-engined cars. That Fuhrmann, their ultimate instigator, should also pass away in 1995 is both ironic and, somehow, highly appropriate. He may be gone, but his legacy has no finer home than in these two great cars.
Keenan Jennings
I think this is a lovely GT car. The power just builds and builds; it doesn’t stop pulling. I bought my first Porsche in 2014, a 997.2 Turbo, and replaced that with a second one in 2016 which I still have. Both this and the 928 can be great GT cars, but they’re so different too. I also had a Macan GTS, which I loved. I am sensitive to the mileage on the 928, but I do want to stretch its legs in continental Europe. I have one eye on the type’s 50th anniversary, which is in 2028.
Marcus Siddons
This car was delivered new to Japan and then went to Dubai, which is where I bought it 13 years ago. I had some great drives in it over there, and then it came back to the UK and sat at Autofarm in storage for five years. It’s had new bushes and dampers, but all to original specification. As a car with A/C, ironically, it has the heavier wiring loom. It’s been to all the big classic events and I can’t think of anything new – other than perhaps an Alpine A110 – that I’d rather have. I hope I never sell it.
This feature was written by Adam Towler and first appeared in the December 2024 issue of our monthly Club magazine, Porsche Post. to receive your copy, as well as enjoying a host of exclusive member benefits and savings.