OPPOSITES ATTRACT
#Porsche releasing a variant of 911 as if designed to your personal specification, only for you to discover the car is subject to limited-volume production and all purchase slots are taken. In the current climate, with allocations on the manufacturer’s GT order books exchanging hands for big money, this isn’t too difficult to comprehend. And so it was in the mid-1990s, when the 993 GT2 (badged simply as 911 GT) was released to enable Porsche to go racing in the FIA’s GT2 class.
Most prospective purchasers with their nose out of joint would be inclined to move along to the next best thing, but not the owner of the 993 you see pictured on this page. Recognising he was late to the GT2 party, but reasoning the model was based on the 993 Turbo, he bought a standard Turbo and then handed it to the Porsche factory in his native Italy, where the car underwent conversion to GT2 specification. Of the 194 993 GT2s assembled, you can consider this the 195th of its kind. In many respects, the 993 GT2 represents the ultimate evolution of Porsche’s in-house development of the air-cooled flat-six.
Even today, the unit’s performance figures are impressive — 424bhp pitches output only twenty ponies shy of the current 911 Carrera GTS, while a 3.9-second sprint from rest to 60mph makes the 993 GT2 just as quick as a new GT3. This is nothing short of amazing for a factory-configured air-cooled 911 fast approaching its thirtieth anniversary. If the 993 GT2 is the flag bearer for aircooled Porsche performance, this issue’s unrestored 356 A coupe sits at the opposite end of the spectrum. Don’t get me wrong, the breathed-on flat-four powering our cover car benefits from a welcome lift courtesy of a Barry Curtis rebuild, but we’re still talking about a Porsche with only twenty percent of the GT2’s firepower. Does this make the 356 any less impressive? Absolutely not. Does relatively low engine output in any way spoil the driving experience? Nope. That’s the thing about classic Porsches — they come in all flavours. Each of them is utterly brilliant.
