What's the rarest Porsche you can think of? Maybe your mind immediately goes to something like the 918 Spyder or a new 911 GT3 RS with the Weissach package. By Porsche standards, those cars are practically falling out of trees in major cities. No, the car I'm thinking of is significantly rarer than that. Porsche only built four examples of the car you see here, the 1993 968 Turbo RS. Just fourteen additional 968 Turbo S' (13 series examples and one prototype) were built as homologation street cars to allow the RS car to race in ADAC GT Cup competition. That's right, Porsche built a unique 3.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine for just 18 cars.
The 968 Turbo RS was on par with, or perhaps even faster than, the speed on offer with Porsche's naturally-aspirated 964-generation 911 Carrera RSR race car. That internal competition between the 968 and 964 drove many race teams to stick with the familiar 911 platform they knew, despite the 968's reputation for more neutral handling, more power, and smoother aerodynamics.
Itself the ultimate evolution of the 924 and 944 product lineup, the 968 was supposed to be the entry-level model for the brand at the time. The Turbo S was extremely expensive to match its speed, but consumers just didn't see the vision. It was outsold nearly 100 to one by the only-slightly-more-expensive-but-not-any-faster 964 Turbo 3.6. In spite of its on-track prowess and prodigious power, most consumers just didn't see the value in a 968 with some NACA ducts on the hood. A rare financial misstep from Porsche, even with a sub-5-second 0-60 time, the unique engine in a common car didn't really catch on. Of course, they're nearly a million dollars to buy one now.
What made this engine unique?
The 3.0-liter engine in the standard 968 was an innovative monster of a motor. In addition to its massive displacement for a four-pot and dual overhead camshafts, the engine was among the first to incorporate variable valve timing, which Porsche called VarioCam. In standard form, the engine produced 240 ponies and 225 lb-ft of torque, which Porsche claimed was the highest-torque naturally-aspirated four-cylinder in the world at the time. For the 968 Turbo S and RS, Porsche didn't just slap a turbo on that engine and call it a day.
Porsche couldn't make a turbocharger work with the twin-cam 16-valve cylinder head, so it reverted to the old 944 Turbo single-cam eight-valve head for simplicity's sake. The pistons were also unique to the 968 Turbo S, with the compression ratio reduced from 11:1 down to 8:1. The street-legal Turbo S engine produced 305 horsepower and 369 lb-ft of torque, an impressive jump from its naturally aspirated siblings. Porsche says the Turbo RS received few modifications beyond increased boost for nearly 350 ponies on the trot.
Having owned a few 944 Turbos in my time, it's exciting enough with the 247 horsepower it made in the late 1980s. I can only imagine how much fun this car would be with the additional torque a larger displacement engine provides, and an extra 58 horsepower. It's a shame that so few of these cars were built, because I think Porsche was really on to something with this engine.
Why didn't they make more of these?
"The quality of the RSR was the 968 Turbo RS's undoing," Michael Roock from ROOCK Sportsystem tells elferspot.com. "The air restrictor strangled the engine of the 968 a bit back then. Its body was also heavier than the RSR's and the front brakes often overheated."
As one of just two teams to enter the 968 Turbo RS, Roock should know, especially as his team also continued to enter 911 Carrera RSRs in the series for the 1993 season. In spite of the car's aerodynamic and power advantage, the car didn't benefit from decades of development and familiarity as the 964 had, and it was just a heavier car with peakier power delivery. Perhaps with years more development and resources, the car could have carried on to great things in motorsport and on the street, but as it is, it'll always be relegated to a footnote in the book of Porsche history.
Without a competitive racing effort for the 968 Turbo RS, the street-going 968 Turbo S was basically a non-starter. Porsche didn't put any effort into advertising the car, and despite a plan to build 100 examples for the public, its relatively high price kept the car from gaining much traction. At the same Porsche dealer, if you were looking for a speed machine, you could order a new 911 Carrera RS for significantly less than a 968 Turbo S. At 175,000 Deutsche Marks in 1993, it was over 80,000 marks more precious than a standard 968 as well, without enough of a visual difference to justify it. Porsche cancelled the program after the 1993 flop season, and the cars were largely forgotten. It's a shame, because this is among my favorite pieces of rare Porsche lore.
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