Porsche 911: air-cooled vs. water-cooled... what's the difference?

Gotta admit...its growing on me...

Its pretty loud though...

 

Coming across this thread and reading the various thoughts makes me think of how I first really got into Porsche/Ferrari cars. The wonderful sounds they make and the feeling of specialness when in their general presence. I am 30 now but can remember my first 911 experience like it was yesterday. Late 1982, my father who is also in the business had purchased for his leasing company and a good client an '83 Kiln Red 911 SC Targa. The looks, the smell, the wonderful noise. It captivated me and set the course for my life in many ways. Since then I have driven and experienced virtually every notable vehicle you can imagine. For me an air-cooled 911 is pure magic. I have had every version since and the 993 is an absolute fave for me. Some insist you need a Turbo, and I admit there is something particularlly special about the early Turbos '76-'89, but in regular driving the 993 body embodies the spirit and the "911ness" best of all in my opinion. I had an early 996 C4 Water Cooled, and it was a wonderful car (and a rare and fabulous color), all Porsches are. After selling that, I got back into a '95 993 Cab and it just feels better, more fun, more emotional, more of what Ferry and Butzi Porsche had in mind I think. Every car enthusiast should experience an air-cooled 911 with bottom hinged pedals (which I LOVE) to see driving in it's purest form. The more and harder you drive an air-cooled 911 of any vintage it just seems you become one with the car. The water cooled cars, as good as they are just don't give you the same feeling.

 

What he said. The clatter of an air-cooled 911 engine is sort of in the same category as the 'Ferrari wail' -- one of motoring's great tunes.

The 997 is great, and it looks a hell of a lot better than the 996 (in and out). It's just different, and the mechanical connection isn't as immediate, IMHO. I'd love to have one as a daily driver, but an early 911S (pre-74) would be a serious weekend canyon road car.

I would, however, say the 997 is the best looking convertible 911 ever. Hands down. (And I had a 993 cabriolet.)

I think you mean the air-cooled cars looked/were more compact, in which case I agree.

To be fair to Porsche, however, when you look at 4,000-lb turds like the BMW 6 series, the 997 has kept the weight off pretty well, IMHO.

 

You know what I mean

 

I was just thinking this morning in my 993 how far ahead its AC/Heat/Air system is to the weird system in an early 911.

It occurred to me that I can barely remember all those levers now, and the hot-oil smell that they always evoked in the interior...

I think that the very early carb cars had between the seats three levers...from the left-
a hand throttle (not a choke, a warm up throttle lever - could be used as a sort of cruise control up to about 65 or 70 to rest your foot)..then the handbrake, and to the right a heater lever. This let in heated air driven forward through converters on the exhaust manifolds to the distribution boxes up front.

On the instrument panel, (same place as the auto controls on a 993 today), three horizontal levers. The top one let in cool air from that vent at the top of the sloping hood, it mixed with whatever heated air was coming from the heat lever. You could play both levers up or down like a shower faucet to get the overall temperature and volume you wanted. Below that was a footwell to dashboard level mixer. Below that was the defrost lever.

The later FI cars did away with the hand throttle and to keep the tradition of the three levers between the seats had TWO heat levers, one left and one right. The dash lever were the same IIRC.

Air conditioning (if you had it, it was usually an aftermarket American kit in this day), was completely on it's own with separate vents under the lower dash.

And to think Road & Track and other magazine called this system "complicated"!!!

Did I remember it all correctly? It has been about 35 to 40 years...

 

Yes, in my 1987 911, it is possible to have all three air systems (fresh, heat & AC) on at the same time, since they all run independently. I believe that top down air-cooled Carreras of the late 80s were the pinnacle 911s for sound, handling & sheer 'Porschiness'. As the last iteration of the original 911, it all just comes together.

Working on one enhances this feeling. i.e. The suspension system is a marvel of spartan function. And very easy to tune.

But then I own one so I am biased.

Ian

 

Congrats. I had a '96 993 cab and it was an exceptional car. The sound was amazing, the build quality was incredible.

A few qualms:

You may find the Tiptronic hurts performance quite a bit.

Also, when the top is retracting, make sure the inner 'side curtains' aren't pinched in the mechanism. And make sure you have the technique mastered of fitting the boot to the top -- the top will get damaged if you drive around without it.

 

totally agree........they are two different animals

All so true..my 993 (turbo s) is awesome and fun to drive i think beautiful in everyway but in the end my 997 (gt3rs) is just Better in everyway. From AC to Handling. BETTER

Porsche couldn't sit back and let everyone pass them by. They had to go to more efficient and better machines. sad or not it's the reality we all want. I think the Air Cooled guys that really won't let go are just not giving the new stuff a chance.

 

Very true, but I will not pay the premium for a 993 turbo over a 996 turbo unless I was keeping the car for a very long time.

 

Of course the air-cooled crowd knows that they are better cars. I think in many cases, they just prefer the simple, more basic cars. While it is often labeled ‘soul’, I think it is more the smell, the glorious noise, the directness of driver input & all of the crazy idiosyncrasies - everything that an old Porsche has that the new ones don't – that is the genuine attraction. Older Ferrari or Lamborghini are sought for the same reasons.

Anybody who believes otherwise is just not being realistic or they haven’t driven both epochs.

Ian

 

You hit it on the nail.

 

Just bought my 5th Porsche,'73 RS 2.7.
Gut feel I will enjoy it more then the 4 others which were a new 964 Carrera 4 a new 993 RS and a Carrera 3 litre race car and a new 996.

 

pics please

 

early next week is the pick,time frame.


Its a M472 touring version RHD,but like many has been converted to LWT version.
Been set up for historic racing but never raced,as the current owner went down the 997 cup path.
No sunrrof,glass front and rear bumpers,funny has left the power windows in her,running 7 and 8 inch Fush's.
weight 1020kilos and the motor has been screwed out to about 250hp.
Photos of my old 993 RS and a carrera 3.0l I raced in historics.
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Its been set up for historics,but its to good in the body for that.
has a full cage,which I will remove the front section.
Normal things have been upgraded including,torsion bars,shocks,sway bars,diff,gears have been dropped and bunched up,still has its period seats but have been replaced in car by modern race seats.
Idea is to do hill climbs,non serious rallies and the odd lap dash/sprint meeting.

 

You can also look at it from a psychological point of view

When I was in high school and college, I sold golf clubs for a living. All the hardcore golfers wanted forged irons and Persimmon Woods. They'd make you think you were a troll and not worthy if you tried to talk to them about cavity back irons and metal woods. They were convinced that using the new equipment...wasn't golf, and didn't have the same "feel".

I guess I'm really dating myself here... but whether its cars or golf... you get a bunch of rich old guys around, who are in love with something... they tend to have this same kind of behavior when it comes to adjusting to new things

I do agree the 911 had become bigger and more GT so if you want the best of both worlds look to the Cayman... it has the small size and road feel of the old air cooled 911, yet all the new advances in car technology without the GT feel. But like golf... prestige, nostalgia, and sports history are more important in these cases than logic and engineering. So most Porsche guys won't look at the Cayman as a modern back-to-the-basics small 911. They'd rather die than give the new Cayman any credit

Just like metal jumbo head golf clubs have changed the game of golf (its getting harder to find a guy who still tortures his score by playing with persimmon woods)...but car guys always need something new/old to lust after, so the air cooled 911 will continue to be talked about and desired by "real" Porsche lovers...even if it doesn't improve their track times
(not that I'm a track guy, but this helped me wrap it back around to my golf example)

 

My undrstanding is that one of the MAIN reasons P went to H2O cooled engines was emission requirements. Hard to keep emissions down with air cooled. Now Pcars are amoung the cleanest internal combustion auto engines on the planet.

I do remember driving air cooled turbos and the excitement of the rear end trying to pass me once in a while. Let off the gas and you got a physics lesson in Trailing Throttle Oversteer.

 

I'm sure there's something to that. The Cayman is a better car than any of the 1997.5-and-earlier Porsches. But having driven a few of the "real" 911s (pre-'74) and several 356s, there's something brutal and raw about them. You could never go as fast in a 356 Speedster as in a modern Boxster/Cayman, but it does sound like the (75!!) horsemen of the Apolocalypse back there and you will feel speed in a way that the excellent modern cars can't do. The sound actually tells you a lot about what the engine is doing, torque-wise, even at low speeds. Much like a Ferrari, the engine is part of the soundtrack and experience, probably because with no jacketing the air-cooled engine is basically unmuffled. It is a unique experience.

There's also a weight factor, to confuse things. The older cars are lighter (IIRC about 1000 lbs lighter, if you go from a '72-'73 911 to a '10 997). No matter what you do with driving aids, 1000 lbs is enough to transform the character of a car. Obviously not all of that is from water cooling infrastructure, but you get the sense as a driver that the machine has changed into something more than the old seat, ass, engine, wheels, road equation that described it from 1950 until sometime in the '70s.

I'm considering a Cayman for my next daily driver, and have driven one (plus several Boxsters and water-cooled 911s). They're very good, but you don't get the shock and awe of the older cars.

There's also an era thing going on. New cars are very antiseptic compared to the classics. No one rates the 250 GT SWB above the F430 because the cooling system is different. The former feels like steel and grease and gears, while the latter feels a bit like a Nintendo. It's hard to separate that from the air-cooled versus water-cooled argument.

Probably true, but I have also heard/read that there are limits to the cooling capacity of what is basically a big fan mounted in the rear of the car. At some point the extra weight of a radiator was justified by the power increase.

 

IMO the difference has less to do with what cools the engine as to the "feel" of the car.
The 993 and older cars had this primitive, if you will, "charm" to them.
The 996 has been described as the Lexus of 911's.
You can feel the drastic difference in design.
A 996 GT2 or 3 has the Extreme built into it but still the interior feels modern.
Many do not like that.

 

Never driven either, but the post-993 iterations are completely the wrong shape.
That alone would be enough to decide me, were I faced with a choice.

If you're brave, use the money saved by opting for a 993 over the newer equivalent to create a monster by wedging in one of those double-hyabusa v8 engines.

 

A 400bhp stock 993TT is seriously fast and depending on mileage probably about the same price as a new 997, which I believe would have a hard time keeping up with the 993.

In Turbo form, the 993 is already a beast.

 

Porsches aren't about the engine hp. They are about the corners. The Butchers who change these cars to 600-800hp plus have never truly experienced what the Porsche 911 is about. I also believe they don't care too.

imho dropping anything different in these cars shouldn't be allowed they are Perfect the way they are. You want big HP buy a viper or corvette and ruin it...