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located between the seats is gone, leaving room for a coin tray that’s an extension of the center console. Mounted in the console, forward of the shifter, are knobs that lock up the center differential and raise and lower the rear spoiler.

Otherwise, there’s little to distinguish the Carrera 4’s interior from the normal 911’s. The seats are the same part-manual, part-power- assisted buckets used by the plain Carrera, a silly combination that smacks of the heavy’ hand of marketing (really. now, power to raise and lower the seat base?). Window switches and door cubbies are as before, although the door- mounted loudspeakers are brand-new. Because of wheel-well intrusion, the old 911 never had a dead pedal. but with the Carrera 4’s new suspension, there’s ample room for this little footrest. which is located at the same level as the clutch pedal.

Long before you have time to discover the nuances that set the Carrera 4 apart from its predecessor, you’ll notice that the 964 looks just a bit different from the standard 911. The molded 928-style aero nosepiece with integrated driving lights, turn signals. air intake and spoiler and the similar soft rear-end cap with license-plate recess are certainly unusual. More than just styling gimmicks. these components. plus numerous underpanels that enclose the engine and driveline, reduce the drag coefficient from 0.395 to 0.32 and result in zero lift. Whether you like their rather massive appearance depends on how much of a purist you are (some Porschephiles have yet to accept the styling of the 1974 model). We like the new bumpers, which also serve to tie the new, flared rocker panel moldings into the body. Ditto for the wraparound taillights, angled slightly to follow the slope of the rear decklid. Flat disc wheels reminiscent of the 928 alloys further alter the appearance 9f the 964. If that’s not enough, then the now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t rear spoiler that rises at 50 mph and retracts at just beyond 6 mph provides that extra touch sure to make the Carrera 4 one of the most distinctive cars on the road.

Unfortunately, it’ll cost you $69,500 to experience all of this for yourself. At that, you’d better hurry because the 1250 cars earmarked for North America are sure to sell wie warme Semmeln. For the less fortunate, here’s what the Carrera 4 is like to drive:

Rock solid. It doesn’t feel like a 911 (though it does feel “German”) and doesn’t ride and

handle like one either. Power-assisted steering makes a big difference, as does the coil-spring suspension. which has a suppleness not found in the 911’s torsion-bar setup. However, the biggest distinction between the old 911 and the new one is all-wheel drive. This makes the car not only supremely tractable but also extremely well balanced—neutral with increasing amounts of understeer when pressed. Incredibly, there’s no discernible oversteer, even under drop-throttle conditions that send the rear-wheel-drive- only Carrera spinning tail-first off the road.

At Paul Ricard, we tried to get the 964 into extreme angles for the camera, but all we got was understeer. It wasn’t until the slalom test, notorious for bringing out a car’s looseness, that we provoked any twitchiness at the rear, and then only moderate. The Carrera 4 posted a 63.3-mph slalom, compared with 65.5 mph for the 1988 911 Carrera. A less grippy skidpad held the 964 to 0.83g. far less than the 0.89g we recorded with a 944 Turbo S on our home pad.

Making up for the Carrera 4’s disappointing slalom speeds were the acceleration times, which were nothing short of sensational for a normally aspirated (and heavy) 911. On Paul Ricard’s back straight, the Carrera 4 simply grabbed onto the pavement and catapulted itself down the track—to 60 mph in 4.9 seconds, to the quarter mile in 13.5 sec. Consider the source: a massive 3.6-liter flat-6 that delivers gobs of torque and pulls without protest from 1000 rpm up to the 6800-rpm redline. The new gearbox and linkage work flawlessly, and between that fat torque curve and the gearing. the 964 can blast through the quarter mile, or from corner to corner, at warp speed. And when it’s time to stop, those massive, ABS-equipped 4-wheel discs enable you to mash the brake pedal with abandon. No wonder the 964 took only 125 and 218 ft to stop from 60 and 80 mph, respectively.

Let the Carrera 4 unwind and you soon reach 160-plus mph. Other Porsches do that, but no other model cruises flat-out with so little drama. Certainly not the 911, whose dartiness and front-end lift are unsettling, to say the least.

During our 3-day sojourn in the sun, five drivers of varying ability sampled the Carrera 4. All were impressed. One of them, smitten long ago by the marque. was moved to say, “Porsche has taken a wonderful car and made it that much more wonderful.”