The 911 Carrera Club Sport is an exercise in minimalism not equaled by any other impact-bumper 911. With the broad torque curve of a 3.2 and the elemental simplicity of a 2.7RS, this is a very special car. In typical Porsche fashion this car wasn’t constructed with a Chapman-era-Lotus-like approach to weightloss, however. Chapman was happy to shave grams off every component and only add some back when the part broke. Porsche took a much more pragmatic approach, and left the driver with only the bare essentials.
While many hardcore 911s have come without air conditioning, the CS is on another level. To my knowledge no other roadgoing 911 took the sun visor from the passenger in the name of weight savings. They’re not driving, so their idle hands can block the sun if necessary. Hopefully the passenger also completed their ablutions before climbing aboard- carrying extra weight is really not in the spirit of things.
The car also used lightweight manually-adjusted cloth seats rather than leather, had carpet where the rear seat should be, ditched the model’s distinctive foglights, and added some of the absolutely-necessary door graphics. The engine wasn’t exactly unique, though it was blueprinted for max effect. As a result it was known to make slightly more power than Porsche admitted to officially. The redline was also 500 revs higher than the standard car.
This litany of minor changes resulted in a car that may have carried fewer components, but was a startling amount more than the sum of its parts from behind the wheel. Is the Carrera Club Sport the best driving classic 911? Maybe. Even if it isn’t, it is deservedly in the company of the all-time greats, from the 2.7RS to the 993 Carrera RS. Though it never officially crossed the Atlantic, the Carrera Club Sport is certainly on our air-cooled Porsche shortlist.