Porsche 911 Carrera 4 (996) | The Brave Pill

Spotless examples of the 996 are creeping up in value - ditto those with spots...

The idea of a winter car is a familiar one to those who possess multiple vehicles of varying degrees of niceness. The concept is a broad one, and although it is usually applied to something cheap and semi-disposable that can keep salt (and miles) off nicer warm weather cars, others will prefer something more exciting.

This is what, indirectly, brings us to this week’s Pill. A few years ago I visited a well-known supercar specialist for a story, this being during the summer. The average value of the stock in the showroom was well into six figures, making a curious contrast with a dusty looking 996 Carrera 4 that was parked around the back. Presuming it was an unwanted part-ex I was wondering about making a cheeky offer, but it turned out to be the millionaire proprietor’s winter wheels and categorically not for sale. Apparently, it came out of its hibernation every autumn, and, wearing a set of winter tyres, was pretty much unstoppable in slippery conditions.

Beyond the fact that earlier 996 had a black interior and lacked a private registration, it was pretty much identical to this week’s Pill. This is another AWD Carrera 4 with a manual gearbox, plus a similar six-figure mileage. But while the earlier car apparently owed its canny owner less than £10,000 six years ago, this one is up for nearly 50 per cent more. That’s because, from their very low ebb, 996 prices have started to creep up, and while it’s not long since £15,000 would have been enough to buy a Carrera 4S these days it represents the bottom of the market for 996 manual coupes. This is the cheapest currently in the classifieds not to have a declared mechanical fault; the fact it is the rarer and more winter-friendly Carrera 4 is therefore a definite bonus.

The advert text for our Pill isn’t short on details, but it is short on correct details. The spec panel promises 155hp, a turbocharged engine and the prospect of 43.5mpg - all being obviously wrong for a 996’s highly bred flat-six, especially the last one. Searching for the MOT history on the registration our Pill is wearing brings a likely explanation, as it now refers to an Alfa Romeo MiTo, presumably one wearing a freshly reassigned private plate.

But we don’t give up easily, especially as the vendor has helpfully included a comprehensive array of images, including several of the service history. We sent Ferruccio, the GDPR-trained database hamster, to inspect these in detail. His conclusion was that the seller hasn’t been as diligent in the application of black boxes as they probably should have been, but he did also find another registration which brought up the correct MOT history. A record that looks as green and upbeat as Daniel O’ Donnell’s greatest hits, especially by the standards of bargain 911s. Our Pill has had nothing more serious than unscary advisories since 2016, and also seems to have been in constant use – reassuring given that long periods off the road are often signs of hard-to-fix maladies. After several years of gradual mileage acquisition, it had a spurt last year, managing nearly 14,000 between its two most recent MOTs.

Closer inspection of the photographed service book shows that the car seems to have had an oil change last April, and that it last visited on Official Porsche Centre for what must have been a pricey major service as recently as 2018. There is also a reassuringly hefty-looking stack of what seem to be reassuringly hefty invoices, the sort you would expect a car like this to have acquired over 130,000 miles.

Not that our Pill is going to win any awards for originality. Even the most hapless automotive detective won’t struggle to spot some obviously non-standard parts, the most glaring being the carbon fibre driver’s side sill finisher emblazoned with the outright lie ‘turbo’. A closer examination of the interior pics reveals an amount of woven composite trim which seems unlikely to have been specified new in a 1999 Carrera 4. Suggesting that some, most or possibly all of the interior might have actually come from a scrapped 996 Turbo. Or possibly not, as the passenger side carbon finisher does indeed say ‘Carrera’. Porsche trim palaeontologists should feel free to fight it out in the comments to relieve our collective ignorance.

Wonky sill syntax aside, our Pill does look to have scrubbed up impressively well for a car that is most of its way to its 23rd birthday. It also proves that the caramelish (or Kormaesque) brown leather does create a far more colourful cabin than Default Black would; especially as 996 carpets came halfway up the door cards to create a homely feel. The 911’s intergenerational spread means that this first water-cooled 911 is smaller and more wieldy than its successors, making it easier to squeeze down narrow roads and into tight parking spaces than its chunkier successors. The basic Carrera 4 suspension tune was also pretty pliant from memory, certainly when compared to the firmness of more recent 911s. It should still be a very easy car to live with.

Our Pill has covered enough miles for its next owner to have no fear adding to the tally, and all-wheel drive offers reassurance in the sort of slippery conditions that seem to have settled in for the duration. But there is a serious problem with its credentials as a winter car – the fact it is probably a bit too nice. Anyone buying such a car as a saltwater hack is likely to end up with both regrets and the need to purchase something scuzzier to protect it.

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bmv6197

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