Porsche 964 Carrera RS: Time for coffee?

Put the kettle on and whisk yourself back to a time when 911 RSs were simple, focused and oh so pretty

If recent spy shots of the upcoming 992-generation Porsche 911 have you in tears, put the kettle on and remember when Stuttgart’s designs were a little simpler. Because a new Petrolicious video has gone live and it features the extremely simple, yet totally gorgeous, shape of a 964 Carrera RS, which, in case you aren’t already drooling, comes finished in Maritime Blue paint and squats on magnesium RS wheels.

This car lives with its owner in Arizona as one of a small but growing number of 964 RSs to have been imported to the US, something that couldn’t have been done prior to 2017 because of America’s ban on importing cars not officially sold there until they are 25 years old. As such, it lacks the weight-adding safety features and power-sapping emissions hardware of normal US Carreras and comes in pared-back German form.

Under that steeply raked back-end lives an uprated air-cooled 3.6-litre flat six producing 260hp that drives the rear axle through a short-ratio, five-speed manual gearbox via a lightened flywheel and racing clutch. This RS owner concedes that the car's performance statistics may not seem particularly spectacular by today's standards, but he promptly reminds us that they come in a taut 964 package that weighs just 1,230kg - before demonstrating the effects.

We shan’t say anymore and will instead leave you to absorb the pleasurable mechanical tones of a 964 RS being driven as its makers intended. Once you’ve done that, we’ll meet you in the classifieds…