Porsche 911( 993) RS Club Sport

Carrera RS Clubsport at a glance

The Clubsport belongs to our Porsche catalogue. The 911's full story from the 901 to the 992 is in our Porsche 911 guide.

The 993 and the return of the Carrera RS

The 993 was the last generation of the air-cooled 911, built from January 1994 to March 1998, with 68,029 cars according to Wikipedia's sales table. The English designer Tony Hatter drew its smoother body in 1991, and a new multi-link rear axle on an alloy subframe, known as the "Weissach axle", was derived from the 989 project.

For 1995 Porsche added a Carrera RS, the lightweight road car with the bigger engine. The previous generation and its versions are described in our Porsche 911 964 guide. The 993 RS was legal in Europe and most other markets, but never in the United States. The Clubsport was the RS with motorsport equipment, intended for club racing and track days and only partly suited to daily road use.

RS Clubsport engine and drivetrain

Both the RS and the Clubsport use a 3,746 cc version of the air-cooled flat-six, with a bore of 102.0 mm, a stroke of 76.4 mm and a compression ratio of 11.3:1. The standard Carrera had 3.6 litres. The extra capacity came with forged pistons, larger inlet valves, lightened rocker arms, twin oil coolers and the Varioram variable-length intake manifold, controlled by modified Bosch Motronic electronics.

The result was 221 kW (300 PS) at 6,500 rpm and 355 Nm at 5,400 rpm, against 200 to 210 kW for the regular Carrera models of the time. Elferspot notes that the Clubsport engine itself was unchanged from the road RS, but it was combined with a lightweight single-mass flywheel.

The gearbox is the six-speed G50 family. The road RS used the G50/31 with a short shifter and modified ratios for the first three gears. The Clubsport had its own version (G50/32, according to Elferspot) with shorter fourth, fifth and sixth gears and a shorter lever throw. A limited-slip differential was standard.

Performance figures

These tests were carried out on the road RS. The sources give no separate measured figures for the Clubsport, whose shorter top gears favour acceleration over top speed.

Weight saving: RS versus Clubsport

The Carrera RS was already a stripped car. Wikipedia lists a seam-welded bodyshell, an aluminium bonnet with a single strut and thinner glass. Racing seats replaced the rear seats, the door cards were simplified, sound deadening was cut to a minimum and the headlamp washers were deleted. The result was a kerb weight of 1,280 kg, or 5.8 kg per kW of engine output by our calculation. The Clubsport went further:

Elferspot adds that many road RS cars were also ordered with the more aggressive Clubsport-style aero package, so a big wing alone does not prove a car is an M003.

Chassis, brakes and wheels

Under the body, both versions share a racing-inspired chassis. Bilstein dampers, a lower ride height, adjustable front and rear anti-roll bars and a strut brace under the bonnet sharpen the handling. The brakes come from the 911 Turbo: 322 mm cross-drilled, ventilated discs with four-piston calipers at both axles. The cars run on three-piece 18-inch aluminium wheels.

From Clubsport to racing 993s

The Clubsport was the closest a customer could get to a factory racer while keeping a road registration. For professional teams, Porsche Motorsport built 45 RSR 3.8 racing cars for IMSA GT and the European GT series. The one-make Cup series used separate 993 Cup 3.8 cars. German Wikipedia records 147 cars for 1994–1995 and 69 for 1996–1997, and 15 Cup 3.8 RSR cars in 1997–1998, one of which was ordered for 238,500 DM in 1997. The fastest 993 racer was the GT2 based on the 911 Turbo; its road-legal homologation version was built only 57 times. Porsche's later Le Mans special is described in our Porsche 911 GT1 article.