Introduced in 1997 at the IAA International Motor Show in Frankfurt, the Porsche 996 was the most polarizing version of the 911 to be unleashed on lovers of the model up to that point. The heretical event was eclipsed only by the Cayenne SUV’s debut in 2002. Indeed, oil and air had been the magic elixir for Porsche’s horizontally opposed engines since 1948, when the very first 356 flat-four emerged from Ferdinand Porsche’s barn in Gmünd, Austria. Now in its eighth generation, the 911 series has undergone a transformation that’s entailed—among other refinements—vastly increased output over the years. But the air-cooled, normally aspirated 3.6-liter engine in the final 993 hit a 282 hp ceiling in the series-production Carrera road cars. By its final model year in 1998, power had maxed out, the 993 had become too expensive to build, and it was not a scalable platform in step with the marque’s plans for expansion. That the fifth-generation 911 would be water-cooled..
