Porsche 911 Carrera 4 (964)
Why 5.8: The 964 launched in 1989 as the Carrera 4 alone: the 3.6-litre M64 with 250 hp, coil springs in place of torsion bars, power steering, ABS, and an all-wheel-drive system developed from the 959's with a planetary centre differential splitting torque 31/69. The rear-drive Carrera 2 followed a year later and took the headlines; the C4 is the car that actually introduced the 85 percent of the 964 that was new.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The same air-cooled 3.6 as the Carrera 2, with the same fan-driven metallic thrash and the same 6,800 rpm cap, so the flat-six itself is unchanged. The AWD hardware adds driveline whine from the front diff and propshaft tunnel that the C2 does not carry, which takes a tenth off. Gruff, not musical, with more gearing in the way.
6-cylinder · naturally aspirated · 6,800 rpm redline · rated 7.8 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €64k (1989) → €72k (2026), trending up · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
Built before ISOFIX existed, so there are no anchor points at all. A child seat here is a seatbelt installation, and the belt geometry of the period was not designed with one in mind.
Derived from production years and seating layout, not a per-car source. ISOFIX was standardised as ISO 13216 in 1997, required on new EU model types from 2011 and on all new EU cars from 2014.
The long version
The C4 has spent its entire life as the 964 people buy to use. It was heavier than the Carrera 2, the early all-wheel-drive system was criticised for pushing the nose wide, and when the air-cooled boom arrived the market put its money on the C2 and the RS. That left the Carrera 4 as the affordable 964 — ten to twenty percent under an equivalent C2 for most of the last decade — and affordable 964s are driven: winter-capable, with heated seats and a heater that works, the C4 is the one that turns up at club meetings in January. Values rose with the generation but the gap to the C2 never closed, so there is less incentive to park one, and the AWD hardware costs enough to rebuild that owners tend to be the sort who keep a car through the work rather than sell it on. The least collected 964 coupé and, not coincidentally, the most used.