. Yet the automaker's flagship 911 continued with water cooling, which was considered an important part of its identity. Porsche had been making air-cooled, rear-engined sports cars from the beginning, after all, so it was hard to break with tradition.The end of air-cooled Porsches finally came in 1997, when the 996-generation 911 was unveiled at that year's Frankfurt auto show. The flat-6 engine was in the usual place, but this time it was air-cooled.
"We experimented with the engine because the air-cooled two-valve-per-cylinder designs were at the end of the road technologically in terms of emissions and power," August Achleitner, then head of technical product planning, vehicle concepts, and package at Porsche, said in a statement."And various air-cooled four-valve boxers didn't work due to various hotspots that we couldn't get a handle on.
, which secured its financial future. None of this would have happened without the 996 911, so it was indeed, pardon the pun, a watershed moment for Porsche.