3 days ago
Sixty years of the Porsche 911 Targa: divisive but drop-dead gorgeous
There's no derivative of the Porsche 911 more divisive than the Targa. Drivers who go to track days and pride themselves on being steely-eyed helmspeople take great joy in telling anyone who'll listen that the Targa is usually the heaviest iteration of the 911. With a chassis derived from the cabriolet, it has the same additional strengthening under the body but with more added weight in the rollover bar. Even worse, that extra mass is high up in the structure, which affects handling.
As such, to these true motoring doyens the Targa is (along with the cabriolet, of course) a no-no. Yet for others, it has always been a thing of drool-inducing desirability.
There are a number of reasons for that. For one, 911 Targas are rare beasts, built in lower numbers since its launch 60 years ago, in 1965, than the coupé and cabriolet versions of Porsche's legendary sports car. It's thought that fewer than 10 per cent of the 997 generation were Targas, for example.
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Another reason to like the Targa is that while they're heavier than convertible 911s, they're also stiffer through the chassis, thanks to that extra bracing up top, meaning they flex less under load. That results in more predictable handling. It's a difference that is probably undetectable to most motorists, mind you, but those who treat their cars roughly will claim to be able to tell the difference.
Perhaps one of the easiest reasons for falling for the 911 Targa is that they look sensational. They always have, even in those generations when the characteristic rollover hoop was done away with.
Famously, that rollover hoop was introduced to the original 911 Cabriolet to meet an anticipated toughening of safety legislation in America. At the time it was feared convertibles would be banned completely.
The result was an all-new bodystyle — neither coupé nor cabriolet — and Porsche needed a name. Those considered for the new style revolved around famous races at which Porsche had had success: Sebring and Daytona are a couple the marketers considered. But when someone mentioned the Targa Florio, a road race that Porsche had won five times up to that point, including in 1964, the answer was clear. It is only later that someone noticed the Italian word Targa translates as 'plate', which can also be interpreted as 'shield' — serendipitous indeed.
For the first few years 911 Targa owners got a removable top panel and, for the rear section, a 'soft window' that could be folded away when not needed. None of these made it to the UK, sadly, because the first imports to our shores arrived in 1973 and by then the soft window had already been ditched. Late in 1967 Porsche started offering an optional fixed glass window, which was heated to avoid misting and offered improved sound and insulation, as well as extra security. It also meant people weren't having to deal with fiddly popper fixings. It became standard equipment just a year later.
And the Targa look remained very much the same, through the G Series, introduced in 1974, and then the 964, which arrived in 1989. We also saw Targa versions of the 914 and 924.
But with the revolutionary 993 generation, which has become ridiculously coveted because it turned out to be the last of the air-cooled 911s, the Targa changed considerably. Instead of the rollover hoop, the 993 Targa — launched in November 1995 — switched to a fixed-glass roof section with body-coloured metal frame that aped the look of the coupé more closely.
Underneath it was still a 911 Cabriolet, though with a discrete roof featuring a large section of glass that slid backwards underneath the rear window. So owners could still get that halfway house experience between a full droptop and a coupé, and with the roof closed a lot of light was still allowed into the cabin. Retractable mesh screens came to the rescue on particularly sunny days.
This idea continued through the 996 and 997 generations (1997 and 2006 respectively), though with both getting an innovative hatchback-style opening rear window, allowing owners to get at their luggage in the rear seats easily.
But when the 991 Targa arrived in 2014 it was given a thoroughly modern interpretation… Transformers-style. The rollover hoop was back, but at the touch of a button the rear glass lifted up and back, the shoulders of the hoop opened up and the canvas roof then retracted for storage above the engine bay. The hoop sections then closed and the rear section returned to its seated position.
And so it has remained. What hasn't remained, of course, is the need for Targa. Modern convertibles have rollover protection — a pair of hoops that pop out behind the driver and passenger seats in the event of a rollover — and windscreen structures are so much sturdier than they were in 1965.
And yet Targa lives on. An unnecessary bodystyle, overly complicated in its current guise and still one that comes with added weight. But 60 years after its launch, for many enthusiasts there is still very much a place for Targa within the Porsche pantheon.
